Advent Vespers
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    The Pope's Vespers for the First Sunday of Advent can be heard live on Vatican Radio. Right now they are coming up to the reading.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    Oh, and the TV feed is being carried by EWTN.
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    Alas... a reading during Vespers. Rev Bugnini, what have you wrought?
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    It was good to hear the cantor singing his part of the psalms well and modestly. Now, if only the other men in the choir had a pleasant sound like that, 'twould be a fine thing.
  • Jeffrey MorseJeffrey Morse
    Posts: 202
    Michael, am I missing something? There has always been a reading (Capitulum/Little Chapter) at Vespers and indeed all the hours at least since the 6th century, and probably long before. Though I must say, It SHOULD have been SUNG at the Vespers this evening. However, the OFFICE HYMN is always rather jarring coming at the beginning and not as the natural "bridge" between the Old Testament and psalms and the New Testament and the MAGNIFICAT. Now that WAS a break with tradition, and one which Bugnini most likely had a part.
  • Dan F.Dan F.
    Posts: 205
    Can a recording of this be viewed anywhere on the web?
  • mjballoumjballou
    Posts: 993
    The shift in the office hymns at Morning and Evening Prayer (aka Lauds and Vespers) was intended to put them in the same position as the hymn at the Lesser Hours. Yes, it seems misguided. However, all I ask is that the appropriate office hymn be sung and not something out of the back of "Christian Prayer."
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    Jeffery, yes, but the "little chapter" is not a "reading" in our modern sense of the longer reading, which really has no place in Vespers. Other offices, yes, but not Vespers. The current LotH diminishes the psalm singing, which was the central act of the Traditional Vespers. But, I have to admit that you are correct in your correction ;-)

    The greatest damage to Vespers IMO is the allowance for a sermon.
  • dvalerio
    Posts: 341
    > The shift in the office hymns at Morning and Evening Prayer (aka Lauds and Vespers) was
    > intended to put them in the same position as the hymn at the Lesser Hours.

    > Now that WAS a break with tradition, and one which Bugnini most likely had a part.

    By the way, as far as I know the first time this was done in the Roman Rite was in Cardinal Quiñonez's Breviary (which you may find here). This attempt at breviary reform from the 1530's was reversed after the Council of Trent. The current LOTH merely copied this idea.
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    Yes, as I recall, the Quiñonez Breviary had the same goal - ease of use for priests. Rome was right to reject it then.
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