R. John Blackley

BLACKLEY, Robert Richard John.  b. New York City, 8 January 1936. As Director of Schola Antiqua, Blackley is known for his work with proportional-rhythm chant, including eight chant-hymns in H82. The son of Robert Blackley (1903-1969) and Louise Ann Fennessy Blackley (1904-2007), his education was based largely on his study of great books of Western literature.  Among the books fundamental to Blackley’s work in liturgical chant are Jan W. A. Vollaerts’s Rhythmic Proportions in Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Chant (Leiden, 1958) and Anthony Gregory Murray*’s Gregorian Chant According to the Manuscripts (London, 1963). According to these theories, ecclesiastical chant (from the the 9th century...