What accompaniments to the Missal Chants do you use?
  • tandrews
    Posts: 243
    The OCP one is lame. The SMH 4th ed. is okay. I've tried harmonizing it myself but it's not great. Are there others that you use?

    I'm asking because our area will be switching to Missal chants for Advent and I'm trying to prepare the accompanists accordingly.
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 3,393
    I suppose this doesn't really help you, but I improvise all of mine (although for the chants we do often they are more/less 'fixed' at this point). It's on my bucket list to write them out one day... but I've never had the need, as it were, although I get requests regularly. The only time I use a written out accompaniment is if there are modal shifts that make harmonizing them unusually difficult. (I'll also note that I do not fret about harmonizing according to modal theory. I do what sounds beautiful to my ear. As one person put it to me recently, "the moment you start 'harmonizing' chant modal theory goes out the window anyway; chant is fundamentally monophonic.") The whole of the NOH is available over at CCW, so you always have a starting point there, but horror-of-horrors: I don't care for those accompaniments at all.
  • Brian Michael Page
    Posts: 158
    I improvise mine as well. I have a few chant hymns that I've written accompaniments to (e.g., "Adoro Te", "Ubi Caritas"), but I improvise just about all of the chant Mass settings (Latin - namely Masses VIII, XVII and XVIII - and English - ICEL).
    BMP
    Thanked by 1ServiamScores
  • colinl
    Posts: 1
    I used the ICEL-provided accompaniments for a while but they're quite bland. I use the NOH now and just adapt it to the English in my head.
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