Antiphons in the Liber Usualis
  • mjballoumjballou
    Posts: 994
    Now that the Colloquium is over, I have a question to pose. In the Liber, I've noted that the antiphons in the office are presented in a one or two word "formula" before the psalm and then the full antiphon follows the psalm. Was the a space-saving convention or did this represent some practice in which the antiphon was only sung in full after the psalm with just a cue preceding?

    I've asked a couple of folks and they were puzzled as well. An examination of the rubrics for the office notes very firmly that the antiphons are always said _entire_, before as well as after the psalms and canticles at all the Hours. This emphatic statement makes me wonder if this was a practice at an earlier date. Of course, I always follow the rubrics.

    I shall now wait quietly for an answer from a musicologist. Perhaps someone arriving home from the Colloquium, full of Morales and Monteverdi, to find a special request for "Here I am, Lord" next Sunday.
  • Jeffrey MorseJeffrey Morse
    Posts: 203
    There was a rather ancient tradition of only singing the full antiphon before and after the psalm on the feasts where this was required called "doubling" or "duplex"which existed until 1960 I believe, and the calendar reform of a re-classification of feasts to simply things. So in the old system a First-Class feast would be labeled "Duplex I" and the antiphons would be sung in their entirety both before and after each psalm. Lesser feasts and ferias required only that the antiphon be sung in its entirety at the end of the psalm and before the psalm just the snippet you see before the psalm. I imagine that to change this in the Liber Usualis would have required a resetting and would have been costly. However, in the later editions of the Liber the new rules are given in the preface.
  • mjballoumjballou
    Posts: 994
    Thank you, Jeffrey. I rather suspected something from the very explicit rules in the preface. Imagine the moaning that must have gone up in the choirs when that "snippet" was replaced with the full antiphon. "But Fr. Abbot, we'll never get the pole beans planted if we have to sing that much." Something along the lines of the whinging brought on with the least mention of propers in many parishes.
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