The Liber Usualis is not intended to be a complete book for the entire yearly Office.

Of course it is also not intended as a complete book of the Mass Propers!

A Graduale Romanum and the Antiphonale are both invaluable to sing the Mass and Divine Office for the Vetus Ordo. A Nocturnale is handy if you want to sing Matins, but the Liber Usualis has Matins for most of the days you would want to sing them.

You might also like to know that while the LU goes out of its way to make vespers easy to sing (e.g. it points all the psalms for you, and so forth), it was intentional that this is not generally done for Lauds and the Hours "since these are generally sung by more experienced Choirs".

I found this archival page and am wondering if there is a website like the divinumofficium site but includes the gregorian notation so one can just chant the entire office without a book (or flipping pages). If not, is there a resource that does? Any other suggestions?

hmmmm... well, maybe I will build the website. (and an app to match?)

Jonathan:

I downloaded that file earlier today. Will see how this goes. Is the 1960 breviary online?

what do you make of this?

http://taylormarshall.com/2010/12/how-to-pray-divine-office-in-latin.html

This is beyond my coding skills but could we not use this,
http://gregobase.selapa.net
with the code used by this,
http://bbloomf.github.io/jgabc/propers.html

To produce booklets for the Divine Office... I agree that it would be very handy to not only produce 1962 versions but Divino Afflatu, Gregobase also has the Dominican and Monastic books as well

N.B. When I get some free time I will look into arranging to have the 1949 Antiphonal and the Nocturnale added to Gregobase.

@Matthew

Couple of points. For the mid-day Office, I find the opposite. The Office is too long for a mid-day office. The psalmody can equal or exceed Vespers on some days (on some days, Vespers is so short as to almost be a "minor hour"). As a fellow oblate friend of mine says, it's like taking out a loan to consolidate your debts. It may seem like fewer payments, but takes just as much money to pay off (especially sung). In any event, praying the other hours is possible using the Gradual Psalms in an annex after Compline in the LOTH. I do so in outside of summer (when I'm more active), as I mostly am at home (retired), and the hours coincide with the time to put another log or two in the wood stove in winter so being reminded to do with a short prayer is nice :-)

I'm certainly not aware of *any* clerics in my area using the 1960 Divine Office. Almost everyone is on the LOTH except the local Benedictines to whom I'm associated, who have their own post-conciliar schema (Schema B, all 150 psalms in 1 week, no omissions of either psalms or verses). They do Lauds and Vespers in Latin Gregorian chant. In any case the LOTH does well at what it is intended to do, make the Office manageable and user-friendly for overworked, ageing and less numerous clergy. Bonus points, it makes it easy for the laity to participate as well. My biggest beef with it is the NT Canticle at Vespers. How anyone can find any trace of musicality or poetry in these Canticles is beyond me. I like to chant the Office in Gregorian chant, and even in chant (maybe especially so) they sound syncopated and un-melodius. In any future revision I'd like to see them ditched and replaced with a proper vesperal psalm. I don't mind the psalm distribution too much. At least some of the psalms are at their traditional places: 62, 117, 148-149 at Lauds on Sundays, 109-113B at Sunday 1st or 2nd Vespers (though psalms 113A and 113B have never been on Sundays in original Benedictine Divine Office), many of the psalms of the Office of Readings from monastic Matins (I use the OOR as "Vigils").

For Compline in the Benedictine Office, post-Council, the Thesaurus Liturgiae Horarum Monasticae allows Benedictines to say the responsory "In manus Tuas" and the Nunc Dimittis ad libitum even for those using the original Benedictine format of psalms 4, 90 and 133 every day; the abbey I am associated with do in fact say them.. I also use those psalms daily in the LOTH, as you note it's a licit option. I take the psalms of Sunday and the readings of the day; I've also seen at a monastery in Italy (Sant' Anselmo in Rome) where they do psalms 4 and 133 in odd weeks, and psalm 90 in even weeks.

Ora

N.B. The LOTH is not an improvement if we can't sing the Office together...

As for the "it makes it easy for the laity to participate as well." not if there are 'options' and different translations. Can I participate in France, Ireland, Germany...?

My N.O. parish has E.F. Vespers, because it is easier, and in a multi-lingual city it helps the laity to participate.

I suspect that more people use the Divine Office on a regular basis than the modern LOTH.

Here in England I gather from looking at information boards / websites that the most commonly sung Office is Evensong by the Anglicans. The next most common will be the Divine Office E.F. I know of two parishes the recite the LOTH during the week, but I don't know anyone that chants it.

I don't think that level of private participation existed before Vatican II. In fact the laity weren't even encouraged to pray it then.

Here in England many books were published with the Office in the years c.1880 to 1965, all for the laity, someone must have been buying them and using them.

Being part of a community that exclusively uses the E.F. I am disappointed that the LOTH is so difficult to use, and so fixed to local use / translation. I can travel around the world with my L.U. / Antiphonal, and can join in the Office with most E.F. communities.

Most disappointing of all is how rarely the Office is now publicly sung.

Since Les Heures Grégoriennes came out, one really needs only its three volumes to chant the entire diurnal Office and the beauty of its organization is that you only need one book on any given day; there's no need to swap books mid-way through a prayer unlike the Monastic Office, unless you want to enhance a particular Office with another antiphon (LHG only gives one choice for the Benedictus and Magnificat on Sundays and many feasts and solemnities).

For the Office of Readings which I still use as the Night Office, I produced my own Nocturnale using the Ordo Cantus Officii as my guide. Still working on shaking down the bugs (typos and the odd omission) but it works. But then in many monasteries the night office was sung recto-tono. I don't get to any EF communities when I travel. I gravitate more towards Benedictine communities and it's rare to find those that use the EF, and then again it's the Benedictine Office when that's the case so my Psalterium Monasticum or the three volumes of the AM would get me by or my two-volume Breviarum Monasticum; however all monasteries I've visited have made what I need available to me when I visit, regardless of schema used. Point taken about the language though, but for personal use the LOTH (in French) works well for me. I can chant it when at home using LHG, and I can carry a single volume around when travelling. When I'm on vacation, simply reciting the LOTH works for me.

Keep in mind that the recitation of at least part of the Office is part of my oblate commitment. Until retirement two years ago I had a very busy IT career with a family and a 100 km each way commute. The LOTH, which I am allowed to use (the other alternative being the Monastic Office), fit that perfectly and allowed me to recite all of the same hours that are mandatory for diocesan clergy. I developed an attachment to it, and the latest work from St-Martin and Solesmes has been, for me, the icing on the cake. So while there are many flaws to that Office, I can say that no Office is perfect, from having tried different Monastic schemas and the LOTH isn't anywhere near as bad as most people claim (I have no attraction whatsoever to the 1910 Pius X psalter; it is a significant departure from both the old Roman and Monastic breviaries; if I'm going to go through all that trouble I'd prefer using the 1500 y.o. monastic breviary adapted to the modern liturgical year of where I can attend Mass, no licit E.F. being available to me within 100 km).

I find that simply saying "it is what it is" and "Roma locuta est, causa finita est" about the LOTH, giving in, and using it as my daily prayer without fretting about its imperfections has been very beneficial. It removed a lot of inner tension and helped make it for me, at least, genuine prayer instead of constant whingeing and irritation about its imperfections. I can also amplify it if I need to. A couple of ways I do that, is to pray all the canonical hours when working from home (mostly volunteer work these days), and to use, for Vespers and Compline, the traditional Monastic schema. I've seen that practice in a couple of monasteries, where they use the LOTH sung in the vernacular for Matins, Lauds and mid-day prayer, and the Antiphonale Monasticum sung in Latin for Vespers and Compline, mostly in houses where there was a lot of activity for the monks outside the abbey (colleges, parish support, etc.). Sant' Anselmo in Rome is one such place.

Ora

Not that I know.

In my parish (also in Kansas), we sing Lauds every Sunday from the Mundelein Psalter, Vespers on some Sundays, and Compline at least two days a week. It's great not to have to create printed resources for all of these services.

http://www.stmichaelcp.org/music-liturgy-of-the-hours
http://www.stmichaelcp.org/the-choir-1

Kevin Vogt
Director of Sacred Liturgy, Music and Art
St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church
Leawood, Kansas

tnx JonthanKK for your info. at present just shooting for lauds and vespers so thinking the Liber will suffice to get going.

Of course, much of what isn’t in the Liber Usualis would be sung recto tono in the diurnale.

Does an Antiphonale Romanum 1960 exist?

Not that I know of but I believe an Antiphonale Romanum 1912 exists and would be the one to use for the 1960 Offices, as the basic psalm schema of 1960 is that of the Pius X breviary of 1910. I might have a PDF copy on my computer somewhere but right now I'm on my iPad. It would have most of what is needed but with some rubric variations. For example the practice was to chant only the incipit of the antiphon at the start of the psalm and the whole antiphon after the psalm. Sometime in the 1950s it was changed to chanting the entire antiphon both before and after the psalm. It would make the Antiphonary a wee bit awkward, but by no means impossible, to use.

On the monastic side there is of course the 1934 Monastic Antiphonary. It would probably have almost all of what you need to assemble booklets, and it's still available from Solesmes.

Ora

Ah yes I forgot about Holy Week and Christ the King and the other additions. The Monastic would have Christ the King but not Holy Week. I have a 1956 Ordo Hebdomadae Sanctae Restauratus but for the Office it simply refers you to the Roman Breviary. The Liber though should have most of what is needed for the Triduum at least.

Ora

Because that’s not really what an ordo is for, though it seems like a useful idea; I have a hard enough time with the breviary on some feasts.

tnx all

you are quite helpful and generous in taking the time to navigate the labyrinth.

it is just amazing to me that the loth and the mass are so... fragmented. it's been a couple of millennia since Jesus left and we seem to be in chaos

I use http://divinumofficium.com or my 1934 Day Hours Book, to work out the Office, I too use Divino Afflatu, Of course modifications have to be made for local Calendars, Patronal Feasts etc. and all their Octaves!