Gradual/Tract/Alleluia in the Novus Ordo
  • How do you go about incorporating the Gradual text into the Novus Ordo? For example, if one used the Ignatius Press missal, you'd only find the Alleluia with its accompanying verse. I'm sure many other pew missals are the same, such as Breaking Bread. Are you successful incorporating such texts into your Masses? Would it be better to just chant it in Latin using a simple tone and then move on to the Alleluia.
  • CCoozeCCooze
    Posts: 1,259
    The St. Isaac Jogues missal includes the music for the responsorial psalm (from the accompanying Chabanel psalms), but includes the text, Latin and English, for all propers of the day: introit, gradual, Alleluia, offertory, and communio. So, the text is in the missal, regardless of language or psalm vs gradual. Super helpful, straight through Mass, and impossible to claim someone can't figure out "where that came from!"

    We don't usually use the Gregorian gradual + alleluia/tract, but we have been known to, from time to time - especially on Palm Sunday, and some other feast days, etc.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen hilluminar
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,371
    The Graduale Simplex (1975/1988) is more fully conformed to the NO than is the GR. It shows, in Tempus Quadragesimae :-
    Psalmus responsorius
    Antiphona acclamationis vel Tractus

    GR does not have the novel Gospel Acclamations, it just gives the tract instead of the Alleluia during Lent. And instructs :-
    "Praenotanda(=OCM) 7. Secundam lectionem sequitur Alleluia vel Tractus."
    I deduce that if you sing the Tract you do not have the Acclamation.
    If there is only one reading before the Gospel, OCM 9. says either gradual or Alleluia*, but GS implies you can sing both. *Presumably they mean this to apply to the Tract in Lent, but they do not spell it out.
  • Andrew_Malton
    Posts: 1,156
    According to the General Instruction, para 61-64, the responsorial psalm and the "acclamation" before the Gospel are taken from the Lectionary or from one of the Graduals. So theoretically, you can use any of them, with no further ado. But you come up against
    * There is no official vernacular translation of the Roman Gradual
    * If the order of listing is the order of preference (as is sometimes said re. the choice at the introit or offertory) then the Lectionary texts are preferred
    * There is a recently invented musical "Tradition" for the responsorial psalmody and for the "Gospel Acclamation" , and it extends to Lent, using the Lenten replacement acclamations which are also in the Lectionary. But there is no tradition or custom for music for the Gradual texts, which are not responsorial in the same way at all. So there will be resistance.
    * The Tract, no matter how you do it, is almost unknown.

    In summary: theoretically you can just use them, if you can settle about using unofficial translations; practically, it may be very difficult to get acceptance.

    In the place where I direct a schola singing in English, we use the Lectionary psalms sung to modern plainsong, unaccompanied, and we sing the Alleluia or the Tract in English from By Flowing Waters which is a (somewhat) official translation of the Simplex. Some have wondered why we don't sing the "proper" Gospel Acclamation. (Some have wondered why we sing plainsong and where the guitars have gone...) So there I would not press for using the responsorial Gradual even in English: a bridge too far!
    Thanked by 1Paul F. Ford
  • trentonjconn
    Posts: 539
    Wouldn't you simply replace the Responsorial Psalm with the Gradual, which would be followed by the Epistle, which itself would be followed by either the Gospel Acclamation or Tract?
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,371
    GIRM does make it fairly clear -
    Instead of the Psalm assigned in the Lectionary, there may be sung either the Responsorial Gradual from the Graduale Romanum, or the Responsorial Psalm or the Alleluia Psalm from the Graduale Simplex, as described in these books.

    a. Alleluia is sung in every time of year other than Lent. The verses are taken from the Lectionary or the Graduale.
    b. During Lent, instead of the Alleluia, the Verse before the Gospel as given in the Lectionary is sung. It is also possible to sing another Psalm or Tract, as found in the Graduale.

    [edit] darned machine has messed up my formatting of the following table
    Thanked by 1Paul F. Ford