Winfred Douglas was the brilliant musician who set the Mass ordinary to English. His editions became the standard chant for Anglicans. His book is now online. It is regrettable that the text is different enough that it cannot be used in full in Catholic parishes with the new texts.
But there are enough chants in here that are useful and essential to make this a book not to be ignored. Ideally, ordinary form parishes would rediscover, for example, the Sprinkling Rite. See page 92. Also, the Requiem chants would be fully usable in the ordinary form. In addition, it is useful to study his method of setting English to chant – a subject of perennial debate and discussion.
Thanks! Now…does anyone have reasonably clean copies of the accompanied versions of the ones published as such? there are treasured and tattered copies of a few at St. James AC in Cleveland, and I'm sure they'd love more.
Canon Douglas transformed the music of the American Episcopal church, and his influence is still felt today. It was a remarkable ministry.
As to his chant accompaniments, you would do better to look at Jeff Ostrowski's site and adapt from Flor Peeters and other methods. Canon Douglas often breaks the mode, (see Adoro devote in the Hymnal 1940, with all of the bad V-I progressions) — he also introduces passing tones and suspensions which break the flow of the singing. Much worse than that, he introduces harmonic change which is often sudden and far too fast — a chord change at the speed of one neume (eighth note) following a period in which the rate of harmonic change was radically slower. Very disruptive when the rate of harmonic change suddenly changes so quickly.