Let me offer my experience with these:

I have just completed my first year as director at a parish in transition from the status quo (Gather Hymnal, large adult choir, a "contemporary group", various ensembles, etc.--a very 'successful' program, in a sense, historically) to the sacred. Through the past year every Mass ("contemporary group included") has sung an Introit and Communion proper, and a catechetical framework has been established at the parish for further incorporation of authentic sacred music. Almost everyone began singing psalm tone propers, and the Adult Choir eventually began singing Fr. Kelly's communion antiphons with verses, which are done routinely now. This choir has sung maybe 3 of his introits successfully in this time (although there have been many less than prayerful botched attempts!). My intermediate-and-growing schola sings some of the simpler Gregorian propers in liturgy, and has sung Fr. Kelly's settings successfully (i.e. well, beautifully, confidently) about 75% of the time. However, with the demands of preparing propers every single week the results were not always so good.

The first thing that I have learned is that it is better to start with something that the singers can sing well, and it will be a long time before I have a parish schola that can regularly sing Gregorian propers, or English "adaptations" well. This does not even get into the issue of dealing a parish that has a phobia of Latin.

I have also worked with many music directors in my diocese who have no concept of propers, but have a desire to begin singing more music in the "chant style". Many are well trained musicians, but as usual, are pretty much without any training in chant whatsoever. Many people at the "entryway" never cross the threshold. A very simple style of antiphons are very attractive to people like this. It can be a way to get them from where they are at to moving toward the ideal.

My experience in introducing sacred music into a place where it virtually had never before existed has been a very enlightening experience. One that leaves me wanting to do simple settings well (at first), rather than more elaborate settings poorly. I imagine that many many parishes are in and soon will be in a similar position. It seems that a complete set of "simplex" antiphons would be most useful for those to whom the elaborate style of the Graduale is inaccessible.

P.S. I love the notation of these. For those who know something about paleography and the semiological approach, there is enough information to render a truly nuanced performance. You do not even need to be able to read the ancient neumes to understand the additional information given in this modern (post-modern?) notation. For those who do not, it is easy to ignore the details and sing it "straight," in a more or less classical Solesmes style.

By the way, my experience with these antiphons stated above speaks to choirs/schola only singing propers. There has been no attempt to make this congregational singing of processional propers. We have been coupling them with hymns for now.

@incantu: I just have to respectfully disagree with you on this statement:

"If you can read (most choirs can to some degree, or should be able to learn), then there is very little difference between the simple and the elaborate."

I can see this if elaborate chants are sung essentially like slow syllabic chant, only words are more sparse. In this scenario, one could be singing a 91 note melisma or the simplest syllabic chant and there would be very little noticeable difference between the two, except that there are fewer syllable changes. To my understanding, there is a very substantial interpretive difference between singing a syllabic chant and an elaborate chant. Both can be sung in a way that is founded on the natural declamation of the text. One is quite simple and can be sung by nearly anyone and one is in a very ornate vocal style, which my parish adult choir will probably never possess. This is why, to my understanding, the (highly trained and rather small) schola cantorum has historically sung the proper of the Mass.

So I suppose the way that chant is sung is a pretty large determining factor here.

We sing the Propers in Latin from the Graduale for both OF and EF, so my comment isn't going to come from experience in using the vernacular. I would like to say, though, that this graduated approach makes a great deal of intuitive sense.

The reason is simple: in the High Mass EF, it's all or nothing. That's a very high bar and thus makes it easy to shrug it away.

In the OF, we have the reality of having to reconstruct a sacred musical culture from scratch, and from a chaotic, babel-like scratch. We have to make straight the path. Graduated propers in the vernacular make tactical sense because they take away the following objections: 1) chant is too hard, and 2) we don't understand it. Plus, it indicates very strongly that sacred musical culture is still alive and kicking, creating new things within the tradition (nova et vetera). Thus the objection that "chant is a throwback" is rendered void.

All that out of the way, I like these settings, especially the first. English tends to be short on long vowels and heavy on consonants. It sounds closer to German (and is, in fact) than Latin and Italian. The use of articles also injects a lot of short, unaccented syllables into the mix. Consequently, English chant sounds best when it's syllabic. In English, long melismas just sound a bit forced.

But maybe that's a good thing. Sounding forced means that the music will be foregrounded a bit more, it will be noticed as an "elaborate moment" as such. Maybe we want that kind of bashing over the head ("this is Christ's name now, it's important!"). But maybe that sort of melismatic setting should be reserved for Holy Week, or something. I guess the point here is that for everyday, syllabic settings are best. Melismas and a lot of multiple-neume setting should be handled sparingly, for very deliberate effect. Otherwise, it just gets lost, or worse, sounds forced, weird, stilted.

Concretely, then, the porrectus on "more" (Resurrexi, above) sounds unnecessary to me, but the melisma on "wisdom" sounds perfect.

Oh, and "difficulty" is a complex thing. More notes does not always mean more difficult (they could all be step-wise). More difficulty = hard skips, more neume shapes, lots of repercussions, long melismas, modes 3 and 4 in general.

Incantu-- Of course you are right, I did ask for opinions and feedback, and yours is much appreciated.

Your statement that I critiqued above seemed to negate the need for anything between a psalm tone and a Graduale proper, though, which is why I wanted to break it down a bit more. Thank you for the further clarification, and for sharing your experience in singing propers, on various levels, different groups of people, etc. All of this experience is very helpful in future projects that are trying to serve the needs of the Church. Thanks for sharing it!

The moderate seems to be along the lines of what he has done so far, and those work fairly well for our choir when we use them (we usually default to Fr. Samuel Weber's settings) 6-8 times a year. I normally have the whole choir sing these together; they have a good, balanced sound for 30 or so voices. Occasionally, I will split the men and ladies up if it seems to be a setting that is more idiomatic for the respective ranges.

The more difficult settings would be problematic for me. I like them, but I have found that people who often say they don't like Gregorian settings because they are in Latin have the same reaction to less-syllabic settings in English. It often betrays the fact that they just don't like the chant, period. I'm not saying they're right, but in my position, those voices are considered, for better or worse.

Really, though, I think all of them are very accessible for most decent choirs. As with so many things, it depends on the clergy's support...

Only our cantors and choir is attempting to sing the Propers. I don't see that the congregation could ever be expected to do so, even at the most simple level. I see it that the ideal for congregational singing are Antiphons, Psalm tones, Hymns and Ordinaries.

I don't think there's ever been a tradition anywhere of the congregation singing all the propers. Orthodox congregations just know a few throughout the year: ones on special holy days, like the Exaltation of the Cross, Holy Theophany, or Pascha. Many congregations can sing the Paschal troparion in several languages, too, which is neat. But most propers are rightly delegated to the choir and cantors... congregations do best at stuff they hear all the time; asking them to learn something new every week is just too much.