Newly composed melismatic verses for Gospel Acclamations
  • m_r_taylor
    Posts: 328
    Attached are a few of my recent Gospel Acclamations. They are pretty quick work, not meant to be strictly Gregorian in style (though that is generally what I'm inspired by), and you might notice these get more and more melismatic as time goes by.

    I would want to revise/rewrite (some are quite awkward), engrave with GABC into chant notation, and perhaps put these into a single larger PDF without the particular alleluia I am using so that one could sing them alongside any number of Alleluia refrains.

    Assuming I continue to get these done, what would be the best way to format them in order to be useful for other music directors? Pending eventual revision and completion, I also would love to work with someone with more typographical experience to format nicely.

    Please let me know if you have any impressions or feedback.

    If I do a second go-round, I might try to make derivatives of the GR when the text happens to intersect with the Gospel Acclamation.

    The current refrain is found in the Anglican Use Gradual. Soon I'll change it up, to be replaced, I hope, with a newly composed Alleluia of the same form: onefold, with mini-jubilus, but in a different mode.

    -Michael
    Michael Taylor - recent Gospel verses.pdf
    403K
    Thanked by 3M. Jackson Osborn CHGiffen JacobFlaherty
  • m_r_taylor
    Posts: 328
    GABC and chant notation PDF for this upcoming Sunday's alleluia - OT 28 B, the last on the above collection. Notes have been revised.

    %%
    name:Alleluia verse OT 28 B;
    supertitle:Alleluia verse;
    title:;
    subtitle:OT 28 B;
    text-left:;
    text-right:M.R.T.;
    centering-scheme: english;
    %%
    (c4)Bles-(cg)sed(gg) are(f) the(g) poor(ixijihig.) in(g) spi-(fe/fgf)rit;(f.e.)(;) for(d) theirs(dc) is(d) the(f) king-(fghf.efg)dom(d_)(,) of(d) heav-(d!fg/h./gh/jh!jkiyijih_g)en.(g.) (::)
    Alleluia verse OT 28 B.pdf
    10K
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen ServiamScores
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,912
    Another proof that square notes are actually easier to read!
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,116
    They may take up less visual space, but are not necessarily easier to read....
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,912
    I should qualify: I find them difficult to play from sometimes. But when it comes to visually identifying intervals, the denser arrangement of the notes makes it easier, IMHO. Modern stemless transcriptions tend to be too spaced out, which makes parsing the intervals and keeping flow harder—at least for me. It took me a good many years to truly become comfortable with square notes, but once I did, I came to prefer them in many-to-most circumstances for this particular type of singing. Another proof of this is the new divine office hymnal. I find the gregorian melodies very difficult to sing in that book. There's something about how my brain processes chant (verses "normal" hymnody) that just makes it easier to comprehend in square notes.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,116
    I certainly read chant notation, but as a pew singer, singing from a program (or similar) with limited space, I very strongly prefer modern notation - when chant notation is reduced in size (e.g., screen capping from the Liber, pasting into eventual PDF'd worship aid), its details suffer in the process and the pew singer has to look too closely at it, which is a bad posture for singing. (Congregational singing of chant is normally devoid of the finer points of chant interpretation.)
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,367
    Yeah, but you can read music, no? A lot of people can't, and our people may be unusual, but they've gotten quite adept at figuring out Vespers and the Ordinary with square notation, even for things which they've never seen before. For example, we finally put out a booklet for the Requiem so that they know the postures and the ferial tone of the preface. Boom, like magic, they caught on to the ferial tone.

    They mostly can handle hymns too, but those also get a longer introduction on the organ of course!

    TBH, if we use eighth notes, I prefer stemmed notes and then beamed for the clivis etc. as in the Solesmes-ish tradition for accompaniment books: Potiron, Portier…I believe that they just followed the Liber Usualis in modern notation actually… The Saint Andrew missal uses those notes too. I'd prefer square notes, of course, but I take what I can get.

    That said, I don't like a quarter with a marcato for the pressus. It should be tied eighths (Portier uses a dotted line to indicate repercussion for those who do this, which is wise). Robert Carroll criticizes this in the chironomy book, and he's right. I always change it if I'm copying something, and I only use the eighth notes in doing my own transcription. Quarter notes are used only for the dot.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,116
    My only ask is, if chant notation other than psalm tones and similar plainsong is going to be used in worship aids, that it be reproduced in a generous size/space, as it were. My experience is that it too often is not. The choir may know the settings enough to be virtually off-book, but fewer pew singers would be.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,478
    Modern stemless transcriptions tend to be too spaced out
    I found ICEL's presentation of the Exsultet here to be just right, as a cantor. I have only been called on for that English version, but the 1970 missal Latin looks less helpful I think.
    Thanked by 1Liam
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