jefe here. I just signed on today following the faint footsteps of Mary Jane Ballou. We have had a monthly COMPLINE with a 'midi' voiced quire (ATBarB or AATB) for four years. Our 14 voice group is a spin-off of Peter Hallock's Compline Choir at St. Mark's Episcopal in Seattle, except we use women also on the top alto voice. About a third of our group are Catholic. They have no other place to chant Compline. The rest are Anglican, Episcopalian, Moravian and one Baptist.
In the beginning it was very difficult to find appropriate music and we floundered until I started composing, arranging, editing, transposing, begging, buying, and realizing music that would work. First we needed a format, an Order for Compline. We used Rod Mather's Order for a time until we obtained 12 copies of the Order for Night Prayer,'Compline' published by the Royal School of Church music for the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, 2005 edition. We use a realization of that Order. It is an improvement, mostly by backdating to a more 'Latin' flavor of the famous 1928 proposed English Order for Compline, Sarum Rite. The most difficult music to find clearly were Psalm settings for ATBarB. Over time, I started to put together a pretty good sized library of music for the 'midi' choir. My professional music carreer is done, so I have no illusions of making money with my work, and there's no market for it anyway. So yesterday, our webmaster uploaded 385 separate works usable at Compline to our website: http://www.trinitycomplinechoir.org
To my knowledge, everything on there is in PD or my own stuff. Here's the catch: It's a FREE download. Push the 'Compendium' button and all will be reavealed. All files are in both pdf and Sibelius 6. I've separated zip files into the changeable parts of Compline: Order (7), Orison (51 pieces), Hymn (56 pieces), Psalm (79 pieces), Nunc dimittis (47), Anthem (39), and Service music (29,mostly transpositions), Ave Maria (12 settings), Russian Orthodox (15), Chants (13, both Gregorian and Ambrosian, all realized in modern notation, much from the Liber Usualis of 1912 and 1951), music of Heinrich Isaac (12), and specific music for Maundy Thursday (23).
I have engraved 40 of Peter Hallock's Psalm settings, which do not appear in the compendium, but will be available on-line in the near future. He is genius, pure and simple. I've also done a lot of transposing of TTBB music by famous living (as opposed to dead white guys) composers, up a few steps for our use. These do not appear either. We have at least as many pieces, published or not in public domain, in our library than appear in the compendium.
My whole agenda with the music was to make it usable by a midi choir, and make it very easy to rehearse in a short period of time, reducing a lot the mistakes made by the performers in pointed, unpointed, and medieval notation. I love the sound of Latin, so much of the music has remained in the original tongue, even if it is a dead language.
Compline has taken me over in a big way. I hope I have enough time left to finish 1000 works for compline.
So, download away and let me know if you start your own Compline Choir and can use any of this stuff.
http://www.trinitycomplinechoir.org
One of our Catholic brothers was heard to remark, "Your Compline sure has a Roman stamp on it." So be it.
regards, as always, jefe
"In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum" is the nut phrase of Compline.
"Life is short. Compline is shorter. You can do both."