ChantHacks Weekend Workshop:
“A 5-Step Method for Gregorian Chant Performance”

Bring Mark to your parish, school, or community to teach your choir a Gregorian Chant rehearsal method that is ordered and efficient in leading your choir or schola to a musical and prayerful singing of the Chant!

After your choir is sufficiently trained in this 5-Step rehearsal method:

  • each individual singer can use it to prepare effectively for group rehearsals
  • the individual singer can prepare his own rendering of the chant for any event that could NOT have a rehearsal beforehand
  • the whole choir can maintain unity
    • unity of pitch
    • unity of rhythm
    • unity of expression, while preserving the individual’s personal expression
    • There are singers with whom Mark has used this method such that, even after 25 years, they can get together and sing the chant with expressive intention, while at the same time preserve pitch and rhythmic unity!

Outline of the 5-Step Method**:

  1. Solfege/Solfeggio, i.e. Do, Re, Mi (Reading the pitches, which establishes pitch unity)
  2. Counting, i.e. ordering the notes into groups of 2’s & 3’s (which establishes rhythmic unity)
  3. Metering (which establishes rhythmosyllabic unity; that is, maintaining the rhythm while singing the words)
  4. Phrase Expression (which adds the tempo flexibility inherent in the Old Solesmes Method within a single phrase)
  5. Total Expression (which combines everything into a “Harmony of Intention”)

See the information below and take advantage of this opportunity to move your choir/schola’s performance to the next level!

Typical Weekend Schedule:

1. Friday Evening Presentation:
“Gregorian Chant as Textual Commentary”

  • Open to the whole parish

2. Saturday Morning Presentation/Workshop:
“Introduction to the ChantHacks 5-Step Method”

  • Open to the whole parish

3. 1st Saturday Afternoon Session:
“Practical Workshop Using the ChantHacks 5-Step Method”

  • For the choir

4. 2nd Saturday Afternoon Session:
“Developing a 5- Step Mindset“

  • For the choir
  • Rehearsing the music they are currently preparing (hymns, polyphony, chant etc.)

Booking

  • Please email mark@vocalart.org or allanna@vocalart.org with your parish/school/community information and desired workshop date (plus any other information you wish to include, e.g. about your choir, the choir’s normal repertoire, etc.).
  • We will respond and arrange a preliminary 30-minute video consultation to determine how your particular choir could most benefit from the workshop.

Cost

  • $4,300 plus travel expenses

For financial assistance, email Mark at mark@vocalart.org or allanna@vocalart.org.

Further Information

The ChantHacks 5-Step Method has at its core the work of the monks at the Abbey of Saint Pierre de Solesmes. Their first abbot, Dom Gueranger, who restored the Benedictine Order in France, saw Gregorian Chant to be of great spiritual benefit to the faithful. His insight was quite remarkable, as the manner of singing the Chant in the mid-nineteenth century, if it was sung at all, was plodding and with melodic corruptions accrued since the high point of chant composition in the 9th & 10th centuries.

Dom Gueranger sought to restore the melodies and rediscover the rhythmic system by which to render these melodies. Through the inspired work of Dom Mocquereau, who was an accomplished cellist before he joined Solesmes, a rhythmic system of the Chant was established. Whether it was discovered or invented is discussed in Episode 6 of my podcast ChantHacks. For our purposes, the melodies and rhythms that have come to be known as the “Old Solesmes Method” are integral to the 5-Step Method for Gregorian Chant Performance.

** Steps 1, 2 & 5 are part of the original rehearsal order used at the Schola Saint-Gregoire (Le Mans, France). As schola director at Thomas Aquinas College (Santa Paula, CA) in the 80’s, however, Mark added steps 3 & 4 as a means of bridging the leap from melody and rhythm to a fully lyrical & musical performance. What at first seemed to be too big a leap for the singers (many of whom were singing Gregorian Chant for the first time) was thus made manageable! Consequently, every individual singer in a choir can become an independent singer of the Chant