Can anyone tell me anything about the Advent Morning Prayer hymn Magnis prophetae vocibus? GregoBase lists the mode as D, but it could be a transposed mode VIII whose tonic is also the tenor. What might be the provenance of this hymn? The '83 Ordo does not even give a location to find it, though GregoBase says it is in the '83 Liber Hymnarius, to which I do not have access. Thanks for any info you can offer!
I see now that it shares its melody with Vox clara ecce intonat. This and its Dominican variant are listed as mode I, but it still ends on the tenor. Does this suggest it is on the older side?
Magnis prophetae appears in the modern Liturgia Horarum (1971). The index in the Liber Hymnarius does not indicate an author, so it was probably a new composition written by the Latinist and poet Anselmo Lentini OSB (b. 1902). He headed the study group that prepared the hymns for the Liturgia Horarum, and forty-two of his texts were adopted in it.
An article by Vincent Lenti in Sacred Music 127.3 (Fall 2000: PDF available here) discusses the work of the study group from 1964 to 1971. I'll attach the text of the article here.
So far I found one attribution to Ambrose (I think this is wrong) and a couple of others but I think the references are to books not names. It is really annoying to find so little, not that I have a copy of the Liber Hymnarius...
I thought we had lists of the confections of Lentini... but my searches cannot find it.
According to the book by Dom Lentini "De decet hymnus" this hymn is by an unknown author and from an uncertain century and it's taken from the Breviarium Goticum. It's originally assigned to the feast of Saints Acislus and compagnons, Martyrs which was kept on Dec. 17.
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