Sung Liturgy of the Hours
  • PaxTecum
    Posts: 315
    I am putting together some new resources for LoTH at my parish. It's been a while since I did any and I refreshed my memory on the rubrics / situation for singing the office. I wanted to run it by you all here and make sure I have a solid understanding - or perhaps I have lost my marbles.

    My understanding is that one cannot simply just sing, for example, Vespers as it is written in the modern breviary. One must follow the prescriptions in the Ordo Cantus Officii 2015. This means that oftentimes the antiphons actually sung are different than those in the breviary. (Does anyone know why?)

    If you are doing Sunday or Feast Day vespers, you happen to be in luck that most of the antiphons required are notated in the Antiphonale Romanum II from Solesmes. If you are doing weekday vespers - you might find many of the antiphons in older resources (Antiphonale Monasticum / et. al. )

    Here is where my confusion comes in:
    If we are singing the office in the english language, which antiphons should be sung? English translation as found in the breviary? Or should we be using an "approved" psalm translation of the antiphon text dictated by OCO? (Please, don't get me started on the psalm translations).

    I've posted on this here before, and done a ton of research and reading up on this, but I must reiterate that it is utterly ridiculous that almost 60 years after the council there are STILL no complete resources for singing the office in ANY language. Not even Latin is complete. Talk about - totally against what Vatican 2 wanted.



    Seriously, if anyone can verify / expand on what I'm saying here, it's much appreciated.
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  • smvanroodesmvanroode
    Posts: 1,000
    This means that oftentimes the antiphons actually sung are different than those in the breviary. (Does anyone know why?)

    The OCO 2015 gives authentic antiphons from the Gregorian repertoire for the sung office, while the LotH was designed to be recited.

    If we are singing the office in the english language, which antiphons should be sung? English translation as found in the breviary? Or should we be using an "approved" psalm translation of the antiphon text dictated by OCO?

    I think you could do both, but I would suggest you to opt for the English LotH. The OCO was put together for the sung office with Latin and Gregorian chant specifically.

    it is utterly ridiculous that almost 60 years after the council there are STILL no complete resources for singing the office in ANY language. Not even Latin is complete.

    Indeed. But! Dutch is complete! I know of three different musical settings (which are all three hard to find...). Latin is almost complete; in a parish setting you can sing daily office with Gregorian chant.
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  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,791
    but I must reiterate that it is utterly ridiculous that almost 60 years after the council there are STILL no complete resources for singing the office in ANY language. Not even Latin is complete. Talk about - totally against what Vatican 2 wanted.

    Is this a feature or a bug? It is all very well for a section of the verbiage of Vatican II to ask for something, but actions speak louder than words.
    Anyway our N.O. parish always has any public Office using the older books and rubrics!
    Thanked by 5PaxTecum Chris Garton-Zavesky MatthewRoth Salieri Jehan_Boutte
  • PaxTecum
    Posts: 315
    I think you could do both, but I would suggest you to opt for the English LotH. The OCO was put together for the sung office with Latin and Gregorian chant specifically.


    What I may do as a compromise is use the sung antiphons in latin from OCO/ARII and sing the psalms in English. I just bought a copy of the Abbey Psalms and Canticles which is apparently now approved for liturgical use - so I don't have to re-typeset this stuff down the road.

    Anyway our N.O. parish always has any public Office using the older books and rubrics!


    I wish. Maybe one day. Divino Afflatu office - way better.
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  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,791
    We use an older calendar c. 1935 and mainly follow Divino Afflatu rubrics. Both the E.F. and N.O. people seem to be happy with the arrangement.
    Thanked by 4PaxTecum Andrew_Malton MatthewRoth RedPop4
  • monasteryliturgistmonasteryliturgist
    Posts: 318
    I do have files of the whole psalter placed to monastic gregorian notation- however the way it was marked we have moved away from, we have a better understanding on how to apply the accents to English now. The problem is that, no one wants to put music to the whole office until the new edition of the breviary comes out, which is supposed to be soon. If you want I can send you the files I have, but there is also a simplified version which you can find from Fr. Weber https://sacredmusicus.wordpress.com/

    sister Marie
  • PaxTecum
    Posts: 315
    Thank you, sister. I know I would love to see what you have put together if you are willing to share it, and I'm sure others here would too.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,372
    What I may do as a compromise is use the sung antiphons in latin from OCO/ARII and sing the psalms in English. I just bought a copy of the Abbey Psalms and Canticles which is apparently now approved for liturgical use - so I don't have to re-typeset this stuff down the road.


    For better or worse, this is not that uncommon. However, I also prefer the Divino Afflatu arrangement, warts and all.
    Thanked by 2PaxTecum tomjaw
  • GerardH
    Posts: 482
    What I may do as a compromise is use the sung antiphons in latin from OCO/ARII and sing the psalms in English.

    This is the solution I usually take.
    Thanked by 1PaxTecum
  • GambaGamba
    Posts: 548
    Me too.
    Thanked by 1PaxTecum
  • monasteryliturgistmonasteryliturgist
    Posts: 318
    @PaxTecum Anyone who would like the psalms we have can send a PM with your email. I normally send these files through WETRANSFER as they are heavy... it is the entire psalter!
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  • igneusigneus
    Posts: 394
    it is utterly ridiculous that almost 60 years after the council there are STILL no complete resources for singing the office in ANY language. Not even Latin is complete.

    Indeed. But! Dutch is complete! I know of three different musical settings (which are all three hard to find...). Latin is almost complete; in a parish setting you can sing daily office with Gregorian chant.


    There is not a complete official edition of the Roman antiphonal, but there is at least a complete Latin antiphonal for the Order of Preachers (available here).

    There are some vernacular versions completely or almost completely set to published music, e.g. the German and the Portuguese one - see my bibliography.

    There are vernacular versions more or less completely set to music available online, e.g. the English one by Fr. Chrysogonus Waddell OCSO. Or the (much poorer) Czech one by yours truly.
    Thanked by 2FKulash PaxTecum
  • FKulash
    Posts: 83
    Hi,

    My understanding is that one cannot simply just sing, for example, Vespers as it is written in the modern breviary.

    Why not? Post a quote or a link to what seems to say you can't sing exactly what's in the breviary.

    it is utterly ridiculous that almost 60 years after the council there are STILL no complete resources for singing the office in ANY language.


    There's the English version from Gethsemani Abbey (presumably written by Chrysogonous Wadell) mentioned above, but I don't believe it includes the Office of Readings. It's very faithful to the breviary, and if you don't like their psalm tones is easy to substitute the traditonal 8 Gregorian tones.

    James A Burns published a complete version, including the Office of Readings, in 1975. The texts are almost always slightly altered.

    In German, there's Antiphonale zum Studengebet, in Norwegian Norske Tidebønner and in Swedish Den Svenska Tidegärden These all include Lauds, Daytime Prayer, Vespers and Compline, but not the Office of Readings. It really is a shame that there's not more in English, while there is stuff in Norwegian and Swedish, with fewer than 100,000 Catholic native speakers.

    Thanked by 1PaxTecum
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,372
    One cannot sing what's in the breviary because there's no music for the parts which aren't, say, the orations, and even then that's lacking since you're still stuck with the old translations, the texts of the breviary are still going to be different from the official liturgical books, and so on.

    The fact that the Office of Readings isn't fully set is sort of shameful, because it's supposed to be easier, less burdensome, and more approachable to the faithful than traditional Matins, and while yes, the only Nocturnale Romanum is that of Peter Sandhofe, if you can get your hands on it and are willing to make corrections, nevertheless, they've had fifty years to do this, and they're not even close to finishing; we're now getting farther away from the reform of the breviary than the length of time which had passed between Divino Afflatu and the reform of Pius XII.
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  • smvanroodesmvanroode
    Posts: 1,000
    For the Latin Liturgia Horarum with gregorian chant, there’s Antiphonae et Responsoria (volumes I through V), published by Edizioni Melosantiqua in Verona. The chants follow the 2015 OCO and are restituted by Alberto Turco.

    Its contents can be found at http://www.antiphonale.net/.

    It’s complete, except for the Officium lectionis, but has only the chants, no psalms.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,791
    and while yes, the only Nocturnale Romanum is that of Peter Sandhofe,
    Do you not count the Tilburg one? and this only applies to the Roman Divine Office.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,372
    Which one is that? My understanding is that there is not a complete nocturnale for the Divino Afflatu office up until the 1962 version. In any case, there's neither a Vatican edition, nor a Solesmes edition.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,791
    https://gregobase.selapa.net/source.php?id=57&images=1
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,372
    Ah, yes, this famous handwritten one. It’s more useless than Sandhofe’s — I can barely read the notes — and I don’t think that it was available until recently (if it was, I never heard about it —Gregory DiPippo, of all people, never knew that St Peter’s had their own book based on some digging that I’ve done.).
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  • Jehan_Boutte
    Posts: 268
    the only Nocturnale Romanum is that of Peter Sandhofe

    Hopefully, not for long.
  • Jehan_Boutte
    Posts: 268
    To this day, the only 'complete' Antiphonary for the modern use of the Roman rite is "Les Heures grégoriennes", which has all the offices for all the days of the year; and although it's an excellent ressource, it's not even a complete book, since it does not have the Office of Readings.
  • smcatharine
    Posts: 50
    As nun who sings the entire office every day (mostly in English) I'm confused as why it can't be sung from the Liturgy of the Hours.
    Some communities have music written for the antiphons but most sing it to a psalm tone.
    You don't need music for the orations. You learn to sing it according to the formula. I've never seen them written out with chant. You don't need to sing them, either.
    There are about 3-4 formulae for singing the responsory which are easily adapted to the English text.
    At the present moment the Liturgy of the Hours, for better or for worse, is the approved vernacular text. Thankfully, God's ears are deaf to poor translations.
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen monasteryliturgist GregoryWeber
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Thankfully, God's ears are deaf to poor translations.


    Hmmm. God is deaf to our failings, if we fail with a sincere heart, for He wants us to accept our dependence on Him... but some of those poor translations were, so far as I know, deliberate attempts to strip all sacral language from prayer, and to make multi-faceted beauty, one-dimensional.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw MatthewRoth
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,479
    <off topic>
    CGZ the motivation was to make the prayers immediately comprehensible to a broad segment of the population. I know from comments made to me over the years that many devout people, even among generations brought up on the Penny Catechism, Shakespeare and Douay-Rheims, misunderstood phrases in the routine prayers they used, or avoided using because of the misunderstanding.
    That is not to say that the translators got it right, or even that it was the right approach. I think what we need is what Trent called for - homilies spelling out the texts used at Mass, which does not mean repeating some aspect of the parable, most of us have heard homilies on that parable before!
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Hawkins,

    A rich translation may take a multi-faceted original and render it multi-facetedly. The evidence suggests very strongly that the best-of-intentions argument is not based adequately in fact.
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  • CatherineS
    Posts: 690
    The nuns I spend time with here in Brazil sing from the text-only vernacular LOTH using simple standard set of melodies/tones that they learn by ear, which are easy to pick up and join in singing.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,372
    The people still misunderstand things though! This is what catechesis is for, and by the time that the council rolled around, the US had no excuse: the Confraternity Bible had pushed out the Challoner version for the parts which were finished, which is to say that most of the epistles and gospels of the year (not from the sanctoral, however) came from that revision of the D-R/Challoner text.

    Why shouldn't a sung liturgy be sung all the way through is the better question. This is where the trad liturgy improves entirely on the reformed one in a way that's indisputable: virtually nothing is recited, and it's all done silently (like the Pater Noster at Compline or in the Preces) when there is recitation. (This is why I don't have a problem with not singing the Canon aloud.)

    Yes, the collect tone should be memorized, but it's often written out in trad-land because it's easy to flub if you have to teach yourself. (This is something to leave behind quickly.) That only pertains to the celebrant though; the antiphons need music or markings if you're ever to advance beyond singing recto tono, which is the idea, no? In other words, even if you use a shortened psalm tone for antiphons, you have to know how to sing it… It's also different if you do this every day versus occasionally, which is why I point the psalms and provided the first lines (the problem with respect to my printing needs is that there is often a flex which needs to be given for one or two but not all five psalms, so I just put the music even when the psalms are in the same mode like in Paschaltide in the traditional office).
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen PaxTecum tomjaw
  • fcbfcb
    Posts: 339
    As nun who sings the entire office every day (mostly in English) I'm confused as why it can't be sung from the Liturgy of the Hours.


    I get together every year for five days with a group that reads through sections of the Summa theologiae together. We do Lauds and Vespers together each day, using the music-less Christan Prayer volumes, and sing pretty much everything except the reading and intercessions using psalm tones. We are lucky to have a couple of strong singers who lead the two sides, but other than that it is strictly amateur hour. If we can do it anyone can.
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen chonak GregoryWeber
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,791
    @a_f_hawkins
    CGZ the motivation was to make the prayers immediately comprehensible to a broad segment of the population.

    I think you left out the word superficial. The translation strips away the mystery, the superficial translation, begets a superficial Faith.

    Thanks to Covid we now sing Vespers every Sunday, my 13 year old has been sing Compline from memory for several years, is now setting up the Liber and singing Vespers. I am sure that he is beginning to memorise the Sunday psalms, and can sing all the tones. This is The EF Divine Office in Latin, so if a 13 year old can do it what is wrong with the adults? N.B. The Liber (and our compline books) do not have the English Translation!
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen PaxTecum GregoryWeber
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    so if a 13 year old can do it what is wrong with the adults

    The 13 year old still has storage space left in his brain; in the adults, that space is already taken up with trigonometric functions or French vocabulary that haven't been used since leaving high school. This is also why we can't remember where we put the car keys.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw Andrew_Malton
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Salieri,

    Is that what we mean by "excusing mediocrity"?
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  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    No. Despite my User Name, I have no excuses for mediocrity (or mediocrities); I think that it's just life. I have noticed the same phenomenon in my choir: the younger people in my choir (middle/high school age and under) can learn their parts for a complete Haydn Missa Brevis in one rehearsal, while the older folks are still working on remembering the correct order of the solfege syllables. I, creeping closer and closer to middle age, can remember the telephone number we had when I was 5 and the Pythagorean Theorem, but I can't remember what I had for breakfast.
    Thanked by 3tomjaw mattebery bhcordova
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