It is good to sing the entrance antiphon: you have the right idea.

There are no proscribed tones, at least. The organ can certainly intone a few notes of the antiphon before the Cantor starts.

If you are doing this for true first time and with no aids except the mentioned instructions, then I'd say find a tone that works well for your text and use that. Keep it simple. Reuse a tone when it's familiar. Practice in advance. Mark up the text or write it out under the notes for practice and performance.

More commonly the antiphon has a tune of its own, and the chant tones are formulas for psalm verses between repetitions of the antiphon. You might hear this suggested instead.

Expect stumbling blocks.

So you foresee no processional hymn? But what happens now is that there's a hymn (e.g. from OCP) followed by the antiphon read out by the celebrant? And so you would replace both with the chanted antiphon?

If so, then the faithful would not sing until the Lord Have Mercy or even the Glory To God. That may be a stumbling block...

I would pick the tone based on the mode. Whatever mode the original chant is in, I would use the same one for the tone. Ex: 4th Sunday of Lent Introit is in Mode 5, so use the Mode 5 tone from Meinrad on the 4th Sunday of Lent.

Nathan, all I have to go on is the OCP Heritage Missal which has three or four lines of text and no music or modes. It is the general missal that all the congregation has. I do have the Respond and Acclaim book for the weekly Responsorial Psalm and Gospel Acclamation settings. I happened to notice the Chant tones on page 57 and got curious about them. This is an idea of my own and I am just a fairly experienced, but volunteer, cantor. The organist really has the responsibility to speak to Father about any changes, but I was curious as to how I would go about it, if I were to volunteer that I could chant the entrance antiphon. The organist probably has more information in the Missal or Gradual. This is beyond my expertise I see.

Andrew, when we resumed singing after covid, we stopped singing any processional hymn so the celebrant enters from the sacristy, goes about 25' to the altar and reads the antiphon. The first singing is usually the "Lord have mercy" chant and response, and then the Gloria follows shortly thereafter. Of course, there is no Gloria during Advent and Lent. When we first resumed having any singing, the first sung part of the Mass was the Responsorial Psalm. At present, the organist plays several verses of a hymn prior to Mass and eventuallythe sacristy bell rings as the celebrant enters and the organist improvises a quick but sensible exit from the music. He is really skillful at stretching/deleting musical phrases to make the timing work out.

My sense is that Father would like to phase out the "4 hymn sandwich." He also reads the communion antiphon before he leaves the altar to begin distribution of the Eucharist.

The Lalemant propers are indeed pre-arranged for just this purpose. Not the Meinrad tones, mind you. Alas, however, the Lalemant propers are not in an approved translation. Rightly or wrongly that's another possible stumbling block.

Carol, thanks for the explanation. I do think it would be best to continue using the text in the missal you have, so that the proposed change is small. I think also that since the faithful at this Mass have become used to not singing at the entrance, but singing the Lord Have Mercy, that that would be good to keep as well, for the time being.

The Cantor's entrance chant would then accompany the celebrant’s ten paces of procession to the altar.

I think that using the same text as Father has already been reading would be preferable to Father. What IS a joy to me is the way the congregation sings the Mass parts very well. Overall, I guess I am on the right track with the entrance antiphon and think I will try to master the Lenten ones using the Meinrad tones before I speak to the organist.

Regarding approval: the translations in Lalemant of the psalm verses are from the Grail, which (I believe) are approved for liturgical use in the United States at least.

However the translations of the antiphons in Lalemant are from Solesmes’s Gregorian Missal, and so 1/ are translations of the Gradual (singing) antiphons, not of the Missal (reading) antiphons, and 2/ even where t he Gradual and the Missal agree on Latin, Solesmes’ and the English official Missal’s are not the same in translation (as observed by Carol above).

That's not at all to say there's something wrong with Solesmes’ translations. Also their books have the imprimatur, for what that's worth -- as Lalemant's introduction itself says. But that's not the same as “approved for liturgical use”.

Does it matter? Well, not hugely: but a very careful priest might object, and it makes it slightly harder to press the case for using them, because you can't quite say, Well Father we’re just going to chant the text right out of the Missal.

I am not trained in chant notation, but the organ accompaniments with modern notation could solve two problems. I could sing with organ accompaniment which would be wonderful, as I am very timid on unaccompanied chanting. Funny story, many years ago the pastor sent over a fuzzy copy of Tenebrae and asked me to sing one of the Lamentations. This was way before YouTube. To learn it, I just pretended there was another line of the staff and, since the notes were mostly single notes or double, I did the best I could. Thank you all for your assistance.

Carol: let me preface my comments by saying that you should start doing this whenever possible. But, I noticed you said you have chanted the Hosanna to the Son of David on Palm Sunday before. So if you expect potential resistance, maybe you could start this new practice on Palm Sunday rather than at the start of Lent, and then continue through Easter, as "something special and joyful that we do for the Easter season". And then once people are used to it, keep going from there. One thing I worry about with adding chant things for Lent is that people who have not had exposure to chant may associate chant with sad/penitential.
In any case, I hope your parish appreciates the thought you are giving to this!

The last couple of years we have been having unaccompanied chant as Father enters, but it was not the entrance antiphon. In the past I have sung the refrain of "Attende Domine" unaccompanied a few of the Sundays and "Miserere Domine" a few others and "Hosanna to the Son of David" for Palm Sunday in English. Then Father reads the Entrance Antiphon when he reaches the altar. I don't think there would be resistance to having a sung antiphon. Actually,it seems to me that he would welcome the Entrance Antiphon chanted, but we have never attempted to sing it. I think it is just that no one has done it this way in our parish before, but I think we CAN do it. There are two versions of the Entrance antiphon for the First Sunday of Lent with text that matches the OCP missal's antiphon. In Fr. Webers settings, suggested above, I see two settings of the same words and I see the second setting for Lent one Entrance Antiphon is less ornamental than the first. I know I could sing that.

Carol, taking into account your situation, I am recommending here some of the easiest settings that will match the texts in your heritage missal.

See this blog I wrote on the English proper chants by Ainslie https://www.antiphonrenewal.com/post/a-user-friendly-collection-of-chanted-antiphons

And these https://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/uploads/FileUpload/23/bc990eb4d2d72744a65f217375bc3a.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3jcZDdNK4SrYrkbXKK9gH_BCk2kQ3aO4ujhIFiuVTcCg2fX_Ji9QrUBhk

From the front matter:

Gratis permission is granted to Peter R Johnson to post to the Internet digital files of musical settings of the Revised Grail Psalms. These digital files may be distributed to, and downloaded by, the general public for use within their religious communities, provided no remuneration is exchanged for this use.

If I remember right, the Lalemant Propers were approved by the local bishop in the diocese where they were published. At the time, USCCB's liturgy committee was not reviewing music publications, but treated the approval by the local bishop as sufficient to allow for usage anywhere in the country. That was some years ago, and the committee's current staff isn't following that policy any more, but (since old approvals remain valid) the old implicit approval seems enough to make them lawful for use.