Greetings all,
We have long desired to introduce a sung Credo at our parish, and with the Lenten suppression of the Gloria, it seemed an opportune time to do so. I was not particularly happy with ICEL's version which can be found in the appendix to the Missal, hence I made my own transcription. Their approach was to alter the melody (sometimes recycling common melodic elements—which is clever, to be fair) to fit the text, whereas I wanted to marry the text as closely as possible to the original melody with as few alterations as I could manage to still fit the text.

I don't believe one approach to be more "correct" than the other; they are simply different, so please don't read me as disparaging the ICEL version in any way. Their version is very straightforward to sing, which I suspect was the overarching goal. However, with an eye toward potentially shifting our parish to the original latin in the future, it seemed prudent to me to leave the melody as unmolested as possible. I believe that learning the ICEL version would make such a future transition more difficult since certain passages do not line up.

Now, I'm sure that my transcription is not beyond its own criticism, not least of all my preferred method for transcribing chant into stemless notes where I use the generic "black = short, white = long" approach. For congregational use I tend to suppress certain things that other editions show, such as tied repeated notes or "squiggly" notes which can be retained between two black notes. Nothing is perfect, but this approach seems the most straightforward for congregations that are only nominally musically literate. (I am more detailed in my transcriptions intended for the choir.)

Keen eyes will also notice that I did not keep the original barlines, although I did retain their placement. The original latin has the text divided into many independent sentences, whereas the english combines certain phrases together. This changes punctuation and emphasis. In an effort to provide a subtle cue to a preferred method of breathing (so as to not lose momentum) I suppressed a number of the double barlines, in particular. Anyone who is used to singing chant (original or transcriptions) was libel to be thrown by double barlines when they occurred in the middle of a compound sentence in the english version.

I also realized after finishing all my engravings that I did one thing which could be considered a mistake, (or undesirable, at any rate) and that was suppressing one melody note in the incipit. I had maintained the ICEL model as it seemed quite natural in english, but to anyone already habituated to the latin, that missing note jumps out to the ear. Those desirous to do so, could easily add back in the missing note and sing two notes on "in" as in the original incipit. As I said, I felt I was a little too deep in to go back and change it once I noticed it.

So with all of those caveats out of the way, I wanted to offer this score to anyone who might wish to use it at their parish as well. I've also made a practice video and mp3 recording. These resources and a PDF of the score (formatted in columns 5.66" wide which perfectly fit 11x17 trifold worship aids) are available for free on my website:

https://www.psallitedomino.com/blog/singing-the-creed