I would commend a studied familiarity with St Dunstan's Plainchant Psalter (Lancelot Andrewes Press) for learning how to set English to Gregorian tones. There are no categorical rules. One needs to be an artist musician who has a very good sense of how to match tones that were designed quite thoughtfully to be sung with the Latin tongue and its quite regular accentual structure with any language blessed with a different one. When using these tones for English and its very irregular accentual structure, a great amount of musical artistry is needed to obtain results which can (despite those who gruntle that it can't be done) be very admirable. As we all know, the Anglicans have been doing this for a very long time, and do it much better than most Catholic efforts, which, typically, mangle the language or the tone, or both, resulting in incredibly awkward and artless performances.

Too, the translation one uses makes all the difference in the world. Coverdale is much better that Revised Grail, et al., because of its more gracious syntax. For a modern translation that works reasonably well, that in the '79 BCP is not bad.

There is one important aspect to how one approaches this procedure that is fundamentally different with English. The Gregorian tones are each designed for specific alignment with grammatical accent and accent pattern in the tone's cadences. Often, such alignment will be evasive in English, which means that one needs to finesse word patterns and cadential formulas with artful invention and a strong sense of good musicianship. The results can yield English performance that is equally as beautiful as Latin. One will notice in the efforts of the better Anglican sources that the structure of the cadences is not at all savaged in setting the tone to English. Catholics (for some reason!) will typically put two syllables on what is supposed to be a one-syllable podatus, or will put two notes where there is supposed to be only one, or will add notes where they don't exist in the original tone. Such licenses yield very inept and amateurish results, but are to be found in even the best Catholic books. In closing, one will observe that great care must be exercised in the choice of which tone to fit to which psalm. Some tones, and their specific final cadences, work much better than others for a given psalm.

Do get yourself a copy of St Dunstan's Plainsong Psalter and avail yourself of many recordings of English choirs singing the psalter to the Gregorian tones. These latter are good for study of syllabification, but not for their typically accentless and monotonic delivery.

I use Finale, one line for the first half, a second line for the other. I export it as a graphic and insert it "behind text" in MSWord. Then I just type or paste the desired text under the melody line.

Paul F. Ford, how does your system work? Is there a link or pdf?

Well, let's start getting specific.

The 1961 Desclee book Versus psalmorum et canticorum has this pointing format:


This isn't a recommendation, just an example of one approach to pointing.

And here are the Propers from our High Mass for Corpus Christi 2015.

The Gregorian parts are in the style of Rev. Carlo Rossini's "Propers" book. In order to complement the "Kyrie" from the Haydn Mass we performed, we used an Anglican double chant alternating in the Introit: the first and last sections only for the Psalm, then the entire chant, through composed with rhythms for the reiteration of the Antiphon. This led very nicely into the Ordinary without any pause.

The Sequence uses hymn tunes from "The Hymnal 1940" with the Latin text. We also had the strings and winds double the SATB on the it.

Steve, are you at Walsingham in Houston? I always forget!

Oh wow! I'm just a little behind! There's a fellow from Birmingham that might have been there somewhere along the line lately, although it could be Wilmington or something further North. Beautiful church!