The Spirit of Gregorian Chant - Church Music Association of America

HISTORY AND TRADITION 33
even though the graphic forms might differ. The marking of a
prolongation of the notes before the quilisma was common to manuscripts
of various schools. 1
The development of this archeological work by the monks of
Solesmes has brought the assurance that in these first manuscripts,
with and without lines, we possess really and integrally the authentic
version of religious music. Since the Chant had survived the various
assaults made upon it by the caprice of copyists, mensuralists and socalled
reformers and correctors, how much more must it have lived
through the two centuries of tradition (VII to the IX) before the
first accessible manuscripts, because during that time one returned
to the immediate disciples of St. Gregory. 2
Through the process of an intensive study of each notation,
and a comparison of neum notation in campo aperto (without lines)
with neums in staff notation, it was found possible to distinguish
with precision the corrections of those copyists who remedied real
alterations of traditional melody, from those alterations which were
but an expression of personal system in manifest disaccord with the
traditional melody. Where a manuscript of one school or of one
epoch had gone astray on a certain point, another manuscript had
preserved it. On the one hand, there was sufficient uniformity for
the preservation of a primitive unity, while on the other hand there
were sufficient variances to show that certain melodies, by accidental
details, were distinct from the common foundation. However, by
adhering to the fundamental law proposed by Dom Gueranger, it
was possible to arrive at a choice among the melodies, and to select
with a degree of assurance those which identified themselves with
their original source. 3
When one considers that in the original manuscripts there were
often graphic variants to express the same thing, and that neums
were sometimes written above one another instead of in a line, arranged
without order, with compositions placed even in the margins,
one can picture to himself, to a certain extent, the difficulties which
confronted the archeologists who labored so perseveringly to restore
i Rassegna Gregoriana, July 1906. Pal. mus,, Vol. X.
2 Pal. mus., Vol. I. • Ibid, Vol. II.