Hi, urli.

You need to speak to Bruce Ford about this. And SACRED MUSIC should consider publishing his article on this. (in my opinion, at least)

Also, rather than try to explain a bunch of "principles," you might also want to have a look at Chabanel Psalms, if you have not already, and see what others are doing. Just a thought.

In Christ,

JMO

You might also consider the Simple English Psalm Tones, which are almost complete.

Here's an EXAMPLE, for the coming Sunday.

The complete set (almost complete) can be found for each feast HERE.

You could always try these, which are based on the Office psalm tones (and others):

(http://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/6849/anglican-chants-adapted-from-the-office-psalm-tones-and-elsewhere#Item_2)

Thanks, igneus, for referring to the Klein Graduale. Here are the psalm tones as a separate pdf. I think they fit English texts as well.

While the cadence of the second part of all psalm tones works with both oxytonic and paroxytonic texts, for the cadence of the first half of some of the psalm tones the comments made by Bruce Ford in another thread may apply:

Following Pothier you would omit the final note when singing oxytonic texts. Following Mocquereau you would use the normal paroxytonic ending, placing the final accented syllable on the final (low) note.

Both performances can be done well, but the latter takes a little more care, especially when the preparatory note is higher than the final note.

Of course, after writing all that, I see Mr. van Roode's response. I will gladly defer to anything he has to say regarding Dutch!

The adaption of the text "Teach us Your ways, Lord" to "Teach us Your ways, O Lord" is a correct alternative translation since "Lord" is in the vocative sense and "O Lord" is an appropriate translation.

:) I don't have a problem making such changes, but I just wanted to acknowledge it might not always be advantageous - particularly when some people may be following along in different books - or you're maybe looking to get something published officially someday...

Thank you for sharing your viewpoint and addressing my concerns. I respect it, as well as your experience and your work very much.

I cannot claim the experience of having lived a monastic life, and don't have the sense that comes from chanting the Psalms in Latin day in and day out. I am, however, a professional choral musician, who has very much struggled with and been musically formed by careful consideration of what happens when text accentuation conflicts with musical accentuation.

My personal experience has been that this conflict arises very frequently in all kinds of choral music - far more than many singers or even conductors seem to realize - or at least respond to in their interpretations. I find that, unfortunately, there is a strong (self-perpetuating, almost pervasive) trend among many (particularly American and English) conductors to value the accentuation patterns of the music over those of the words. I don't know why this is so, perhaps because so much of the study of choral conductors is focused on musical issues rather than those of declamation. But for many conductors (and hence, choirs), the most attention the text ever receives is matching vowels (which it seems is often for the more musical sake of intonation) and encouraging clearer consonants (so that the words are merely understood by the audience, if not comprehended) - and even these areas seem on the whole to be given less attention than at least I would ideally prefer.

So often I feel many choirs (by which I really mean conductors) could/should focus more on the relationship of the text to the music. And I don't just mean pointing out to choirs the use of text painting, be it quaint or clever - but rather, changing one's interpretation of phrase lengths or even employing subtle (or even not-so-subtle rubato) to inform the music with at least one particular interpretation of the declamation of the text.

For me, the influence of the text on the music - the push and pull and conflict between them - IS the stuff of choral music - or any sung music. For if the composer didn't want such things "getting in the way of" the music (as was once offered me by a colleague with an opposing viewpoint), he or she should have just written the work as an instrumental piece.

So, I highly respect the declamation of text. But I also love the beauty, tradition, nostalgia - essence - of the traditional Gregorian tones - and I just can't be so quick to relegate their use strictly to Latin texts. I'll state again that the text/music push-and-pull happens much more frequently in Latin psalmody than I feel it is acknowledged, and I also find its occurence in English psalmody to not be the terrible distortion you perceive it as - in fact, as I said above, I find it to be an occurence of - or at least an opportunity for - beauty.

Perhaps the real issue is one of the aims of the vernacular. If one's goal in using modal tones to point vernacular texts is an end in and of itself for a self-contained, stable vernacular liturgical action, then I can perhaps understand the use of tones composed or arranged to be particularly suited for the vernacular.

If, on the other hand, one views use of the vernacular as a gift of understanding to aid a community on the way to a stronger continuity with the musical and Latin tradition (as is the case in the community in which I find myself), then it seems to me inventing or appropriating a brand new way of doing something apart from the Latin almost gets in the way of bigger goals.

(For example, in my situation, when my students hear Latin psalmody someday - or when we work up to it in a few years - I want them to be able to say, "Oh yeah, that's the same thing we did with English," and I want the work we did (in English) to enable a connection to the Latin, rather than have them think, "that's kind of like what we did, but it's kind of different - and something new I have to learn," and risk them making the judgment that one is perhaps better than the other - whichever way that judgment might fall.)

I will allow there is room for more than one opinion on this, but I am somewhat put off by the fact that it seems among some in the establishment the matter is settled in all cases and there is no merit to this point of view- and those of us who hold it just don't understand the issues.

Mr. Ford, many thanks for your patience with me on this issue. I think we agree in principle. My chief objection is to those kinds of English use tones that don't even (or barely) recall the traditional formulas while theoretically holding to the same modes. It would be great if you could post the formulae for all of the tones (with the various endings) as you propose them to be adapted for English so I can have a better sense of what you mean.

I will also PM you with some more specific questions...

Thanks again.