One of the techniques I like to use when teaching chant, especially complex chants that have many notes per syllable, is to simplify the chant by assigning one key note to each syllable, and then building up gradually to the full complement of notes. The advantage of this is the highlighting of the ornamental (i.e. non-melodic/structural) nature of Gregorian chant. This keeps things closer to the text and helps us work against the tendency to invest every note with a formal weight that the early monks clearly did not intend.
The disadvantage to this approach is that it requires the singers to put their books down and learn by listening and repetition. I say that this is a disadvantage because when I say to most people, “Alright, listen and repeat after me,” they are simply lost, no matter how simple (in my mind, at least) is the phrase that I am giving them. Yes, sometimes it is a problem of Latin; but from watching how people from all walks of life dearly resist putting down the book—the authority!—in order to enter into an oral mode of acting, I think that the problem is at least heightened by our emphasis on literacy. As I say, the book is the authority, and I am merely one interpreter, who obviously just learned this from the book.
Literacy is a great gift, of course, and allows us access to all kinds of cultural riches that are denied those who cannot read. But as we move further and further away from oral modes of learning and interacting, the disadvantages to a strictly text-based mode emerge. We can easily fool ourselves, by our reliance on texts, into thinking that we have learned something, when we have learned a simulacrum instead. We all know how a good professor can make a subject come alive; I’ve encountered persons recently who dismiss out of hand great philosophers simply on the basis of having read them and not liked them. There is no sense of the cultural embeddedness one needs to have to appreciate certain authors. This embeddedness is greatly enhanced by having it modeled by another human being. Someone who speaks passionately about Plato or Beethoven or Botticelli or the varieties of birdsong or human dialect can suddenly make an abstract idea one of real flesh and blood.
Literacy gives us the illusion of being self-sufficient, particularly as more and more texts become more available on the internet and elsewhere. Oral learning stresses our dependence on the experience of another.
In this way, the loss of music in school curricula is particularly to be lamented. My own love of oral/aural learning certainly comes from my musical background, which while literate, makes use of a lot of oral tradition. I learned German/American folk dances from simply playing along at family gatherings in my grandparents’ house. I learned guitar from friends (“Here is how you do the left hand for the opening chord in “Purple Haze”), and from listening to the radio and old vinyl albums. I played in a number of bands where learning a song meant sitting across from the songwriter, having him say, “OK, after that chord, this one for three beats, then a hit over here…” Even in classical music, I have long stressed the important sense of tradition that one must have. You can pick up a book of songs by Fauré and sing them correctly, note-for-note, and very easily miss the whole point of singing songs by Fauré. To really understand them requires some kind of mentorship, listening to a master sing and imitating what he or she is doing (in this case, Elly Ameling and Gérard Souzay, if you were wondering!).
This difficulty is an important one for us as Benedictines to be aware of. While we like to boast of the emphasis that Saint Benedict places on literacy in his Rule, we should always remember the word with which it opens: “Listen!”