Category: Simple Propers

In an effort to get a bit ahead of the game with the Chant Cafe Simple Propers Project, we offer now a set of simple propers for next weekend, the 29th Sunday in OT, along with a few demo recordings:

Download Simple Propers for the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

Because we were able to put these together a bit earlier, my newly formed parish schola had the opportunity to sing through these at the end of our rehearsal last night in preparation our singing of them of them next week. I brought along my Zoom H4 recorder in hopes of recording examples to share with the CC community, but it malfunctioned and gave me the opportunity to see how the recording feature of my new iPhone works.

Just a quick note on these recordings: This is not a musicological demonstration, or a professional choral recording–It is a quick run through of simple antiphons at the end of 2 1/2 hours or rehearsal for some of us, and after 12 long days of work. My point in saying this is not necessarily to offer a sort of disclaimer for the recordings, and not only to demonstrate the antiphons themselves, but also to show that a completely volunteer group of 12 singers in an average parish music program, at least half of whom had little to no experience actually singing chant even two months ago, can prepare and sing dignified settings of the propers of the Mass in a very short amount of time, amidst the usual circumstances of life. These are factors that most typical parishes deal with, and will have to weigh when the consider singing propers in liturgy for the first time. After singing these same formulaic melodies for a few months though, my own choirs and also average parish choirs can sing the propers with even more success because the melodies are already learned, and what changes is the text. I will say that if this can happen at my own parish that was singing out of the Gather book only two short years ago it can virtually happen anywhere.

So here are a few recordings for next week’s offering of Simple Propers from the Chant Café, recorded by a volunteer parish schola in formation on a cellphone in less than 20 minutes. I’m actually pretty happy with the result.

Download Simple Propers for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

This week’s installment of “Simple Propers” are a continuation in our experiment in music resource production. As Jeffrey has so deviously shown, I am indeed still working on the melodic formulas that will eventually be used for an entire cycle of antiphons to cover the liturgical year. The plan is to have 8 formulas for each proper–the Introit, Offertory, and Communion–one in each mode for each set, so this will total 24 melodic formulas. The hope with these formulas is that they will be able to meet the diverse demands of the English language while remaining within the bounds of the laws of the Gregorian compositional language. The goal is to arrive at melodies that can adapt to virtually any English text, and the result, it is hoped, is that average parish musicians, even congregations, could learn these melodies and sing them easily to a variety of text settings. Compiling these formulas has not been easy, and the work is far from done, but with the guidance of Fr. Kelly I have great hope that they will be a success.

As Jeffrey has shown, the Introit formulas seem to be mostly stabilized, although there could be changes made to them in the coming weeks. I’m pulling together the communion tones, and the Offertories are still largely unfinished. So in the mean time I will continue with the “simple settings” always, which emply St. Meinrad tones, and there will be cases (such as this week’s Offertory) where this is the only setting available.

While we’re posting handwritten manuscripts today, let me add one more. Here is this week’s offertory harmonized in 4 parts according to the Meinrad Tone accompaniments given by St. Meinrad Archabbey:

It occurred to me this past week that this sort of arrangement may be incredibly useful to the “trained parish choir”. This sort of edition could be seen in continuity with many of the resources that parishes are currently used to, such as Respond and Acclaim, et cetera. There could be the benefit of having it in modern notation (accompanying, of course, a chant edition), the 4-part harmony could be a simple organ accompaniment, or even could enable 4-part singing for choirs that are used to singing figured choral music. Since many such choirs are not very familiar with the non-metered style, this perhaps could serve as a bridge to the chanted style, while retaining some of the elements of the current common practice. The benefits are that parish choirs could sing the propers in a somewhat familiar fashion, there could be an immersion in Gregorian modality, and a practice of singing non-metered music. I sense that if a parish choir could sing this beautifully then this would be a big step toward singing more elaborate settings of the propers.

Take a look at this arrangement and try to invert some of the harmonies. I found that this can add a very nice contrast. This arrangement can very easily be sung in the following ways:

1. Swap S and T (cantus firmus in the tenor)
2. A up an octave (becomes S), B up an octave (T), omit T, keep cantus firmus in A [becomes SAT with high soprano]
3. S down an octave (T), A up an octave (S), T up an octave (A), B unchanged [becomes SATB with high soprano]

There could be other possibilities such as harmony in just two voices. These harmonizations seem like a real treasure, and I’m glad that I’ve discovered this approach. I think that I will try it with my own parish choir!

Lastly, if anyone among our readers is able to typeset this score in an engraving program I would be most indebted to you. For the life of me I can’t find a reasonable way to do this. If anyone could find a solution and share a template I would be most grateful!

I also hope to get the propers for 29OT out within the next few days in order to keep us a little ahead of the game.

Download them here

Thank you all for participating in the “beta” of our “Simple Propers” project! With your feedback you are helping work out a system of production that utilizes open source software, public domain and creative commons material, and organized volunteer efforts; what we are able to achieve so far with these resources alone seems rather remarkable. The project is building steam, and we’re excited for the new possibilities that it may open up for Catholic liturgical music resources.

Download simple propers for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

The method for producing these simple propers is really beginning to come together. A team of diligent workers are putting together much of the source material for the project, but we need more hands. At least 75% of the time and effort that goes into producing this resource involves the compiling and formatting of texts. These tasks are what we need help with in order to put together a resource like this covering the entire liturgical year. The fruits of this labor will be available beyond this project–an online source for the singing of the psalms, with texts pointed, psalm verse designations for all proper antiphons, antiphon source texts, translations, incipits, scripture sources, and much much more.

If you see value in this project and can help in some way please contact us!

As a continuation of our experiment in sacred music resource production here are a set of “simple propers” for this week:

Download simple propers for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This work is the fruit of a collaboration between a host of Catholic musicians who have discerned a need in the Church for very simple settings of the propers, which are aimed at the current ordinary state of parish life. A team of volunteers is going to work on the compiling and formatting of source texts for this project and potentially many others, the collaborative effort can be followed by clicking on the links on the sidebar under “Open Source Projects”.

As promised, here is another experimental set of “Simple English Propers” that are aimed at the average parish situation.

Download simple propers for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C.

The processes in use here were described in great detail last week. The same processes were applied to this weeks proper texts. Antiphon translations are taken from the Gregorian Missal, and psalm verses are taken from Douay Rheims, although slightly modified to reflect a more modern English.

We at the Chant Café would love to see a conversation about these settings spring up in the comment box. As I said before, these are “experimental”, and there is nothing that can advance an experiment like review and critique. Please don’t be shy. No one’s feelings will be hurt. We really want feedback from all walks. Many of the more “expert” opinions have already been discerned, but feedback from people who are considering the needs of their parishes who don’t sing the propers at all would be most valuable!

Music directors and schola directors–Ask yourself: “What would I do if I found myself in a parish that didn’t know what propers were, and had no exposure to chant in any form, whatsoever.” How would you bring them along? What would you recommend to a parish musician across town that would like to begin singing the propers at Mass? With no experience in chant, with virtually nothing but a humble interest? Where would suggest they start?

This is the sort of need that this project is seeking to address. Please share your thoughts, especially while we’re still in “experimental mode”!

Last week the Chant Café began an Experiment in Sacred Music Resource Production with an aim toward the singing of propers. There has been quite a response so far to this call for an open source effort that has the potential to create something “bigger than the sum of its parts” and to perhaps assist in bringing the singing of the proper texts of the Mass into the liturgical celebrations of ordinary parishes.

Click here to download simple settings of the proper for the Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.

We are calling this an “experiment” for many reasons. One reason is that we are taking a very non-conventional approach to the creation of liturgical music resources–a team of committed voluteers are busy working, at this very moment, on a database of liturgical source texts for the singing of the the Introit, Offertory and Communion chants. (There is still room for more to join in the effort!)

The second reason why this is an “experiment” is because we are not quite sure what the best solution will be for the parish that is beginning to sing propers for the first time.

Last week we posted some sample settings of the precessional propers for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time.

This week we have a new batch of samples that we would like to present, and we invite you to take a look at them, sing through them, even sing them in this weekend’s liturgy, email them to friends, and, most importantly, share some feedback here in the comment box on what you think of them.

If you are in a parish that sings more elaborate musical settings of the Mass proper, even the Gregorian propers, fantastic! But think of the parish down the road that sings four hymns or songs out of the Gather Book, or the Music Issue–Would any of these settings of the proper be a practical solution for them if they were to sing this weekend’s communion antiphon? Maybe you could email them this PDF file and see what they think. Maybe they’ll give it a shot this weekend.

Here’s a quick look at a few of the samples that we put together this week:

First we have a few simple Gregorian psalm tones. Fortunately the English texts this week have mostly Latin-esque terminations. This makes for easy use of the Gregorian tones. When the ends of lines end with words like “God” or “Lord” (i.e. the final syllable carries a hard accent, which is likely 75% of the time in English) then using the Gregorian tones effectively becomes much more tricky. Still this could be a very practical way for parishes to begin singing the propers in a way that is deeply rooted in the Gregorian tradition.

Next we have a few English antiphons using Gregorian “solemn tones”. These are the tones found in the Graduale Romanum which are intended to be used with Gregorian Introits and Communions. That these are a bit more ornate makes them slightly easier to use with English texts, although problems do often occur with them. The effect here seems very nice to my ear. The question might be raised, though, as to whether this would be too difficult for the singers of an average parish today.

Then we have an Introit and Communion that are set to melodic formulas that were composed by myself and Fr. Columba Kelly, OSB. These are experimental formulas and we hope to compose several more in the 8 modes. The goal in this approach is to develop a set of melodic formulas that are composed from the conventions of the Gregorian musical language, and that will work very effectively with the cadence patterns of the English language. The overall melodic shape is something like an Office antiphon, and although they make great use of reciting tones, the effect is more like an antiphon than a psalm tone. The formulas can be applied to any English text and the hope is that the melodies are learned well once, and when they are used with different texts the melody will be intuitively recalled by the singer. So with a set of 8, 16, 24 or these melodies a parish could sing all of the Mass proper with formulas that they only have to learn once. I’m very excited to do some more experimentation with this model. So far I’m very happy with the results. What do you think?

Compare these with one of last week’s Introits which used the same Mode 1 formula, along with a few other Mode 2 settings that utilize the same melodic formula:

Lastly, we have two examples that use St. Meinrad Tones. These tones are very simple and work well with English texts 100% of the time. They do not follow the traditional 2-part arrangement of the Gregorian psalm tones, but are expandable for up to 6-lines of text, with a different melodic formula for each line. This works well with the “Hebrew” grouping of the psalms that is found in the Grail Psalter, and the forthcoming Revised Grail. The overall shape of an antiphon, using these tones, is similar to the melodic formulas described above. There is an overall “Roman” arch in the melody, with the typical Gregorian melodic “swirling” along the way. I am very satisfied with the result of this approach. It offers an ultra-simple method for parishes who would like to begin singing the propers, is rooted deeply in Gregorian modality, and it works instantly and very intuitively with the termination structures of the English language. What do you think of these?

And very lastly, the psalm tones for the verses are composed by Fr. Samuel Weber, OSB. These are similar to the St. Meinrad Tones, but arranged for the traditional 2-line layout of the psalms. These are even simpler than the Meinrad tones, are firmly rooted in Gregorian modality, are quite beautiful yet are incredibly easy to sing. These tones are also used in the Mundelein Psalter. Using these tones with the above antiphon settings allows for a nice contrast between antiphon and verse and seems like a very good solution especially for the parish that is singing the propers for the first time.

Please share your thoughts! What would be most effective for your parish, or the parishes you know? Feedback is very welcome!