I guess it depends on how you're presenting it. If it is an antiphon that will bookend the whole text, then yes, it doesn't make sense to sing the 'and'. If you are going to be chanting and then the congregation joins in mid-way through, then keep the and. But as presented with just the antiphon music showing, it is awkward to start with 'and' since the rest of the phrase stands by itself. In this case you are hardly abusing the text by omitting it since you are keeping it verbatim and providing its context.

If I take out the "and" and change the semicolon to a period, would you suggest doing that in what I type underneath as well? It's part of the antiphon, so I don't really want to remove it, but I also don't want to confuse people.

Oy. What a pickle. Perhaps you should keep the and. My own inclination would be to drop the and in the antiphon itself and then place it in brackets in the longer text below. That way it is present but it doesn't make it awkward to sing either as a pickup or as a cantor tag (which I agree would be very awkward). [and] might be a happy compromise. Grammatically speaking, and could be omitted completely anyway, since there is a semicolon. It doesn't change the meaning at all.

Based on suggestions from here, here's the latest draft I've been working together, and I would appreciate your feedback. The main change is that I have added an option of the same setting with gregorian notation. Much of the feedback that I received was about notation and how to set chant into modern notation, so I am proposing this solution, but I have some questions.

1) Is this a worthwhile solution? I kind of like the way that I have stemmed and combined noteheads in the modern notation version because for someone not terribly familiar with chant, I think it's helpful for seeing the accents in the words. If you place a small relative emphasis on the first of each combination of 8th notes, that helps an inexperienced chanter disrupt the idea of regular meter to encourage more free-flowing rhythms of chant. Also, after working with far too many singers who want to make every quarter-head stemless note a full beat at a plodding pace, I think that the 8th note "beat" helps to encourage a more swiftly moving chant.

However... I also hear and understand the many comments here about the drawbacks to this form of notation and how for somebody more familiar with chant, the fact that I have barred together multiple words and used a greater combination of rhythms than would normally be used in the modern notation of chant can be jarring. So, I added the gregorian option for those who would be more comfortable with chant notation rather than trying to do something in the middle for both.

Do you think that having the gregorian notation will scare less experienced chanters away? Or do you think that it's OK since it doesn't show up on the first page that they see and is just an option to use it or the modern notation?

2) How does it look? Obviously gregorian notation looks rather different than modern notation, and I am using 2 different programs to produce the different settings. I have spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to match fonts, sizes of text, thickness of staff lines, line lengths, not to mention losing several weeks on trying to get the multiple programs that I'm working with to work together to combine files. The way I have it now, the staff on the gregorian notation is a little larger than that of the modern notation, while the note heads are similarly sized but a bit smaller. Do you think it's OK as it is, or would it look better would it be better to better match staff size while leaving the note heads on the gregorian very small or to match notehead size with a much larger staff on the gregorian? Does it look sufficiently like they are of a similar style while being 2 different forms of notation, or does it look tacky and spliced together?

3) Do the 2 forms of notation work together? Due to feedback from here, I've taken out most of the dotted quarter notes except to denote a tristropha and the ends of certain phrases. When compared with the gregorian notation, do the places I have left them in make sense? Do any of you have the ability to hand the gregorian to a singer and the modern notation to an organist to have them test it out together and let me know how it goes?

Joining in late, but here are a couple of random comments.

* One reason not to simply use the Meinrad introits and communios is the quest for a free/libre/open-source resource.

* I improvise to some degree on the accompaniments. Since the cantor -- the author -- can easily carry the chanted line herself, I'm chording when the cantor is singing alone (verses, first time through the introit), usually playing the bass clef chords with adding treble clef notes. I double this line when the congregation is invited to sing as well.

P.S. I'm the accompanist the author married :-)

drjones, a couple additional differences between this and the Meinrad ones are the use of the texts from the Graduale Romanum instead of the Roman Missal and the fact that the refrains used are part of the proper itself, not just related to the proper.

Can you tell us more about what sort of notes you add to the treble when you are improvising?

Introits for Congregation is a good title in my opinion.

Agreed, the licensing isn't the only difference. The other two differences cited are important as well. The licensing difference does address an unanswered point from near the beginning of the thread, I believe.

Regarding how I play the introits, my current take is to simply extend the chord into the right hand with an appropriate note, usually below the note that the cantor is singing. I believe it makes for a fuller sound, but you could argue that it just gives my right hand something to do :-)

As for titles, I do like St. Paul VI if emphasizing the fact that the work helps bring chant to the vernacular. Introits for Congregation is a great functional title. My personal style, of course, would call for picking a Celtic saint...

Please no more “St. X” titles...it always smells to me like a false appeal to authority.

-St. X didn’t give their imprimatur for what people name after them.

-St. X (except in very few cases) didn’t even write anything about a hymnal or new collection of English chants.

-St. X is not even the sum total of all that my Very Special And Holy Hymnal/Choir/Organ wishes to achieve. We need Cecilia and Gregory and Dunstan and Bernard...

And it’s not like you’re going to entomb a relic of St. X in your book or consecrate it on St. X’s feast day.

I still favor the unindented version. It looks like there is some space between the last line of the first verse and the first line of the second verse; a little more might be better.

I still favor the indents. I think it’s asking for trouble in the heat of the moment to have a bunch of staves that look alike and expect the organist to jump around without any visual cues or aids.

Think of this scenario:
You’re the organist and conductor. You look up to give a cue to the choir when to cut off the refrain after verse 1. You have one hand on the organ, one in the air as you make eye contact with a singer to help them cut off correctly whilst making a motion with your floating hand. Then you have to look down to start verse two and also feverishly glance at your directing hand as you place it back down on the manual.

You’ll be awfully glad for that indent.

As a cantor who sings while holding a baby and managing multiple other children (and sometimes lose track of which "qui tollis pecata mundi" I just sang), I certainly am in favor of trying to idiot proof my music.

Though there's a Douglas Adams quote that comes to mind...
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

How's this for a next attempt? I did not indent verse 1 because it is still part of the antiphon (and matching indents with the refrain is tricky when I put a mode in there... not impossible but tricky). I've indented vs. 2 (Psalm verse) marked with a versicle symbol and the doxology (which is part of vs. 2 as written but could be pulled out and used separately) with a cross. Helpful or too busy?

Am I going crazy, or is the Gregorian notation for the psalm tone a tone too low?

It's clear that the clef C3 for the chant verse should be C4 - evidently a typo? Mode VIII doesn't end on ti - it ends on sol.

Version 8. Perhaps a final version on the formatting (unless I manage to remove stems on the verses of the Simple Version).

Richard, I haven't found Weber's different versions to be confusing. My concern is more how to make clear that the first and second are the same thing in different notation while the 3rd is a simple version. I think it's more of an editing issue than a need to exclude them. I could consider putting the gregorian first, calling the 2nd an organ accompaniment/modern notation, and the 3rd a simple version. Do you think that would make things more clear?

I considered making "you" a bistropha, but I know some singers who rebeat the bistropha twice (and the tristropha 3 times) and some who hold the note. My concern is that this is more likely to confuse the congregation, so I have converted all bistrophae to either you(j_) or you(j.) in my refrains.

Thank you for catching the typo in the Simple version.

Another great point on the way the text lines up on the Simple Version. Do you think either of these versions fix the problem?

I'll need to mess with the spacing a bit more if I go this direction, but here it is with the Gregorian first. Does this make it more clear?

CCooze, I'll think about changing "ways." I've set it to mostly match the psalm tones of the Gregorian Chants, which has the movement... but it's not English, so maybe this is a necessary change. Anyone else want to weigh in?

I can't say it's ever happened that a choir has opened Weber's book to the appropriate Sunday and started singing three versions at the same time, but I can't predict it never will.

The line extensions simply make one wonder whether to wait for a harmony change on "be"; it's also a standard convention to use numerals to show only the beginnings of verses. This I would consider legible:

Numbering the second system of the verse is still distracting (as I said, it conventionally denotes the start of a verse), and a missing double p in disappoint.

Maybe the first/filler page for each Sunday could be a copy of the Latin Gregorian with translation below?
Not only does it provide context, but for any choirs that like to do the "repeated" antiphon with the Latin to "normalize" the Gregorian antiphons, this may be helpful.

CCooze, I've attached a couple of concept ideas based on your suggestion. Given that the original chants are available in a lot of other forms, I'm not sure it's necessary or worth the extra effort, but I did find freely available gabc files online for all the chants that I can modify for my needs that makes it not impossible...

Richard, yes, that is part of the point. A parish can publish the refrain for the congregation in a handout or get the congregation book, and the cantor can pick which set of verses to use. They could also use some verses from one version and some from the other, for example if one of the antiphons in a procession is too difficult, the simple version for that antiphon could be used.

...if the user is fully awake.

...which is obviously not me today...

That is a good point. Some of the Introits have shorter antiphons and/or Psalm verses, which could potentially lead to putting more of it on the first page, but I think I could decide to purposely avoid this and just adjust spacing.

Help me with titles! The two frontrunners currently are:

Propers for the Parish: Introits

and

Propers for the Faithful: Introits

Which one do you like best, or suggest your own, but do it quickly because I'm very close to needing a final decision. (sending to USCCB, starting a website, etc)

Sing the Mass: Introits?

I like that one too. Now who here owns singthemass.com?

I noted that the domain is owned by somebody, but nobody has put up a website with it yet. My qualm with "Sing the Mass" is that I'd like to emphasize that the congregation is part of that singing. "Sing the Mass" seems more general.

But yes, I do like a title that would promote other editions, and Communios might be next... though I'm pretty far along on Alleluias too...