How fast the chant?

If you sing the chant too slowly, you lose the sense of the chant, you lose the meaning because the chant, the text, becomes less and less understandable.  Yes, you have to understand what the text is saying.  You don’t have to be a Latin scholar to know that (though that helps a lot).  People in the pews have books they can follow, that is true.  But singing the chant too slowly risks breaking the integrity of the text’s meaning.  Try listening to an audio book at a really slow rate of reading. As you turn the pace down, it eventually becomes incomprehensible.

If you sing chant too quickly, you tend to retain the meaning of the text, but you put its sacral character at risk.  The texts are sacred.  They deserve respect and time.  They must not be rushed.  They must be savored.  Chant that is rushed has a nervous, jittery quality to it.   It lacks the essential quality: it isn’t prayerful.  The pace of a Mass must not be lugubrious.  Every Mass and every element of Mass must retain a sense of progress, of moving forward towards a goal.   When you tear through a chant, you might be making progress, but you lose the essential sacral sense.  Every word of the chants are the voice of the Church singing with Christ’s own voice.  Christ is the true Actor during Mass.  He borrows us, the baptized, and uses our gestures and song.

More from Fr. Zuhlsdorf here

5 Replies to “How fast the chant?”

  1. At this morning's rehearsal, three of us plowed our way through Veni Sancte Spiritus for the first time. The slower than usual pace afforded by our unfamiliarity did two things: the meaning leaped out at us and the phrases became an extension of our breathing. These two criteria – meaning and breathing – continue to help me lead our small and inexperienced group of men into the beautiful depths of chanting prayer and praying chant.

    Thanks, Jeffrey, for the thoughts about pace, meaning and the sacred.

    Martin Franklin
    Hibbing, MN

  2. I think the one other critical (oft neglected) element that should help determine chanting speed is the space in which the chanting is taking place. Large cathedrals and basilicas with lots of highly-reflective surfaces and materials (marble, granite, stone, etc.) require a slower pace so that intelligibility of the text is maintained in contrast to small chapels and/or more modernistic churches that have acoustically absorbent (or even dead) materials (carpet, acoustic tiles, paneling, etc.) which allow for a much faster chant pace.

  3. So true. But it's true for readers too. In recent years, many readers have been trained to read way to ssslllllooooowwwwwlyyy. Some readers read so slowly that I lose interest and stop paying attention because they take so long to complete the thought. When I was responsible for training readers, I trained them to read only slightly slower than they normally speak. That's slow enough to enable listened to savor the reading but not so slow that they get bored and distracted.

  4. I can't say I've ever heard chant done too quickly. And I've heard quite a lot of it. When I've listened to your Colloquium recordings, my sense is that y'all usually chant well. Maybe 20-30 percent of the time you take it a bit slower than my preference. but never, ever too fast. Justin is correct: acoustics are a key factor for practically any music. The building is part of the vocal instrument. Use it.

    But I have heard that jittery quality when people play or sing music too quickly. A good tempo gives life to the music. People rightly criticize chant for being too slow too often. It is. When I hear slow chant, I usually hear insecurity, unfamiliarity, and a serious tendency to go flat.

    Good musicians can indeed alter the tempo of music to good effect. But they aren't lazy about it. Father Z seems to be promoting laziness, a nostalgia for a false prayerfulness. Sacred music must be prayer. But is must be full. "Largo" is the tyro's cheap substitution for "prayerful." When singers pray the text and pray the music there's little enough danger of singing too fast.

  5. If you perform the music at a tempo appropriate to the accoustics of the room/space, the quality of the music will shine forth on its own. It's not only a matter of tempo, but the space between phrases.

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