Chant Café

Wikipedia tells us that: “Pope Paul VI promulgated the revised rite of Mass with his Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum of 3 April 1969, setting the first Sunday of Advent at the end of that year as the date on which it would enter into force. However, the revised Missal itself was not published until the following year, and full vernacular translations appeared much later.”

The new English translation, then, appears on the first day after the close of the 40th year. Call me cranky or crazy, but I’ve never been interested in this numerology stuff, and there is a Biblical significance to the number 40.

This is a tremendous interview with monks at Clear Creek. Extremely inspiring! Good for EWTN, and congratulations to the skilled producer David Biddle.

A brief trawl of the internet produces a surprisingly wide variety of styles of settings of the proper texts which range from simple chants that can be sung without accompaniment to choral settings for mixed voices. Some are obviously adaptations of Gregorian Chant or are indebted to that musical language, others are more contemporary in feel…. Of course, there is nothing to stop us singing Latin chants in a predominantly English liturgical celebration. – Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth, ICEL

Let’s look at the options for this weekend’s entrance proper, Miserere mihi: “Have mercy on me, 0 Lord, for I have called out to you all the day; for you, 0 Lord, are good and forgiving and plenteous in mercy to all who call upon you.”

I count nine available for download. Perhaps I’m missing some.

We begin with the normative choice, the entrance from the Graduale Romanum (same text as the Missale) which we take here from the English-language Gregorian Missal.

Once that normative choice is established, we immediately note that it takes some degree of practice to be able to sing this. A beginning choir feels out of sorts just looking at it (though it isn’t as hard as it looks).

So let’s explore other options, beginning with the easiest one from the Anglican Use Gradual:

Now consider the Psalm tone offering of Fr. Samuel Weber:

Next comes a selection from Fr. Columba Kelly and the SacredMusicProject.

Next, the choice of the Arbogast Propers published in 1966:

A very popular resource for propers is Bruce Ford’s American Gradual:

Next, the choice of the Palmer-Burgess Gradual and also repeated in Introits of the Sarum in English:

Now something completely unexpected, a selection from Introits and Graduals for the Church Year by Healey Willan – a Lutheran resource:

I will end this tour of introit propers online with a selection from Richard Rice’s Simple Choral Graduale, which is undoubtedly the one to which Msgr. refers above.

Everything shown above is a free download (Rice is a $7 download). Some are in print. So we can see that there is not a lack of options. There is a lack of knowledge, and a lack of will that thus results. Msgr. Wadsworth is precisely right that we have to change the consciousness.

Thomas Wilson is only 28 years old but as the new director of music he is bringing glorious things to St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, Australia. Trained at Westminster, he is working to bring Gregorian propers and traditional polyphonic music to this very important liturgical venue. Have a look at the full program for this week, and dream.

You do not want to miss this excerpt from Beethovens Anvil by William Benzon:

Two paragraph sample but do read the whole piece:

Medieval Europe was inhabited by a collection of tribes and states, shot through with tendrils of Christianity following the remains of the Roman Empire and with the Islamic world pushing up in Spain. European culture, considered as a specific constellation of ideas, modes of expression, and forms of organization, hardly existed, nor did any of those people think of themselves are European. Europe, as such, originated in Christendom, and the core institution of Christendom, the Christian Church, was held together, not only by religious doctrine, but by religious ritual and practice.

Plainsong was at the center of that ritual, and much religious practice as well. During the medieval period most plainsong was used within religious communities as a daily aspect of their religious life, rather than being performed with a congregation on Sundays. While this body of music has its roots in pre-Christian music of the Jewish service, it is generally known as Gregorian chant, after Pope Gregory I, who played a major role in organizing and codifying the chants late in the 6th Century CE. these chants are generally regarded as the fountainhead of Western classical music, all of whose forms have some link to this Gregorian lineage, though many other musics will eventually be put to classical use. For this reason we can think of the classical music as developing under a Gregorian Contract.

CONTINUE