Help with setting text to music
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,212
    This discussion was created from comments split from: Musical Setting of Psalm 22 for Good Friday, Communion.
  • TeresaW
    Posts: 42
    I know this is years down the road from the original discussion, but at some point I learned how to chant when you have just words and a few bars of notes, but now I can't remember when you have 3 lines of chant and 4 bars of notes, which do you omit?? I'm driving myself crazy trying to find the answer!
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,212
    Are you having trouble fitting a psalm-tone (musical template) to the text you have?
    Can you post a photo of the score you are working with? Maybe that would help.
  • PaxTecum
    Posts: 314
    General rule of thumb for that type of situation is start at the beginning and when you have one like of text left, jump to the last bar of music.
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • liampmcdonough
    Posts: 297
    Yes, generally you would omit the 3rd line of a 4 measure tone to fit 3 lines of text. This depends on the set of psalm tones, however. Most of the popular sets of "English tones" like those of St. Meinrad abbey follow this rule of singing the measures in contiguous fashion, and then skipping to the last measure for the last line of text. St. Meinrad has some exceptions to this. These are written out here: http://www.stutler.cc/russ/st_meinrad_psalms_tones.pdf

    The traditional Gregorian tones are a little harder to explain...
  • ericperry
    Posts: 2
    Do you still need help with it at https://egaminghall.com?
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