I agree about VIII.

I personally keep Masses intact.

Our rotation:

1 on Sundays of Easter (including the vigil and then Pentecost if the Mass isn’t polyphonic; I’d personally rather do II on that day but not my call).

IV on major feasts of Our Lord other than Christmas through the Epiphany and of the Apostles, on June 24.

VIII from Christmas through the Epiphany, on Trinity and the following two Sundays if it’s chant and not polyphony and when the pastor feels like we need to do it (I’d rather do IX but oh well)

IX on feasts of the BVM (would also recommend X).


XI on Sundays of the year (here we make the problem of lots of Mass XI after Pentecost go away by switching to Mass XVIII for the gesima Sundays…and I’d like to work in XII but again, not my call)

XVII for Advent and Lent plus the gesimas (Kyrie in mode VI for Advent, in mode I from Septuagesima onward).

The problem with the mournful thing is that he’s not wrong, but people need to understand modality and that modes are not limited to one time of the year or kind of feast (with the caveat that mode VI is pretty rare in some parts of the year and in some parts of the repertoire because it’s often too devout and therefore happy but can also be mournful, like in the liturgies of the Dead). The reason to not like Jubilate Deo is that the Kyrie for green ferias, and the Sanctus and Agnus are for penitential weekdays. The combination is not really conducive to Sundays at all.

Yeah. But actually singing Mass VIII with a congregation can be another story. We do it by force of habit and not necessarily because it’s the best intro to a Gregorian ordinary.

And really, this is the advantage of working with people who start singing chant without ever being in a choir otherwise. (Yes. I know that Mocquereau was comfortable with such transcriptions, but they’re training wheels that need to come off quickly.)

Kyrie Xl

XI or IX; the Gloria of IX has quite the range but I still find it easier than VIII in some ways (there is a jerky start and stop between double bars of VIII). My solution to both is alternatim, but if you can start with women at “Et in terra” for IX, you solve the range question.

Maybe IV; the Gloria of IV is less forgiving at the quilismas but the motif is repetitive, and its range is tighter. XI has the benefit of being used by far on the most Sundays, and its Gloria is quite repetitive also.

People with musical knowledge have other problems which aren’t the ones that volunteers with no or little musical training bring, and there comes a point when it comes to chant where I don’t want to deal with those problems, frankly. On the extreme end, Fr. Mageira of the FSSP, rather infamously in the trad circles in which I have run, was told to be quiet during his seminary years, because he could shut off his operatic voice but was still the voice into which everyone keyed and behind which everyone sang in terms of diminishing their own volume.

Square notation may be an accident of history. But it’s the official notation and while it is imperfect, it communicates certain things obscured or obliterated by modern notation — this is so widely acknowledged that I find myself bewildered by the suggestion that one should just go ahead and hand out modern notation instead of teaching people how to read Gregorian notation from the outset.

Now, I happen to find certain pitch ranges consistently comfortable for a given chant or even a mode (provided that a chant of the authentic mode doesn’t extend too far into the upper fourth which happens in the Mass propers especially). But chant shouldn’t be given to singers with a key signature, lest people fall too far into this association.
Fontgombault’s style doesn’t even give major or minor to the organist, just the number of sharps or flats, although the written-in pitch of the first note determines the predominant key once you work back to the final of the mode; this is important. Mode VII with A as the dominant of the psalms has one sharp. But it’s not G major. It’s D with a C natural.

People chanting should be fluent in square notation just as much as they need to be able to read modern notation. Happily, I think that my point still stands even if you turn to polyphony (IOW I’m not inconsistent holding that “you need to learn to read chant notation, but modern notation is OK for polyphony”.)

People chanting should be fluent in square notation just as much as they need to be able to read modern notation.

That makes a lot of music sense. We should learn both forms of notation.

In my opinion, the best way to give chant pride of place is to teach Gregorian ordinaries. I am in a Newman Center where most students come with very little experience with chant.
I have found it successful to teach in this sequence:

Kyrie XVI
Kyrie XI

Sanctus XVIII
Sanctus XI

Agnus XVIII
Agnus VIII

I do not use Sanctus VIII because the phrases are too long for the congregation. It always ends up really messy with weird breaths. Same with Kyrie VIII. Mass XI has shorter phrases and is more doable for amateur singers.

In the future, we are teaching Gloria VIII and (hopefully) Credo I ICEL. Movements from Mass XVII are also on my list, but I really am going to wait until the congregation is strong on the ones we are doing.

If they sing it with excellence, more power to ye. That has not been my experience.