The psalm tones are my adaptations of the Dominican psalm tones. Each one is simplified to a two or three note formula for the mediant and final cadence, which in my experience is the easiest for communal singing in English. I've attached the full list I have. (Note that the Dominican tradition includes fewer versions of each mode than is found in the Liber usualis or [even more so] the more recent Solesmes books.)

I have felt the same way about most English tones you hear. I had a conversation with David Clayton about it when he showed me the work he had done on his own tones. We both agreed that (with the exception of Tonus Peregrinus) the reciting pitch should remain the same from mediant to termination.

Hello, friends. I'm not too inclined to get into yet another debate about psalm tones (I have been in enough of these!) but do have one response to the argument above about the reciting tone:

We see in the Gregorian tones in almost all cases a strong change in pitch on the penultimate accent, which—when sung in an inflected manner—gives a sharp contrast to the monotony of the single reciting pitch. This can be reproduced in the English language in some cases, but the problem (for those who sing the English text in an inflected way that respects the natural word accent in the text) is that in very many cases there are no weak syllables between the true penultimate and final accents in a phrase, just as 75% of the time a phrase in English will end on an oxytonic accent (which happens less than 10% of the time in Latin). So in these cases we either need to elide (through syneresis) the pitches over the penultimate accent with no weak syllables that follow, or have to in some way rewrite the tone. (Or, of course, we can simply ignore the accent altogether). There are many other textual challenges that English presents, and these rules end up, in my opinion, getting so complex that the intuition that is required in Psalmody is virtually lost. Thus, I have mostly given up on trying to adapt Gregorian tones for use with English texts.

Back to the reciting tone: Because of the consistent change in pitch on the penultimate accent in the Latin tones, with Latin texts, there is a kind of melodic modulation at the end of (really in the middle of) the phrase, which breaks up the monotony of the reciting tone, creating a wonderfully beautiful and balanced melodic phrase. Since this is not easily done with English, all that we can do is give a series of changing pitches before the final accent, but there is no regularity in the treatment of the penultimate accent. In many cases, I and others (such as Fr. Columba Kelly who composed the Meinrad tones) have found that this single reciting tone with regular modulation on the penultimate accent creates a monotony that is not found in the Gregorian tones. The only way to create the same modulatory effect that is found in the Gregorian tones is to change the reciting pitch in many cases, in my estimation. It is a creative solution, but one that, I think, breaks the monotony and redundancy often found in a tone with a single reciting tone and no regular treatment of the penultimate accent.

Now, this is all assuming that the texts are sung in a way that actually gives tangible accentuation to the word accents in a text. I can understand the arguments that people often present in opposition to the tones that I and others have employed with English texts because I hear the way that they sing the Gregorian tones, and word accent is not respected. The words are sung essentially with equal length and stress on every syllable, and the sequence of pitches is heard more as a "melody" than a formula that plays off of the accentuation patterns of the Latin language. I have found that I can't get far in this conversation with those who chant in this way, because we're talking about apples and oranges. I can understand why such interpretation would find the tones I've composed or adapted to be "madness" or overly simplistic.

In the end, to quote Fr. Innocent who started this post, I'm happy to "let a thousand flowers bloom" in this pasture! I have been working on some more ornate English tones, in fact, which are certainly more interesting than the ones in SEP and the LCSG. They have alternating reciting tones, though, because I judge that this is needed in order to maintain the interest and essential ethos of the Gregorian tones.

Best of luck with your sung Vespers, by the way, Fr. Innocent!

OH ALSO!

I just saw this in the OP's link:

The full GABC/LaTeX sources are available here.

WITH A LINK TO GITHUB!


Woot. Woot. Thanks for sharing.

#OpenSourceLiturgy

I just want to add one thing, lest it seem like I am trying to "pile on" the Meinrad tones and their progeny:

One of the things where I find the Meinrad tones work exceptionally well is with larger blocks of text that should be rendered more melodically than a Gregorian psalm-tone would allow. For example: the Responsorial psalm in the OF. The authentic Responsorium Graduale is, of course, a through composed melody, both in the responsory and the verse: using one of these "modulating tones" for the verse of the Responsorial psalm retains, IMO, the idea of a discrete melody for the verses of the psalm, which are often two or three verses, which amounts to four or six lines of music, which a Gregorian psalm-tone does not.

The Meinrad tones, I have found, also work well when one has to try to sing a "High Mass" in English from the Missal (and, yes I know about Palmer-Burgess), or with choirs that are just beginning. Singing last Sunday's offertory to a Gregorian tone would be deadly, on the other hand, singing it to the appropriate Meinrad tone adds a little more melodic interest for that long text.

So, in short, I find them to work very well when singing a text that would normally have its own melody (the processional propers themselves, the responsorial psalm, antiphons, etc.), but I prefer the retention of the Gregorian tones (or tones based on them with a single Tenor) for verses of psalms sung between repetitions of an antiphon.

Just my $0.02 .

Thanks for your comments and perspectives. The first celebration this afternoon went very well. If you're in or near NYC feel free to join us next Sunday or in the (foreseeable) future.

The booklet is beautifully laid out. Two minor questions:

1. In the psalm tones, would it be useful to label the initial measure with a † for the flex (perhaps underneath the second note), so that it visually matches the flex as indicated in the psalm text?

2. Should there be a te instead of ti in the "Deo" of "Deo gratias" at the very end?

I looked it up: the rules for the flat in the Dominican Processionarium (1913), p. 329, have it as being in effect to the end of the line:

Signum ♭ molle ante notam si positum minuit acuitatem notæ uno semitono. Effectus autem ejusmodi signi se extendit usque ad finem lineæ, nisi prius ♮ quadro evictus fuerit.

See their Antiphonarium (1933) for this Benedicamus Domino, p. 12.

Whether they can have a flat in the "key-signature", I didn't come across.

I was thinking of the † under the second note, the do (instead of underneath the quarter bar). But I think that either solution could work.