Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Extremely Rare Passion Books, Liberated

Thanks to a very special donor with a far-seeing vision, three fantastic books from the past have been digitized and thereby liberated into the infinite sector of the global commons. Many, many priests who celebrate the extraordinary form will rejoice at this news. These books that cover chants for Holy Week have been nothing short of impossible to obtain. You see them sometimes in choir lofts that miraculously escaped the great gutting of the late 1960s. Now they are back. If you print them, they appear on 8.5×11 sheets. I decided to forgo the color for load speed and convenience.

Cantus Passionis (1952): Volume I, Volume II, Volume III

15 Replies to “Extremely Rare Passion Books, Liberated”

  1. These are some of my favorite chants of the whole year. The formulas/melodies are so captivating, even if you can't understand the Latin or don't have a translation available (as was the case the first time I heard it). What a gift!

  3. Jeffrey opined:

    > Actually, as I think about it, I see no reason not to use these in the ordinary form, right? The passions would be the same. Am I right?

    Actually, no…and yes. The textual citations may be different.

    For example, for the Passion Gospel on Palm Sunday this year, the extraordinary form uses Matthew 26:36 thru 27:60; whereas the ordinary form uses Matthew 26:14 through 27:66 (or 27:11-54).

    On Good Friday, however, both forms use the same verses from the Passion according to John.

  4. Surely you are aware that the Holy See publishes the notated Passion Gospels for the Ordinary Form? I picked up a copy when I was in Rome several years ago.

  6. I sang Christus from this edition in an Ordinary Form liturgy several Good Fridays ago in the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Chicago, with Paul French conducting the marvelous choir at the west end in the Turba lines and a superbly experienced and accomplished tenor as Evangelista and a brilliant young countertenor as Synagoga. I was way out-talented by the others but managed to do well enough to have a memorable experience (in a good way, for me at least). The church was jammed; the faithful had printed translations in English and Spanish. The tenor in particular breathed his lines effortlessly and smoothly, as though his first language were Latin. Superb!

  11. The text of the Novus Ordo Passion is from the Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum editio.

    Which is to say, they match the Novus Ordo texts even less than the 1962 texts.

  12. The "Planctus" is gone after 1955 as that text was done away with- the most musically GLORIOUS part of the whole Passion. However, we do the complete Passion with Planctus at St Stephen's in Sacramento, and so does everyone else I know. Lucky for us that good taste wins the day and not Bugnini's mis-guided Holy Week reform. (J. Morse)

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