Richard Rice has composed some simplified propers for the 1962 missal; in many cases, they can be used for the corresponding OF Masses.

The Chants Abreges provide simplified graduals, tracts, and alleluias, again for the EF.

There's also an easier option in the 1955 book Graduals, Alleluia Verses, and Tracts which sets them all to psalm tones.

Learn your psalm tones. If a chant is too difficult to learn in the time provided, I just chant it to the psalm tone assigned to it. Better than the practice of chanting everything to the same tone throughout the entire mass.

You need the graduale simplex. Do a good search, it's exactly what you need.

Felipe, do you know of the old Ratisbon Gradual from the mid-19th century? They could use some re-transcribing but they may be just what you're looking for . . .

http://media.musicasacra.com/publications/pdf/graduale1871.pdf

(Note: BIG PDF)

It's a project I wouldn't mind pursuing. See the sample attached, then let me know what you need, if you are interested.

Richard: What you have attached is exactly what I am looking for! :)

Is there a way that I could help with the work?

I’m wondering now how difficult this it would be just to adapt Bartlett’s SEP to Latin texts?

Not particularly (from Nov 2013).

Is this at the EF, or OF?

Felipe, I've forgotten the name of the book (and I suspect it's floating around somewhere out there - maybe CC Watershed) but the Vatican issued something after the reforms so that you could use your old Liber or Graduale for the reformed liturgy. It provides all the page references for where everything should be. I suggest you use that as a starting point for 'porting' EF resources to the OF.

Palestrina: I’m aware of Isaac communios, but not offertories. Palestrina set all the offertories, but IMO they’re about the least inspired music I’ve seen that bears his name.

I simply want to incorporate a broader repertoire of music than using the full GR chants all the time (or whatever polyphonic settings of whose texts) would allow. It’s a practice that worked very well when I was at an Anglican Use parish.

Also, you may be thinking of the “Ordo cantus missae”, which lays out a “plan” for what is to be sung when—analogous to the “Ordo lectionum missae”, which lays out readings without giving the actual texts. The OCM was actually revised in 1986; presumably, a forthcoming edition of the Solesmes Graduale will incorporate its changes (as well as updates to the chant notation itself as per more recent Solesmes publications).

What Ben said - it's the interim publication that you want. Either that, lr check it all against the new gradual every week.

re: Offertories - if you don't like Palestrina, shop around! It's all there somewhere - you just need to put in the hours to find it.

It's more a matter that I've been asked by clergy to do this for various reasons. They include having an appointment soon after mass, wanting a particular motet to be sung at offertory, not wanting to wait so long for the gradual and alleluia... the list goes on. From what I've been told by TLM people here, they often opted to psalm-tone certain propers because of a lack of time to prepare the full gregorian chants to standard.

I don't place the blame on you for this, but it really is sad to see this, especially reason
2. If you have the capability of singing the full gregorian chants, it's unfortunate to see them cut, especially since both of them are an action in and of themselves, unlike some of the other chants, which accompany other actions.

Psalm tone the tract from lent I? I get it. But regularly cutting the gradual when it's possible to do the full one? That's too bad.

Perhaps they should consider shortening their homily instead.

Off hand, I cannot remember which document said so, but it has even been suggested by the church herself to sing propers to Psalm Tones if the full chants cannot be mastered.

I think the contrary is true: to sing propers to psalm tones has been discouraged by the Second Vatican Council, although a plain discouragement is only to be found in the preparatory texts and not in the final documents.

In preparing the text of the constitution Sacrosanctum consilium, the Council Fathers deleted from the fifth concept an earlier explicit reference to the singing of propers to psalm tones as a way to simplify the proper chants for smaller churches, explaining:

Quibusdam in regionibus iam non parva exstat difficultas Ordinarium Missae cantandi; Proprium vero vel omnino neglegitur, vel recitatur sub organo aut ad modum psalmi. Haec omnia systemata sunt in detrimentum patrimonii gregoriani et naturam sollemnitatis Missae quodammodo simulant. (Declaratio to no. 109 of the fifth concept, August 10, 1961)

In short: the existing practise (in 1961) in some smaller churches to ignore the propers altogether or sing them to psalm tones harms the Gregorian patrimony and the nature of the solemnity of the Mass.

So, though the use of psalm tones was at first proposed to facilitate smaller parish churches in singing the propers, this recommendation didn't make the cut in the final text of the constitution, and was removed in favour of the desire to use simpler melodies in order to safeguard the patrimony of Gregorian chant and the solemn nature of the Mass.

@smvanroode That's interesting that it places psalm toning them in a similar category as simply replacing them. Another reason I love the Chants Abrégés.

Agreed, Salieri.

Yes CW. Since we are not longer singing the Propers or most of the Ordinary, Mass is now only taking 50 minutes instead of 55. Oooh Boooyy--big time savings there. (We actually managed to crunch it down to 45 min last Sunday. I sure hope the collection's gone up!)

yes, it's a great piece, but it's role would be secondary to the proper it follows.

I would use it after the offertory proper if there were time (which could be possible if incense were used, and even possibly possible without it, if the priest doesn't rush), or at communion after the communion. At my parish, we have time to use verses of the communion as well as a motet, or sometimes two. But even if you don't have time for that, you can still just do the antiphon, the verses are optional.

Or, you could use a simpler setting from the LCSG, SEP, or even the graduale simplex.

Off hand, I cannot remember which document said so, but it has even been suggested by the church herself to sing propers to Psalm Tones if the full chants cannot be mastered.

The 1958 De musica sacra prescribes this, not as a recommendation, but as a restriction. It permits either the authentic proper, or a psalm tone, or recto tono but no other form of chant. It appears as though the authorities were seeking to promote the use of the authentic Gregorian propers by pushing choirs out of moderately simplified chants such as the Chants abregés. One had to step up to the authentic melodies or settle down to psalm tones. Along the same lines, the 1950s book of "Graduals, Alleluia Verses, and Tracts" from Solesmes consists entirely of psalm-tone settings.