absolutely gorgeous.

How can I see what the chant is?? All these posts have got me interested!

An excellent resource!

If we look at the available collections of vernacular plainchant:

Simple English Propers - Covers Sundays and Major Feasts.
Anglican Use Gradual - Essentially a Psalm-Tone Gradual, useful for when there is limited skill amongst the choir as a preliminary form of chant before the SEP.
By Flowing Waters - Useful for Saints' Days, but also as a general change from the SEP.
Fr Columba Kelly Propers - Slightly more advanced antiphons.
Communio with English Psalm Verses - Good for transition between Vernacular and Latin chant.

These are all good ways to build up the skills of a choir, hopefully adding chants from the Graduale Simplex and the Graduale Romanum as things progress.

Assuming that your church uses incense, the recommended practice would be to sing a hymn until the clergy reach the foot of the altar and sing the introit during the incensing of the altar. The antiphon would be sung with it's attendant psalm verse and gloria patri. However, in the ordinary form it is acceptable to finish at the end of the psalm verse or gloria patri if the clergy are standing and waiting to begin the mass.

Solo Cantor, perhaps accompanied on 8' soft flute would be appropriate.

Whether we like it or not, most congregations, at least in my experience, have no training in singing square notes.

And that, in large part, is due to musicians saying this, then not giving neumes out or teaching them.

Chant is something often best learned by rote and by listening. Most congregations don't know how to read modern notation either, they just look at the ups and downs and sing from memory, with the cantor or choir (just as they could with neumes). No reason they can't do the same with neumes.

Fr. Chepponis, interesting timing for your questions, and I would have just responded with a general "yes" to all of your scenarios.
Summer/Ordinary Time is precisely an opportune occasion to make a switch from say the SEP to the Kelly, which is exactly what we've done out here in CA. After two or three years of confidence with SEP it's almost ideal to stretch the choir/schola singers' now innate understanding of phrasing, rhythmic precision and intonation with less formulaic melodic motives. We're enjoying these very much.

For those who want modern notation OCP is now selling Father Columba's chants in booklet form on their website. I think this will be of help to those who are hesitant to begin singing propers! Also, don't forget Fr. Weber's chant settings poster here on the website.

Our choir sings year round due to the televised Mass (though we do not do a weekday rehearsal during the Summer and less polyphony), so they will sing it. It is printed in the worship aid, but the length of this particular antiphon makes it unlikely there will be much singing. However, they do sing the settings from the Lumen Christi series quite well when we use those.

I agree, MJO. For several years, I transcribed chants into round notes for the assembly, but I realize now that it was just my fears getting in the way. The schola sang both, depending on what was available.

In my current parish, the director puts square notes in the program if it's chant, and round notes if it's not. As far as I know, he's never gotten any negative feedback about that - even if we've never explained what a quilisma is. People sing the best they can.

Is this part of a larger work (i.e. a Fr. Kelly gradual)? If not, it really should be.

This is so lovely, but I wonder if an episema and/or a dotted punctum or two might be appropriate at some of the cadences.

This is so lovely, but I wonder if an episema and/or a dotted punctum or two might be appropriate at some of the cadences.

I believe they're implied.

Since I had the great privilege and honor of adapting Fr. Columba's Missal Antiphons
into modern notation and harmonizing them for the OCP publication (I have been a student of Fr. Columba's for many, many years) I feel that I am in a good position to answer some of the questions that have come up in this posting. First, the Antiphons
are really too melismatic for a choir. They are best suited to a cantor or at most a very small schola. As those familiar with his work already know, the rhythm is based on Cardine's understanding of semiology and the importance of the oxytonic syllable.
There are modal and melodic structure pitches and the rest of the notes are ornamental. It becomes difficult to perform this delineation of primary and secondary melodic notes with multiple singers. Because of this, Fr. Columba has composed for each setting a shortened "Congregation refrain" in the same mode and echoing the melodic shape of the Antiphon. This can be sung by the congregation between the strophes of the Psalm since they are easy to remember (they are very syllabic) . OCP has printed a pew edition with the melodies only, in modern notation. All of the square neume figures (e.g. podatus, torculus, porrectus, etc.) are identified in the modern notation by slurs (so that those familiar with Cardine will know which notes receive their proper full syllabic value. In the course of production, the OCP staff omitted the slurs from the pew edition, which gives the unfortunate idea that all notes are equal and potentially "hammered" in the same way. The director will have to refer to the square notes on the St. Meinrad's website or the six volume OCP accompaniment edition (with Psalms written out). The accompaniment edition thankfully retains the slurs. Fr. Columba has used the melodies and modes of the Antiphons from the Gradual where they remain the same as in the new Missal. New Antiphons were created for the new Missal Antiphon texts. OCP has decided to publish approximately 400 of these Antiphons and Psalms including all Sundays and major feasts ( all optional texts from the Missal have also been set and will be published by OCP). The real genius of these settings (besides the fact that they respect all of the traditional idiomatic melodic modal nuances with regard to the given English text) is that they can easily be combined with the Latin Gradual (where the texts are in agreement, of course). They can be used in many different ways, from just
having a cantor sing the Antiphon once, through singing the complete attached Psalm
with Doxology (interspersed with the Congregational refrain and concluding with the
repetition of the Antiphon. The OCP editions will be available by the end of the year.
The original intent of OCP was to create an English Gradual, but ultimately they chose
not to include the Offertory Antiphons since they do not exist in the current Missal.

I didn't recall seeing offertory settings in the pdf on St Meinrad's website. If they do exist, it's truly unfortunate that they are not available.

Melo, If you look at the Fr. Kelly's notation on Meinrad site, the designations are at the beginning of the Antiphon lyric in English notation not Roman.
So the Entrance for the 19th week in OT is in mode 7. not VII

http://www.saintmeinrad.edu/media/29113/19OT_Booklet.pdf

Andrew C, there are some Offertories found among the "older" settings on the
St. Meinrad's website (check out the Requiem) but Fr. Columba has not adapted the
majority of the Offertory texts at this point. We can hope.