It was requested for presentation at the Colloquium this year.

Steve, I was singing off of the Laon variant.

(Just kidding. In reality, what happened is that I was a little flat on that note. I'm told it happens to the best of them...)

So, anyone else stunned that this is only 4 decades too late?

Are threefold Kyries back officially now? I hope so.

Chonak, I think it's always been permitted to sing a threefold (or, rather, a ninefold) Kyrie when its musical form requires it. For example, an AAA BBB AAA' form may be sung as AA BB AA' (or even AA), and an AAA BBB CCC' form may be sung as AA BB CC' (or CC). An ABC DEF GHI form such as this one by Richard Rice cannot be sung as a sixfold chant without doing harm to its musical form. Since it is a fairly brief setting compared to some sixfold polyphony or even some of the more melismatic chants, I don't think anyone can argue that this chant has unnecessary repetitions or that it would unduly prolong the rite.

Newly composed chants such as this (and those in the St. Meinrad Kyriale), raise an interesting question of interpretation. When I see Solesmes notation, I generally know when the transcription indicates a long note (as opposed to a light note) in the manuscripts and can sing them as such. I am free to sing keeping in mind the syllable as the basic unit of duration, rather than an ictic pulse in groups of two and three. However, it is clear that Richard Rice is writing with a nod to the Solesmes method, from his use of the rhythmic signs associated with that school. We do not have the opportunity to ask the Gregorian composer(s) about their chant, and we can only speculate (through no small amount of scholarship) what the earliest notation of their works intends to communicate to the performer. In the case of new chant compositions, it is no mystery, at least to the composer, what his intention is. I wonder, however -- and perhaps Richard can respond -- if composers of new chants are open to various interpretations of their work, or if they would (given the choice) insist on a certain reading. If for no other reason, this would allow me to use a consistent approach with my choir, rather than changing the rules from piece to piece. This wouldn't be a problem for me, or for many professional chanters, but it could be a real challenge for an amateur schola to turn "the method" on and off.

That having been said, these are beautiful, and I (obviously) want to use them!

Re: Anglicae / Angelicae, isn't it fascinating how the mind "corrects" what we see to what is familiar to us? In this case, that correction turned out to be wrong, but often we need to rely on this very tendency. This is an idea I've been trying to express lately when talking about the St. Gall manuscripts in particular. That one scribe explicitly uses a long symbol where another uses the corresponding light symbol does not necessarily indicate contrary practice. When one has the chant mostly memorized, you just know what it is supposed to say. For as many cases where two identical symbols are to be sung differently, there are those where two different symbols are to be sung in the same way.

And, of course, these settings are angelic!

Well, Gregory the Great, when seeing some slave boys in the marketplace, famously answered on being told that they were Angles, that they were indeed not Angli but Angeli. (I'm sure everyone here has heard this many times.)