Schola cantorum was the name given to singers of the chant called Gregorian. The Schola Antiqua has studied, transcribed, performed, and commercially recorded these songs, which are a foundation of Western music history.

    Now in its 53rd year, Schola Antiqua has published in pdf on its website eight freely-downloadable writings. In 2022 came Laon 239: Chant Transcriptions in Proportional Rhythm, English & Latin, containing over 400 Mass Proper chants as transcribed and sung by Schola Antiqua between 1978 and 1985 in New York City. MS239, dating c.930 and housed in the Bibliothèque Municipale of Laon, France, is an essential key to a correct rhythmic understanding of Gregorian Chant, and its songs are presented in an easily singable chant notation.

    The Schola hopes to combine ideals of the perennial philosophy with present-day thinking, while being aware of Simone Weil’s caution: “We should conceive the identity of the various traditions, not by reconciling them through what they have in common, but by grasping the essence of what is specific in each. For this essence is one and the same.” [Notebooks]

    For 2024-25, there is R. John Blackley’s What Went Wrong? Its 32-page text presents three theses: 1st, that every individual person needs to possess both feminine and masculine ways of discerning reality; 2nd, that both religion and academia tragically have eschewed the feminine; 3rd, that energy—consciousness—is the only reality of the universe. The ideas are based on a 129-page highly illustrated “Appendix: An Annotated View of Western Humanities.”

    From 2008 came Rhythm in Western Sacred Music Before the Mid-Twelfth Century and the Historical Importance of Proportional-Rhythm Chant, illustrated with music. It, as the others, may be freely downloaded in pdf by clicking on the lengthy title. It includes in score six early hymns in regular syllabic rhythms, three Mass Propers, six fine pieces of early medieval polyphony in various rhythms, and two complete 12th-century liturgical music-dramas. Many of these are illustrated in MP3 audio the tracks of which can be heard here.   You may download a zip file containing all of the audio tracks by clicking here.

    In 1991 Barbara Lachman, an incorporator of Schola Antiqua Inc. on June 24, 1976, finished an historical novel called “Tagbuch Entries of Hildegard von Bingen, Advent 1151–1179,”downloadable by clicking on its trade-book title, The Journal of Hildegard of Bingen; in 1980 she had written an article Five Liturgical Songs by Hildegard von Bingen. Reaching to the Romantic era,in 2000 she wrote Voices for Catherine Blake, an historical novel about Catherine’s & William’s life.

    Both John and Barbara (as co-directors, in San Juan) wrote La Casa del Libro 1989–1992: An Illustrated Chronology of Exhibitions and Activities and Trouble in Puerto Rico. (Emails: rjohnblackley@gmail.com; barbaralachman82@gmail.com. Telephone: 540-464-1195.)

Please note that the eight writings were conceived in book-form, to be downloaded with pages back-to-back; when opened, verso and recto pages will face one another.