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Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

An Applied Course in Gregorian Chant

We finally got around to doing what so many have been asking us to do. We’ve put in print Joseph Robert Carroll’s wonderful 1957 book An Applied Course in Gregorian Chant. This is the fruit of generations of experience in pedagogy, an attempt to reduce the teaching of chant to the essentials so that a person can sing or direct well at the parish level.

The language is super clear and precise. It avoids unnecessary complications. It is not the end of studies but it goes a very far distance down the path toward expertise without losing the reader. It is probably the single best introduction. It is also ideal for the classroom in a school of music.

Posted on by Adam Bartlett

150 Indispensable Catholic Hymns?

A Chant Café poll:

Imagine that you are in a parish that is slowly and gradually transitioning from “4-hymn sandwich” liturgy to singing the proper antiphons of the Mass. You are doing catechesis on the nature of the proper antiphons as being integral to the liturgy, and are helping your parishioners understand that singing hymns in place of these proper texts is ultimately a substitution for something that is a substantial part of the liturgy. You realize that hymns will not likely disappear from your parish’s liturgical celebrations any time soon and you need a small collection of congregational hymns that can serve you through this process of transition, and can serve as supplemental congregational material for liturgical and devotional use even after the propers have been restored to their rightful place.

Which 150 hymns do you want to have in the pews of your parish? Based upon consistency with Catholic doctrine and Church teaching, sound tradition, beauty, dignity, effectiveness, and so on and so forth, which hymns should every Catholic be familiar with and be comfortable singing?

Here is my current working list at my parish. What is missing? What should be removed? Why? Please share your thoughts in the comment box!

(all chant hymns listed by their Latin title presume a singing translation in English in addition to the Latin text)

  • A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing
  • Adoro Te Devote
  • All Creatures of Our God and King
  • All Glory, Laud and Honor
  • All People Who on Earth Do Dwell
  • All Praise to Thee, My God This Night
  • Alleluia, Alleluia
  • Alleluia, Sing to Jesus
  • Alma Redemptoris Mater
  • Angels From the Realms of Glory
  • Angels We Have Heard on High
  • As With Gladness Men of Old
  • At the Lamb’s High Feast We Sing
  • Attende Domine
  • Ave Maris Stella
  • Ave Regina Caelorum
  • Ave Verum Corpus
  • Away in a Manger
  • Beautiful Savior
  • Christ the Lord is Risen Today
  • Come, Holy Ghost
  • Come, Thou Almighty King
  • Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus
  • Creator of the Stars of Night
  • Crown Him With Many Crowns
  • Crux Fidelis
  • Faith of Our Fathers
  • For All the Saints
  • For the Beauty of the Earth
  • Forty Days and Forty Nights
  • Go Make of All Disciples
  • God, We Praise You
  • Hail the Day that Sees Him Rise
  • Hail to the Lord’s Annointed
  • Hail, Holy Queen Enthroned Above
  • Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
  • Holy God, We Praise Thy Name
  • Holy, Holy, Holy
  • I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say
  • I Know That My Redeemer Lives
  • I Sing the Mighty Power of God
  • Immaculate Mary
  • Jesu Dulcis Memoria
  • Jesus Christ is Risen Today
  • Joy to the World
  • Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee
  • Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
  • Lift High the Cross
  • Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates
  • Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming
  • Lord of All Hopefulness
  • Lord, Who at Thy First Eucharist
  • Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days
  • Lord, You Give the Great Commission
  • Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
  • Merciful Savior
  • Now Thank We All Our God
  • O Breathe on Me, O Breath of God
  • O Come, All Ye Faithful/Adeste Fideles
  • O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
  • O God, Beyond All Praising
  • O Holy Spirit, by Whose Breath
  • O Sacred Head, Surrounded
  • O Salutaris Hostia (chant)
  • O Salutaris Hostia (Werner)
  • O Sanctissima
  • Of the Father’s Love Begotten
  • On Jordan’s Bank
  • Once in Royal David’s City
  • Pange Lingua
  • Panis Angelicus (chant)
  • Panis Angelicus (Lambilotte)
  • Parce Domine
  • Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow
  • Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
  • Regina Caeli
  • Salve Regina
  • Silent Night
  • Sing of Mary, Pure and Lowly
  • Sing With All the Saints in Glory
  • Songs of Thankfulness and Praise
  • Soul of My Savior
  • Stabat Mater
  • Tantum Ergo (chant)
  • Tantum Ergo (St. Thomas)
  • The Church’s One Foundation
  • The First Nowell
  • The Glory of these Forty Days (Old Hundreth)
  • The King of Love My Shepherd Is
  • The Strife is O’er
  • There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy
  • To Jesus Christ, Our Sovereign King
  • Ubi Caritas (chant)
  • Veni Creator Spiritus
  • We Three Kings of Orent Are
  • What Child is This
Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Spem in the Quad

From Keith Fraser:

Spem in the Quad, Worcester College Oxford

It’s not often you get the opportunity to perform Tallis’ masterpiece “Spem in Allium” at all these days, let alone in the quad of Worcester College Oxford with a group of music students dedicated to performing works such as this for the sheer fun of it. I was delighted then to be invited to join Christopher Ku in this particular performance on Friday 28th October.

I have to confess, I have a wonderful recording of the Spem in Allium by Jeremy Summerly’s Oxford Camarata and have even listened to it on occasion. It’s one of those ironies, I suppose, that anyone with an interest in early music will be familiar with Tallis’ motet for 40 voices but like many I’d never even picked up a score let alone actually sung it. Arriving an hour before the performance (which included a Lassus madrigal and Holst’s Nunc Dimittis which was commissioned by R R Terry for Westminster Cathedral in 1914 and was for many years lost) the notion of singing one per part in a piece of music that can at times appear fiendishly difficult was a bit daunting, but as we got into it, the composition did actually start to make some sense.

I don’t know if it is an urban myth that Tallis composed the piece as a bet or a dare after hearing of a 40 part motet written by Alessandro Striggio to outdo him, but somehow I could almost believe that. It has also been suggested that the piece was composed to honour Elizabeth’s 40th birthday, but I expect any canny composer would dedicate a piece to the monarch to ensure publication and patronage. Either way, I’m glad he did write it. The piece itself spans about 10 minutes and is written for 8 choirs of 5 voices (SATBB) and the grandeur of the scale allows for moments of imitative counterpoint, homophony, dialogue between the choirs, rhetorical text-setting, and bold harmonic changes. Tallis himself would have likely considered it a significant achievement because musically he signed his name within it. The very length of the piece is a cryptogram for his name: 69 Longs (a “long” being two breves) being the same value as “Tallis” when the letters in the Latin alphabet are converted to numbers and added (19+1+11+11+9+18).

It is believed that the first performance of the Spem took place at a dinner party in the octagonal banqueting house of Nonsuch Place where half of the performers would have stood on the ground level surrounding the guests while the other half would have sung from the first floor gallery overlooking the hall creating a revolving pillar of sound. The logistics of the quadrangle at Worcester didn’t quite allow for that (the gardeners refused to allow anyone to stand on the grass precluding us singing from under the cloister) and so we had to make do with an arrangement whereby the choirs were stood at the top of the cloister steps and the audience around the quad. It worked, though not helped by a bracing October wind that at times could be quite loud, but which also carried the sound into ever corner. It was, for me at least, a wonderful experience that I would hope to repeat and I would encourage anyone thinking of embarking on a Spem project to do so with gusto. Tallis would most definitely have approved!