I strongly disagree that pointing is useless. I also think that you should have pointing as in the Liber or no pointing at all. Other systems are idiosyncratic and useless to people who understand chant (from the Liber), and we should know how to use actual books if we ever do find ourselves with usable books instead of more convenient abridged editions or excerpts.

My experience is that you wind up with very syllabic and wooden psalmody if you typeset all of the verses punctum by punctum, syllable by syllable as is possible with the Psalm Tone Tool on Ben Bloomfield’s website.

Also, printing every note for the psalms would just be a massive book, and my edition on letter paper with pointed psalms in two columns already runs to over eighty pages. I don’t even have an English translation paired with the Latin. So if money is no object, do what you want, but something’s gotta give.

Plus, since a significant number of psalms are paired with mode 8 antiphons, then I hope that they can handle pointing. There is no substitute for a more common problem for those without much experience of the sung office: moving through the modes rapidly. Tenebrae is gentler than Vespers of feasts from the Middle Ages that go 1-2-3-4-5 in short order, but it still has its moments…

No need for your editorial comments on a public forum then!

That’s all well and good, but if learning to sing the psalms is not worth doing, and if they can’t learn to do it, then what are we even doing?

Thanks, GerardH. I was aware of the Bloomfield propers project - but was really asking whether anyone else had done this yet in their own parish context.

I have witnessed, too many times, the absurdity of a group of singers making an absolute hash of the psalms because they are lucky if they sing to pointed editions once or twice a year. It is neither musical nor edifying.

(a bit off topic from what is being asked here, but on the topic of pointing....)

I've found, with my choirs, that when everything is notated, the singers have a tendency to get bigger down by all the notes, whether they are trying to or not.

It wasn't hard teaching them pointing techniques in both English and Latin chant, and, as the music almost completely gives way to the text, it helps them to understand that text is king.

Ideally, you should be able to give a choir notated psalms or pointed psalms, and they should feel comfortable both ways.

Good! Here are Matins and Lauds for Easter Saturday. Just one warning - these have not been battle tested, so there may be mistakes. We were going to sing them one year, but "political " considerations cancelled Tenebrae.