The article from Caecilia sounds very much like our own struggles with Sacred Music. It's nice to know that this isn't the first time this has happened in the Church.

Yes, I know there were many places where the full propers were sung. The Netherlands, where I live, was no exception. Even small villages had a Sung Mass every Sunday; both my father and grandfather sung in a schola and did the full propers every week.

But there must have also been places where choirs struggled with the propers and sang them recto tono, to a psalm tone or omited them altogether. I would like to know if this latter practice was widespread, where it did occur and how it was looked upon. What can be found about this in contemporary writings?

A friend of mine recalls visiting France as a child and at funeral masses, the older men of the village would sing the full Requiem chants from memory.

It is interesting that, based at least on the Caecelia articles, that not only were propers often done recto tono, but sometimes (oftentimes) they were omitted and only the Ordinary was sung. I'm trying to wrap my mind around this. Does it mean that the priest would recite them? Since he had to do this in any case, I suspect that was the case. So during the offertory and communion was there just organ music?

When I read the articles above my understanding was that some places sing the Propers recto tono, and fewer places omit them. The Ward book clearly states that it was for school children.

Singing the Propers takes commitment...
In parts of Germany I can quite understand the political upheavals over the years prior to say 1900, would make the commitment needed to sing the Propers difficult to impossible. Add to that the popular songs / Hymns being sung in the other church down the road... I quite understand that the Propers fell out of use in some places. A friend tells me that other places in Germany carried on singing the Propers.

I am surprised that in England new churches being founded in a time of great expansion, that choirs were able to be formed to sing the Propers. But I can quite understand that in parts of the U.S. it was not so easy, perhaps not helped by the so called Low Mass mentality. I am sure places in England also had no sung Masses but I have no evidence.

I wonder if anyone knows how many of the various editions of L.U. were produced, does anyone have sales figures? The only other way to find out what was being sung in churches is to look in bulletins or perhaps the local newspaper.

Yes they were high masses. My work parish had them every morning with a more solemn high mass (the pastor's mass) every Sunday at 10:00 a.m.

I have heard plenty of complaints from a small group of people, that money is being spent on choirs that could be used in other ways.

I wish money was being spent on my choir. The church spends nothing on that choir. Our former pastor used to say we had a tradition of good music. As someone else said, it wasn't because he ever spent anything on it. LOL.

There is a lack of appreciation by most clergy for the amount of income an organist, but especially a choir director, can produce for a church. And the music program, overall.
The concept of labor productivity is not taught at seminary.

Baumol's_ cost disease

Another option is eleven years before Rossini.

http://www.ccwatershed.org/library/

Very Rev Theodore Laboure OMI
18xx born / 1910 Ecclesiastical Review / 1944 died.
Rev Carlo Rossini
1890 born / 1913 ordained / 1975 died.

1922 sep 22 imprimatur
Laboure "Proper of the Mass for all the Sundays of the Year"

1933 sep 12 imprimatur
Rossini "Proper of the Mass for the entire Ecclesiastical Year"

Here are some interesting historical details which I stumbled upon. In May 1924 The Tablet offered a prize essay on the subject of 'Voluntary Choirs and the Proper of the Mass'. An excerpt from this initial article shows us a picture of the singing practice in the UK in the 1920's:

Some choirs are content to "monotone," while the organist supports them with rich harmonies. Others depute one or more singers to " chant " the sacred text, which too often means that a psalm-tone is chosen with so little reference to the meaning of the words that a Gaudeamus Introit sounds the same as a Requiem aeternam, and the Offertory Terra tremuit is as meditative as a Majorem caritatem.

No more than fourteen submissions were printed throughout the October and November issues of 1924. From a historical point of view, these submitted essays are quite interesting to read, offering an insight into the practice of singing the proper of the Mass during the first decades of the last century and showing the struggles choirs had with this.

I didn't read all of them yet, but I would like to share two observations from the reading I have done so far:
1. Using psalm tones or recto tono is often suggested/witnessed as an alternative to the chants of the Graduale
2. There were choirs that were still singing from the Ratisborn or Mechlin editions instead of the Vatican edition. This corresponds to a similar practice in the Netherlands, where there were choirs using the Neo-Medicaea edition well into the 1920's.

Here are links to the entire series:
October 4, 1924, 433-436
October 11, 1924, 476-478
October 18, 1924, 497-499
October 25, 1924, 534-535
November 1, 1924, 564-566
November 8, 1924, 614-616
November 15, 1924, 636-638
November 22, 1924, 666-670
November 29, 1924, 702-703