Seasonal Psalm Tones? - Lent, Easter
  • probe
    Posts: 94
    Currently, about once every five weeks, I chant the Responsorial Psalm (which otherwise is simply read) and I find the Bévenot Tone 1 easy for English text. I am now wondering if the eight Gregorian psalm tones are applicable at any time, or are there some suited to penitential seasons like Advent and Lent, or joyful times like Easter? I remember from a previous discussion that one caution is that they are designed for Latin stress patterns and are hard to adapt to the random stresses of English. In particular, whichever I pick has to be easy enough to fashion a phrase for the Response to be heard by the (largely non-singing) congregation once or twice and then taken up in the response to the psalm verses.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,536
    FWIW, I've never heard of the Gregorian tones having a *seasonal* character. Even the Tonus Peregrinus, perhaps casually associated by some people with penitential texts, is paired with non-penitential texts.
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  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,350
    The tonus peregrinus is penitential because of its composition and usage by certain composers for falsobordone settings. But it’s regularly used with ps 113 on Sundays (Mondays for the Benedictines) and then in certain offices of feasts with the Benedicite or psalm 112.

    The tones don’t have a seasonal or festive or penitential character per se. The same tone 2 used for the Benedictus of the office of the dead and the burial rite is used again with the Magnificat of the Circumcision (this is where it’s helpful to not conflate tone and mode: I would agree that the Ego sum is from a branch of the family that is more mournful than the Magnum haereditatis). Tone 8 shows up at both Tenebrae and on feasts.

    Tone 8 probably works best in English if one must use the vernacular, but beware of monosyllabic endings especially at the mediant.
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  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,945
    We use seasonal Gospel Acclamations, but in general I (too) think the tones are better matched to the appointed Psalm. A model for making English Responsorial Psalms out of Gregorian tones is Richard Crocker's Gradual Psalms and The Plainsong Psalter. While free to preview, Arlene Oost-Zinner's The Parish Book of Psalms adopts a seasonal plan and a more cumbersome unpointed layout.
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