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The Chant Café

The new Antiphonale Romanum

As I mentioned a few posts ago, my most recent impulse purchase was of the new “Antiphonale Romanum II” from the monks of Solesmes.

One of the problems with the post conciliar Liturgy of the Hours is the lack of musical settings for the antiphons, which makes singing the psalms of the Hours somewhat problematic. The excellent Liber Hymnarius, covering the hymns of the office, came out nearly thirty years ago but there was a long wait until more music for the office came out in the form of the Antiphonal Monasticum, which started appearing in 2005. This new book pertains to the Roman office and is therefore, in a sense, more suited to the needs of parish life. This new volume contains all that is needed for the celebration of the office of Vespers on a Sunday, for every week of the year.

Reviews of the new Antiphonal Romanum have started appearing, for example at the New Liturgical Movement and at the CMAA. I’m not going to offer a full review here, but I’ll make a couple of observations. The first is that the book is beautifully produced and a joy to handle and look at. Also, there are a number of features that make the singers’ life easier:

the psalm texts are accented and have cadences indicated in bold text;



the Magnificat is given special attention to show how to fit the words in the different tones and in an appendix the text is given accented and bolded for each of the psalm tones.



However, as with the new Antiphonal Monasticum, Solemnes seems to have given up any attempt at rhythmic indications: so there are few dots and the episema and ictus have been banished. (There are some interesting comments about this in the Antiphonale Monasticum at the Gregorian Association’s website). This means more work for the musical director! This may be difficult on two levels: for the first, getting the rhythm from the text is often relatively straightforward to do in simple Gregorian settings, but antiphons not uncommonly contain florid melismata for which a bit of rhythmic indication would have been helpful; on the second level, there’s nothing like chant rhythm to start a punch-up between chantists, so the poor musical director will be caught in the middle!

Chant Resources

There are some excellent resources available from the Church Music Association of America (CMAA) to support the singing of Gregorian Chant in parishes. Their resource page is available here.

Two things I’d especially draw your attention to are the “Parish Book of Chant”, a simply excellent collection of chant repertoire suitable for all parishes and the “Communio” collection of communion antiphons. Both of these are available for free download in pdf format, but hard-copy versions at reasonable prices are also available.

There is a lot more available, including reproductions of many of the older chant books. For example, the 1961 English-introduction-and-rubrics version of the liber usualis is available in pdf.

Beyond the resources page, it’s an excellent site for chant junkies to browse and there’s even a forum!

Singing the Chant

Not so long ago, I went to a Gregorian chant workshop in Middlesbrough. Now, this was the second such workshop that I’ve attended. A handful of years ago, I went to one in Lancaster, run by Mary Berry, that being a time when I lived over that side of the Pennines.

Two workshops and no regular singing of the chant was beginning to make me think that it might be a good idea to attempt to put this training into practice. Fortunately for me, Mike Forbester attended the workshop in Middlesbrough and suggested that I might like to join in the fun at English Martyr’s in York.

So, last Sunday saw me join the schola for the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite for the Feast of Pentecost. Mike had warned me that there wouldn’t be many singers there, but I was slightly surprised when I arrived to find that “not many” equals “three”! To my great delight the other two singers were really strong and secure, so I found that blending in with them was much easier than I would have found blending in with a larger choir. I had practiced the ordinary of the mass (lux et origo) beforehand, but the rest of it was done on a couple of run-throughs.

I have to say that my Gregorian chant “début” was a wonderful experience (for me, anyway…) and I really would encourage anybody who fancies having a go to do so. From my experience it’s worth noting that

• There are an increasing number of high quality workshops on Gregorian Chant available throughout the country. They are open to, and encourage, complete beginners.
• If you are already a singer (up to the standard of an average church choir, let’s say), learning how to sing chant to an acceptable standard is not difficult.
• If you can read conventional musical notation, learning four-stave square note notation is not difficult (in fact, I find it easier to sight read than conventional notation).
• There seem to be an increasing number of opportunities to sing chant in a liturgical context.
• There are lots of free resources (such as this) available to support singing the chant.

So, if it’s ever crossed your mind as something you might like to try, just do it!