I have 10-15 copies of the Tieze book of entrance proper hymns that I can send someone. just write me privately with your address.

In my view, his book is a wonderful idea but my own problem with them is as follows. He uses conventionally known traditional hymns and sets the proper texts to them. But the people know these hymns with other texts. That's more or less the way these hymns work. Each age, each country, each denomination has certain entrenched expectations of text associations with certain tunes. To change them so dramatically struck me as an unviable project, strangely ahistorical, like singing Sanctus Sanctus with Veni Veni -- it is just not a comfortable fit. I'm a believer in proper texts, but the texts are not magic in the sense that they can be plugged into any musical setting. So the spirit of the project is just great. He is right to have undertaken it, but the final results just point to a problem with disregarding the unity of text and music.

Gavin, we are all doing what we can to work toward propers in everything we can influence.

I think there is yet another reason to sing the propers instead of hymns. Traditionally, the Church interprets the psalms as prayers of Christ: by praying and singing the psalms, we direct our prayers to Christ, who speaks of Himself in the psalms, or we pray with Christ in unison to the Father. As the texts of the propers are chiefly drawn from the psalms, the one voice of the Church in the liturgy is therefore the voice of Christ. Singing the propers, the voice of Christ Himself sounds forth through our lips to the Father. I do not know of any modern hymn which has the same spiritual depth. By replacing the propers with hymns, we remove Christ from Mass - and gradually from our minds and hearts.

We use the Rice Introit before the opening hymn at the "high" OF Mass.

How to move forward with Propers, hmm...

Latin in EF, done. (English in EF done in simple polyphony by Richard Rice.)

Latin in OF, done. The Graduale presents its own schema, which sometimes differs from the Roman Missal's.

English in OF presents problems. Introit and Communion antiphons from the Roman Missal are printed in (e.g. GIA) missalettes, but these are intended for reading, not singing. If you want to sing English propers in the OF, you've got options. Roughly:

- American Gradual, adapted Graduale schema and melodies with 1979 BCP (American) and RSV translations
- Anglican Use Gradual, adapted Graduale schema and melodies with older BCP (e.g. Coverdale?) translations
- Complete English Propers by Paul Arbogast, Roman Missal schema, new melodies (modern notation, good beaming), Confraternity of Christian Doctrine transl. of psalms, not sure about the transl. source for the antiphons
- English Propers by Samuel Weber, Roman Missal schema, new fauxbourdon-like melodies (modern hand-written notation), various translations (ICEL, Douay-Rheims, RSV, etc.), organ accompaniment
- English Propers by Columba Kelly (incomplete), Roman Missal schema, new melodies, ICEL translations
- By Flowing Waters, schema/melodies from the Graduale Simplex, which follows the Graduale's schema, NRSV translations

Corrections to the above are greatly welcome.

Our moving forward with English OF propers is not an obvious decision. Schema, translation, and melody are all factors still in play.

In my view, an ideal a collection of English OF propers would have the following features:

- harmonized schemas of Missal and Graduale
- English translations that are more accurate, elevated, and musical
- neo-Gregorian melodies representing organic developments of those in the Graduale.
- modal organ accompaniments
- fauxbourdon settings of psalm tone verses.

By next week, if possible.

"English in OF presents problems. Introit and Communion antiphons from the Roman Missal are printed in (e.g. GIA) missalettes, but these are intended for reading, not singing."

I'm getting very confused again. You mean the propers of Fr.Kelly, Fr. Weber and Richard Rice don't match with those from Roman missal? I just checked with the missalette I have and our parish uses (Celebrating the Eucharist by Liturgical press), the antiphones seemed to match. Or you mean the texts have to be modified to set to a music?

Thanks, Pes. I'll start with whatever is available now, until we can really do the latin Propers in the future.

I was looking at the communion antiphone of the 3rd week of Easter season from 3 different missals; Daily Roman missal, missalette, Gregorian missal. They all have different communion antiphones. (Fr. Kelly and RR match with the missalette) The communion antiphone in Roman missal is the Alleluia verse after the first reading in Gregorian missal, and it is the communion antiphone of year A (according to RR and Fr. Kelly), but this is the only communion antiphone provided for the 3rd week of Easter seaon in Roman missal. My head is spinning. Don't understand. I wonder the new translation is going to fix these problems.

Thanks, eft94530. I really appreciate your info on this. I'm going to work on it. I'm fighting a small battle in an area where most churches never heard of something 'called 'Propers' (or at least they 'forgot' about them. No EF in this area) I have to be well equipped, otherwise I can lose.

The Meinrad introit for this coming Sunday is super, btw.

RR

Right, so I was shooting from the hip about this -- http://musicasacra.com/books/simplifiedgraduale1962.pdf -- those aren't polyphonic, but simplified ones.

Sorry about the confusion re: Communio!

Mia

I should append a little footnote to all my posts that says, "there is an x% chance that this post is accurate." For that one, I should've put it around 80%. :-)

I do worry that these are confusing. Even I get confused about all the material up here. Tons and tons of it! Can you imagine what it must be like to be new to all of this?

I worry about this too, since it would be a mistake to forget that most people are still new to this entire landscape of references. A single webpage of links organized by Mass type would be helpful. Imagine:

Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form (High Mass, Latin)
- Missal (1962)
- Psallite Sapienter
- Graduale (1962), Communio (RR's)
- Polyphonic Propers
- Parish Book of Chant
- (other resources)

Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form (Low Mass, Latin and English)
- Missal (1962)
- Psallite Sapienter
- RR's Propers in English
- Parish Book of Chant
- Suitable Hymnody
- (other resources, eg. Sancta Missa for rubrics, Fortescue, etc.)

Holy Mass in the Ordinary Form (Latin)
- Missal (1970)
- GIRM
- Gregorian Missal (x), Graduale (1974), Graduale Simplex (x), Communio (RR's), etc.
- Polyphonic Propers (leading to a liturgical index with links to cpdl)
- Parish Book of Chant
- (other resources)

Holy Mass in the Ordinary Form (English)
- Missal (1970)
- GIRM
- sung Ordo Missae booklet
- sung readings tutorial
- Chabanel psalms et al
- on a separate page, all the available resources for chanted propers
- Polyphony page
- (other resources)

Divine Office (Latin)
- oy...

Liturgy of the Hours (English)
- oy...

This would be a page that lays out links to all the resources so that how to move closer to the ideal is made easy and people know what goes with what.

The Musica Sacra sidebar is great and has tons of stuff, but it's a sidebar.

"Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form (Low Mass, Latin and English)...
- RR's Propers in English..."

Dag gummit, Pes! No English Propers never, Low Mass or High, in the Extraordinary Form.

So let's try this one more time...

Resources prepared by R. Rice available on CMAA website:

- Communio: contains Latin Communion chants with verses for both Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms
- Simplified Graduale (1962): contains simplified settings of the major Propers (Gradual, Alleluia, and Tract) for the Extraordinary Form
(can be used for corresponding chants in the Ordinary Form)
- Offertory Verses: contains Latin Offertory chants with verses for the Extraordinary Form
(again, can be used for corresponding chants in the Ordinary Form)
- Simple Choral Gradual: contains settings in English of Entrance, Offertory, and Communion chants for the Ordinary Form

and of course...
- Parish Book of Chant: selectively useful for all occasions... makes a great gift... etc.

Well, this type of organization is great if you want materials for only one form of Mass but as Richard suggests, most EF materials can be used in the OF but not usually the reverse.

What we really need is a good database that can organize everything according to how people want it. EF/OF, English/Latin, Author etc. etc.