What amazes me about the SEP is their versatility. They can be sung by choir; by soloist; cantor on verse, choir on antiphon; alternatim men/women; the psalm sung by the congregation(!); in some communities, it may even be possible to teach the congregation certain important antiphons. Musically they can be sung in unison, octaves, with improvised organ accompaniment, with vocal/instrumental drone, with percussive instruments, etc. The melodies are even worthy of a skilled organist improvising upon them.

But what if we sang the verses... in parts? Believe it or not, I am not copycatting Adam's extant work; rather, last Friday I was playing around with the tones and wrote the attached harmonization of Tone I, as found in the SEP. It was something of a keyboard harmonization, using the "fauxbourdon" style (as I understand it) with the melody in the tenor, and I later added a rather dissonant soprano part. It's true, this is for a choir of good ears, but I think this would rather nicely complement a unison/octave singing of the antiphon. I'd written more using a similar method, but was not as pleased with the results as I am with Tone I.

A few years ago, I embarked on writing out English renditions of introits that are easy to sing, and posted them online. I didn't find much musical worth in them, but hoped that some may find them useful for parishes which "hate Latin". I also hoped someone better trained would write better versions of these chants. Three years after I wrote my first English adaptation of the Ascension Introit, the excellent Simple English Propers was released. So you're all welcome for it. Hopefully my own feeble efforts with the psalm tones will inspire others to create similar projects of higher quality.