Little hours hymns, Sung Matins
Posted by Chris T. on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007
I've been continuing to adapt the chants of the 1912 Antiphonale Romanum for the Anglican Breviary (AB) — this time I've set the hymns at the little hours (Prime, Terce, Sext, and None) to the AB texts. As in the Antiphonale Romanum, I've only given the first verse of each, in three settings — for Sundays and minor feasts, for major feasts, and for ferias and simple feasts.
Little Hours Hymns (PDF, 36K)
Little Hours Hymns (TeX source, 17K)
I also figured out what I was doing wrong that made the climacus and other three- and four-note figures go all wonky. So i've fixed the Compline Hymns as well:
Compline Hymns (PDF, 39K)
Compline Hymns (TeX source, 19K)
I've also been working on some seasonal hymns at Matins, Lauds, and Vespers, but I'm using the Carthusian Hymnarium and need to wait until they've given me permission to distribute those. I sent an email over the weekend, but I imagine they're fairly busy under normal circumstances and doubly so as the Easter Triduum comes to a close. Ideally, I'll release the Eastertide ones as soon as I can, then work on a proper chant hymnal for the Anglican Breviary.
Finally, I mentioned earlier that I was looking for resources for sung Matins — settings of the Venite, invitatories, etc. It turns out I had that all along, because the S Dunstan's Plainsong Psalter has almost everything you need. The translations of the invitatories are slightly different from the AB, and I don't know how many proper invitatories it has for saints' days. But a lot of it's there — certainly it lets you sing all of Matins I'm personally interested in singing with any regularity, minus the hymns (basically just the Venite with Invitatory and the Te Deum). Eventually I would like to work on developing something of an English Nocturnale, though — at least the most common antiphons, stuff for Holy Week, adapting the chant for the invitatories to the AB language, etc. But that's far down the road.
18 Responses to “Little hours hymns, Sung Matins”
For Holy Week, everything already exists in the Monastic Diurnal Noted reprinted by Lancelot Andrewes Press — while there are very significant differences between Monastic Matins/Monastic Diurnal and the Anglican Breviary for the rest of the year, they are identical for the Triduum except for minor translation issues.
I should have said “For the TRIDUUM” — the rest of Holy Week does not have everything in the MDN — and the differences that normally exist do exist Palm Sunday - Spy Wednesday.
Too, it should be remembered that much of the work for the Little Hours and Vespers has already been accomplished in the “St. Margaret Antiphoner.” The translations are not identical to those of the Anglican Breviary (in fact, they are usually better,) and it’s what we use at S. Clement’s.
Paul, is the “St. Margaret Antiphoner” in print? If not, is it old enough to be in the public domain? If so, or if an arrangement with the Margaretine Sisters could be made, I think it would great to scan them in and make them available publicly on the internet.
No, Excellency, sadly it’s not. We make copies for our own “fair use,” but haven’t tried to reprint it, or scan it for public consumption. The book dates from the 1950’s, so it might well still be in copyright, if indeed it was ever copyrighted in the first place. The Margaretines still exist, so their permission could be sought, in any case.
Their translation of the Roman Breviary was from the same period, and is much better than the Anglican Breviary in many ways, although less well known. It was printed in two volumes.
Hi Tim –
I found a few differences in the order of the prophecies between the MDN and AB as well. And the antiphons don’t really match. But I did use it during Triduum anyway.
Paul –
I would definitely like to take a look at it some time, and it would be great to have it online, if that’s possible. I’m ok with duplicating some effort, especially where there are translation differences and/or copyright status is in question. I’m planning a post on copyright, but I’m definitely interested in producing resources for the Office that are under a really permissive license — too much of the stuff out there is incredibly expensive and gets hard to distribute if it goes out of print or the group that produced it disappears.
That said, one work I don’t plan on overlapping at all is the S Dunstan’s Plainsong Psalter. It’s beautifully made and reasonably inexpensive, so where the translation there is identical to the AB (Psalms, canticles, etc.) I don’t plan to mess with it. I might not even worry about the Marian antiphons, which are significantly different from the AB, because I love the S Dunstan’s Psalter translations and don’t much care for the ones in the AB.
Father,
We use the MD(N) translations for the Triduum, although the AB is our “official” book. I wasn’t aware that there were any differences other than translation; could you provide an example?
Generally, our practice is to prefer the best and most accurate translation, regardless of the source. So, we have the AB, the MD, the MDN, and the Margaretine books, along with Bute and other various Roman efforts.
Little is sung other than Sunday Vespers, so that tends to be a lesser concern.
And we use the Marian antiphons in Latin, for what it’s worth.
All that said, I’m always happy to see someone promoting the use of the traditional offices, in any context, and in any decent translation.
Paul –
The differences I’ve noticed are slight (and actually slighter than I initially thought, now that I look at it). The antiphons are from the Psalms, so they’re almost exactly the same. In the readings, there are little differences like “because none come to the solemn feasts” (MDN) vs. “because none come to the holy trysting-place” (AB) in DALETH in the first lesson on Maundy Thursday. I could have sworn I noticed bigger stuff, but I’m not seeing it now.
In any case, if I did anything with the Holy Week chants, it would be a long time down the road — mostly, I’m being driven by the desire for having the chant that’s not available in the S Dunstan’s Psalter (or the MDN, in a pinch) in a convenient place, in English. Hopefully it will prove useful to others, too.
BTW, the Anglican Breviary translations for the Marian antiphons do match the traditional melodies — I believe the St. Dunstan’s Psalter used the Monastic Diurnal translations.
(By the way, I completely forgot to mention the real purpose for my last post: I’d be glad to send “review pages” of the antiphoner to anyone who wants to see them.)
Count me in, Paul!
Me, too! (I have the un-noted Margaretine breviary.)
Excellency, how would it be if I provided you with two copies, one of which you could mail on to Fr Tessone?
That would be great!
Gah, you should really be using something a bit more structured—surely Lilypond (www.lilypond.org) can handle what you’re looking for? I know for a fact that it can integrate with LaTeX files.
Don –
Can you explain what you mean by “structured”? I’m a little lost.
But Lilypond definitely isn’t developed enough in terms of Gregorian chant. Mark H. mentioned it in my earlier post, and I tried it out without much success. OpusTeX isn’t ideal, but it seems to be the best that’s out there at the moment.
Is that TeX source you posted the actual original source file that you’re editing? That’s highly unstructured. If that’s just an intermediate transmission format, then my comments don’t apply.
I’m still not sure what you mean by “unstructured,” though. (It is the actual source file.) What’s unstructured about it compared to LilyPond? LP seems to have roughly the same format, except it moves the lyrics out to a different section, which might not necessarily be ideal when it comes to Gregorian chant. (The note is supposed to be centered on the vowel in each syllable, and I’m not sure how LilyPond detects where to put the note.)