MOCQUEREAU, ANDRÉ - Benedictine monk, born at La Tessoualle (Maine-et-Loire) on 6 June 1849, died at Solesmes on 18 January 1930. He made his Benedictine profession at Solesmes in 1877 and was ordained a priest in 1879; he became D. Pothier’s collaborator in the restoration of Gregorian chant.
Pius X’s initiative for an official edition of the liturgical chants (1904) placed at the service of the Church the great resources of scholarship and art already amassed by M. and his group of Solesmes monks. The volumes of the Paléographie musicale, from 1880 onward, are M.’s achievement. For scholars, the Paléographie musicale still represents a unique body of working material, namely, a collection of the finest liturgical musical documents from the 9th, 11th, and 12th centuries, according to the various schools of neumatic notation. For knowledge of M.’s doctrine, the studies he published in vols. I, IV, and VII are particularly important. His masterful work, Nombre musical grégorien (I, Tournai 1908; II, ibid. 1927), takes up arguments already treated in the introductions to the volumes of the Paléographie, which reappear in various pamphlets and in the numerous articles published in the Revue grégorienne, as well as in lectures given in Paris, Rome, Washington, etc. He follows Pothier concerning the rhythmic unity of the Latin word (cf. Nombre musical, II, p. 231), but departs from him in asserting a greater freedom of rhythm with respect to intensive accentuation, whether verbal or not; and M.’s originality would consist in restoring to honor the Hellenic concept, rhythm = ordo, motus. This led to the reinstatement of the almost forgotten but highly consequential distinction, of great practical importance, between rhythm and meter.
The rhythmic system applied by M. to the performance of Gregorian chant seeks to reconcile the general laws of rhythm with the positive evidence of the musical manuscripts of the various schools, with the extremely sparse explanations of medieval theorists, and with the austere nobility of the liturgical functions for which Gregorian chants are intended. The worldwide diffusion of the so-called rhythmic editions demonstrates the eminently practical character of the system. M. was responsible for several adaptations of Gregorian chants and for some melodic compositions, such as Alleluia, Rosa vernans, etc.