Tenebrae Rubrics (pre-1955)
  • liampmcdonough
    Posts: 331
    Can someone point me to where the rubrics are laid out for this? In particular, where is does the candle hearse go; in the center, on the epistle side, up close to the altar, in the crossing, something else? Does it have to be inside the communion rail? What if the choir is "in choir" outside the rail in the crossing? Or is that not allowed? If all cantors are lay people, can you use the ambo for readings, or only a lectern? Where is the lectern in relation to the candle hearse? Does the lectern face the congregants or the altar? If the lectern is in the center do you bow to the altar every time you approach it? Is the lectern used only for readings, and responses and psalms and antiphons all done in choir? If responses sung polyphonically, do you move closer together in the center, or stay in choir (especially if "in choir" is too widely spaced)?

    Thanks!
  • NoahLovinsNoahLovins
    Posts: 6
    Fortescue
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,946
    1930 edition here,https://archive.org/details/ceremoniesofroma0000unse/page/302/mode/2up
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,440
    Well, no, not Fortescue.

    And a crumb of context would help but:

    The hearse goes (here anyway) towards the epistle side. It would not go on the gospel side. The lectern is in the middle facing the altar.

    The lectern faces the altar. (This one would have been found on any number of streams or Google Images…)

    if you have to choose, put the hearse inside the rail and the lectern outside the gate. It’s easier.

    If you have a mixed choir they have to be outside (unless this is English and Ordinariate in which case I know that this isn’t followed but…)

    You genuflect to the altar. On Thursday only you could also follow the rubrics for saluting the sides of the choir but that is overkill if you’re here asking these question so late.

    Tenebrae is not a solemn office and so the antiphons etc. are intoned in place. The responsories may be sung in a circle. I don’t really think that anyone envisioned a mixed choir with true antiphonal singing but so long as you’re outside the rail in a TLM community anyway it wouldn’t matter (but I would personally refrain from singing in the middle even in front of the rail; the far left or right of the crossing or even in front of the first pew some distance from the rail is great for this circumstance)
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