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Posted on by Adam Bartlett

Simple Antiphons for the Feast the Archangels

Because this Thursday’s Feast of Michael, Gabriel and Raphel, Archangels was not covered in the Simple English Propers, I am offereing here a set of simple antiphon settings for free download.

DOWNLOAD HERE

In particular, the Sister Servants of the Eternal Word in Birmingham, Alabama have asked for these since they have begun to sing the SEP regularly in their community and were in need of propers for this Feast that is so dear to them.

Please note in these settings (which are a draft from a forthcoming project soon to be announced) that the antiphons specifically are crafted for congregational singing. The texts are short, usually two lines, and rarely three or four, which allows for the congregation to respond easily after the intonation of a cantor. The cantor can then sing verses from a psalm with all responding at each repetition of the antiphon, very much like our common practice of Responsorial Psalm singing.

Because the topic of GIRM 48 and 87 so often appears in comment box conversations at the Chant Café, it will be of interest to note that this method of singing the propers allows, perhaps to the greatest degree possible, the most literal fidelity to these rubrics. While the singing of the propers by the choir alone is very much allowed here, and even implied by the fact that the chants of the Graduale Romanum are in the first option (which has never been congregational music), in the rubric on how the chants of the Entrance and Offertory are to be sung the people are encouraged to sing 3 of the 4 times: “This chant is sung alternately by the choir and the people or similarly by a cantor and the people, or entirely by the people, or by the choir alone.”

It should be noted that the above rubric only applies to the Entrance and Offertory chants, while GIRM 87, pertaining to the Communion Chant, gives a much greater responsibility to the choir alone: “This is sung either by the choir alone or by the choir or a cantor with the people.”

So I would ask you to consider these antiphons and consider if they, and others like them, both proper and often seasonal, would help your congregation sing the antiphons of the liturgical books in dialogue with the choir or cantor. Many desire to achieve this in their parishes. Perhaps we are close to having more resources that will help make this achievable (i.e. STAY TUNED!).

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Super Flumina Babylonis: Offertory for 26th Sunday

Happy day: the offertory antiphon for Sunday is “Super Flumina Babylonis” and some of the most remarkable music of the Renaissance sets this text, which means that the proper of the Mass can be sung polyphonically in any number of settings.

Our choir knows this one by Palestrina, so this is what we will sing. Thank you Taipei Singers for a loving and passionate performance! Can we import you to our parish for a tomorrow performance? Note the memorization of all music, and the work-of-art style of conducting. Absolutely wonderful.

However, youtube turns up others, such as this marvel by Philippe de Monte – yet another composer of the period with whom I’m unfamiliar. Embedding disabled sadly but go away.

And here is Victoria

Finally, for those who love this exotic sound of Charpentier here is a version you will not very likely hear in liturgy in your lifetime.

Posted on by Mr. C

The Café Never Closes


While considering what exactly I wanted to say in this post, I remembered reading an amazing essay I believe was composed by young Marc Barnes, the purveyor of BadCatholic Blog that typified virtually all of the traits and aspects that are most toxic about the Catholic Blogospheres. If someone can locate this article and provide a link, I’d be greatly in your debt. It needs to be read by any habitués, casual or calcified, of cyber-Catholicism.

Recently, Jeffrey provided me a golden opportunity to review a Mass setting that crossed his desk that caught his eye, Mass of the Mediatrix by Dr. Patrick O’Shea. And that was a gift that is going to keep on giving, as we read it thoroughly in rehearsal last week, and it confirmed that yes, Virginia, there are great Catholic composers out there not named Kevin Allen. (Joke, just a joke.) But as Jeffrey, myself and others took note, this setting’s pedigree line is tenuous, at best, to the chant ethos; it is decidedly a choral Mass, an incredibly worthy, singable and beautiful choral Mass.


In my review of the Glory, I made a very slight observation that I didn’t quite understand the necessity in the very opening phrase to have the soprano/alto sections singing “Glory to God in the highest,” while the tenor/bass voices omit “in the” ostensibly to set up the suspension in the tenors cleanly. I get that. I’ve done that in my composed companion Gloria to Proulx’s Oecumenica Mass with the women declaiming “You are seated at the right hand of the Father” and the men following in canon, but with “You are …. at the right hand of the Father.” These are the oblique concerns involved with multi-part text setting that, as Jake (Tawney?) pointed out below composers have had to figure out how to parce out since polyphony made its- (choose one) 1. ruinous; 2. miraculous- debut, doubtless first in what is now “France.”

Now to the point. This enterprise, the Chant Café, emerged onto the LitBlog scene to be a forum for the sharing of experiences, methods, repertoires, mentoring, events of interest and whatnot, mostly for those who subscribe to a pretty well-articulated body of beliefs about how well “chant” functions as a servant to liturgy. In the intervening years, the Café has been remodeled any number of ways, and I’ve always tried to do my part to uphold the aspect of it openly and firmly remaining a safe haven for those who live the words of St. Augustine, “Cantare amantis est.”


When we venture far from the hospitality and charity that are intrinsic and self-evident in the world of “chant,” we need to carefully tread because the forms of music that other folks prefer does not, per se, eliminate them from among those who also believe “to sing is to love.” And we must also recognize that should we engage in dialogue, criticism or derision of other musical forms within this “café” environment, that logically it follows that we are unwittingly allowing those forms to be legitimately named “cantus,” or we are opening ourselves up to be decried for duplicity or hypocrisy when it is publicly known that we chant adherents also make “accommodations” within the scope of liturgical rubrical precision on a weekly basis, and in banner “event” Masses as well.

I’m not advocating that we habitués of the café stand for nothing, or should refrain from advocating that which is best and brightest to help all interested parties, not just stereotyped encampments we casually dub “reform2” or “ex-liberal, nee conservative old hippies,” pursue a greater interest in plainsong, Gregorian and other chant forms. I am advocating that we present a welcoming face to any and all who cross the threshold of our little shop, and that we make every effort to insure we never become a “little shop of horrors.”

 Pax Christi et Soli Deo Gloria.


Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Ave Maria by Arcadelt

The singer of ChoralTracks.com was struck by how unusual this piece is by Jacob Arcadelt (c. 1507 – 14 October 1568). I agree that there seems to be something suspiciously modern about it – even if it is incredibly beautiful. One wonders about 18th or 19th century reworkings. There has to be some scholarship on this.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Question: How Did This Obtain ICEL/USCCB Approval?

Many people are asking how Dan Schutte’s Mass of Christ the Savior obtained approval. The Gloria does the usual trick of mangling the text into an antiphon/response structure but, even more alarming, it changes the liturgical text: “Glory to God in the highest / and on earth / peace on earth / peace to people of good will.”

At the very least, singing the wrong text doesn’t seem like a good way to learn a new text.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Rethinking the Hymnal – Completely

For years I’ve heard the lamentations. Why can’t Catholics seem to put together a decent hymnal? We have all these companies, all these attempts, thousands of products available, warehouses of liturgical resources, pews stuffed with things, paper flying every which way. And yet, even after all this, there is no hymnal to compare with the clarity and competence that is so obvious in the book in the pews at the local Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian Church. Even the Mormons do a better job of packaging the songs of their faith for the people to sing at Sunday gatherings.

I can recall the very first exposure I had to what is laughingly called the Catholic hymnal and the practice of singing hymns. It was a small parish in Texas near the East coast. It might have been the first time I had entered a Catholic Church since I was an 8-year-old assistant to an organ repairman. I had started to develop an actual interest in the faith. The sheer shabbiness of the throw-away missallete and the seemingly universal refusal on the part of the people to sing a note startled me. Nothing has really changed in the intervening years. It’s the same most anywhere in conventional parishes: poor resources, silly music, and silent people.

I must be missing something, I thought. Well, over the years, I’ve developed a wide ranging theory that more-or-less removes responsibilities from the publishers, and I still think there is some validity here. Catholics are not historically a hymn-singing people as regards Mass. The Divine Office is another matter, but community participation in the Office has not been part of the Catholic experience for many generations. Mass is what Catholics today do, and the Mass isn’t a vessel that intrinsically calls for hymns. They will always be external to the liturgy itself, and Catholics are only responding to this reality. It is the ordinary chants, the propers, and the dialogues that are to be sung.

Further, and unlike Protestants, Catholics have never developed the practice of singing in parts and that must explain why these hymnbooks only have the melody line. There’s also the problem of the relatively recent change to the vernacular, which left the Catholics without their Latin-hymn heritage and introduce opportunities for second-rate song writers to foist their untested 70s kitsch on the faithful.

There are a number of problems with the theory. The biggest one is that there is a massive demand for a good hymnal that is not throw away, includes all readings, has good arrangements of English hymns, includes some Latin hymnody, has the Mass propers, has quality Psalmody, has solid chant in Latin and English, and otherwise offers theologically reliable texts of dignified hymns that people can sing. A hymnal is not a magic solution to the problems of bad Catholic music but it can vastly improve a parish.

Why haven’t publishers met this demand? They’ve had nearly half a century, and yet you have to dig and dig to find anything that is even presentable beside a protestant pew resource.

Right now, there are bad and not-so-bad options. If your parish gets roped into one of the bad options, years of disaster can follow. It really is true, however strange, that people refer to parishes by which publisher own them. People call this parish an “OCP parish,” that parish a “GIA parish,” and another as a “WLP parish.” You can be one of the three, some worse than others.

When out of town I like to tour parishes, and I can discern all I need to know by looking at the hymn racks. If anyone asks my opinion about what a parish should do, I always say: save your money and don’t get a hymnal at all. The readings are in English, so why do we need a book that repeats them? The Psalms can be downloaded for free. All the music of the Mass is free online in fact. As for hymns, many sites have public domain hymns for recessionals or post-communions. You can always make weekly pew aids. Rather than risk being owned by a publishers, it’s better to just do without.

Our own schola in my parish does without. We now plan liturgy without any recourse to the hymnal. This has saved us endless hours of frustration over crazy music, bad theology in texts, terrible arrangements, goofy Psalms, pathetic Mass settings, and more. We are free, and now the Roman Rite speaks for itself.

I’ve not had much luck in persuading pastors of this opinion. Taking the hymn-free option does indeed require some degree of musical expertise. You have to be pretty savvy to know how to pull it off. Not everyone can do this. New pastors who don’t entirely trust their music staff still need a hymnal just to work as a filtering device, and many pastors believe that the people do indeed need something to look at during Mass.

In this case, I’m happy to report that after half a century, there is now a viable alternative. The book is the Vatican II Hymnal. It is published by Corpus Watershed. This is not a big publisher. It is actually one person, and his name is Jeffrey Ostrowski. He has virtually no money at all, but tons of talent and passion. Alone, he has done this hymnal. I find this completely amazing.

Peter Kwasniewski wrote the following about his review copy: “How fitting, as this hymnal represents nothing short of a total elevation of the musical level of Catholic worship in a way the English-speaking world has never seen — before OR after the Council. Instead of sappy, sentimental stuff (as in too many preconciliar low Mass hymnals), it offers an excellent selection of poetically and theologically robust hymns. And refreshingly, unlike most postconciliar hymnals, there are no self-referential pop-song imitations. The rest of the hymnal is filled out with a diversity of highly useful material. What blows me away particularly is the inclusion of the entire Lectionary for Sundays and Feastdays. In one fell swoop, this hymnal obviates the need to pay big bucks to throw-away hymnal manufacturers (and, incidentally, fill dumpsters with environmental waste each year as the copyright runs out). All the readings are there; good responsorial psalms settings are there; the texts of the propers are there; the order of Mass. In short, this hymnal is a masterpiece.”

Another reader said: “wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.” An astute older musician said “It is beyond comprehension how our young lions (of both genders) have virtually, single-handedly revolutionized the editorial process of compiling worthy hymnals and propers collections.” And yet another reader said: “the book really is a beautiful work! The excerpts that Jeffrey kindly shared with us in advance isn’t quite the same as actually seeing it in-hand. This ought to come in editions with ribbon bookmarks and gilded pages! The book certainly doesn’t suffer from a lack of content — my gosh, just about everything is in here. Every accent, every translation, every explanation and alternative ending and twenty-plus different Mass settings and references to online resources! Bravo! And I will be sharing this with my pastor for his consideration!”

For emphasis, please consider what this means. This book was done not by some old, bureaucratized, mechanized, industrialized publishing house. It was done by one person working alone and crowd sourcing the review process online. It uses mostly public domain resources. It has full approval from the USCCB, which he obtained in record time. Everything in here is 100% reliable. The whole enterprise is truly astonishing.

I don’t want to take away anything from other valuable attempts in this past but this book really is different, mainly because of the inclusion of readings, propers, and a full English-Latin Kyriale, plus excellent hymn layout. It does indeed raise the bar. It is the perfect marriage of the old faith with modern technology. Jeffrey is an excellent musician with a lifetime of experience, and he has finally put together his dream hymnal. That same dream is shared by many.

Now that it is available, I among many others will be curious to see what happens. Will it become a bestseller in the Catholic world? Many people are watching very carefully. You can order for $19 by calling 810.388.9500 or by visiting http://www.ccwatershed.org/vatican/