Chant Ordinary Settings
  • gregpgregp
    Posts: 632
    I'm wondering how scholas who sing through the year alternate settings of the Ordinary (I suppose this would mostly concern the EF, but I'd love to hear from anyone doing the OF as well). We started last summer singing Mass XI, then moved to XVII for Advent, VIII from Christmas to Lent, back to XVII, and now Mass I during Eastertide, so I've been thinking I would like to do IV next, since we'll be singing it at the Colloquium.

    My question concerns how many of these you use during the year, and how often you change them? Of course we are trying to do half a dozen things here: besides the most important, singing the Mass, we are also introducing people to this music which, chances are, they've never heard before. We're also trying to get them familiar enough with it over time to think about joining in. If it were just my schola, I'd go through everything in the PBC before I started repeating again, but I want people to think, "I've heard that before", and maybe some day, they'll join in.

    Thoughts? (oh, and please don't talk about polyphony - we're not even close yet).
  • Mark M.Mark M.
    Posts: 632
    Very cool that you're doing this, Greg.

    I'll cede to others' expertise on this topic here. As for my situation — usually a one-man schola, with NOH accompaniment — I switch seasonally, too (Advent, Christmas to Epiphany, Ordinary Time, Lent, Easter to Pentecost, Ordinary Time again), though I don't do the Masses as single entities… I'll take a Gloria from here and a Sanctus from there, etc. (I've sought and received advice on this topic from this forum before!)

    When I introduce a new collection of Ordinary parts, there is a rather disconcerting silence from the congregation… at least at first. Some parts go over better than others. For example, we're doing Sanctus XIII right now, but it seems like I'm the only one singing. I brought back the Agnus Dei II (from Cantus Ad Libidum) from having done it prior to Lent, and that's a little more palatable to them, it seems. I'm not sure yet where I'll go next, i.e., what parts I retain and what parts I replace. Since it's a pretty long stretch in Ordinary Time from after Pentecost to Advent again, I may see if I can include two different settings for use throughout the season, and alternate between them.

    Sure beats using "Heritage Mass" week-in and week-out!

    By the way, here are the half-sheets I provide for the congregation. (They're single sheets of paper… originally two columns in landscape orientation, then printed back-to-back and cut in half.) I've done 'em so far since this past Advent. (The sheet for Lent was made, but never implemented… turns out we did the Jubilate Deo setting — or as Arlene calls it, the "Death Mass" — instead. How I would have loved to sing Kyrie XI!) You'll see I'm rather "stuck" on the Poterack Gloria, in English, but happily so, for now. I may try Gloria VIII soon, in either English or Latin.

    The file sizes are a bit large, and the music appears a little sketchy on-screen, but they print beautifully.
  • Mark M.Mark M.
    Posts: 632
    Hm… files didn't upload. Let me try again. Here are three previous ones…
    kyriale brevis lent.pdf
    527K
    kyriale brevis OT alt.pdf
    533K
    kyriale brevis advent alt.pdf
    415K
  • Mark M.Mark M.
    Posts: 632
    …and here's the current one.
    kyriale brevis Easter.pdf
    710K
  • Steve CollinsSteve Collins
    Posts: 1,022
    I highly recommend Missa IX "Cum jubilo". It's exquisite. It is intended for Marian feast days, but would also be wonderful at Christmas time. If you have any former Anglicans in you congregation they might recognize most of it as "Communion Setting Four" in The Hymnal 1940.
  • Arthur Connick
    Posts: 496
    Hi Greg -

    We follow this pattern for Sundays without polyphony:
    Mass 1, Credo 3 - Paschal Time
    Mass 17, Credo 1 - Lent and Advent
    Mass 11, Credo 1 - 2nd Sunday after Epiphany to Quinquagesima and beginning with the 4th Sunday after Pentecost.

    For Feast days without polyphony, even those on Sunday, we sing Mass 8, Credo 3, except for Marian Feasts in which case it's Mass 9, Credo 3. On the odd Ember day displacing our 1st Friday votive Mass of the Sacred Heart, we sing Mass 18. We will begin singing Mass 12 for 1st Friday beginning in July. Beyond that, our next step would likely be substituting Mass 4 for Mass 8 on off-Sunday feast days.

    As you can see, we pretty much follow the suggestions in the Graduale. I think we could sing a wider variety of ordinaries, but we already have polyphonic ordinaries twice a month, and so there's a concern with undermining the congregation's participation in singing the chants.
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