Various alternatives antiphons in the Roman Missal.
  • awilliamsawilliams
    Posts: 101
    I thought I should introduce myself since this is my first post (though not nearly my first time on this forum).
    Hello, I am Aaron -- Seminarian and Amateur Organist/Composer.

    I have been looking for the answer to this question for several months and have been completely fruitless.

    Are there historic ("official") melodies for the many alternative antiphon options in the English Missal. For example, under the Sprinkling Rite there appears the normal Asperges Me and Vidi Aquam options but there are several other options that were not available prior to the council so they don't appear in the Liber, nor are they in the graduale. I saw in my copy of the Vatican II hymnal that Fr. Weber composed a chant setting for one the non-Eastertide options. Did he have any original source or was it a new composition? If so, has he (or anyone else) done a chant setting of the rest of them?

    I ask because several months ago when I received my new missal I began flipping and saw these antiphons. I have since composed melodies for each of the English Texts but I feel like they are just not up to par and I would like to see if there was a historic melody or if others here have seen or composed melodies for these alternatives.

    Thanks.
    -Aaron
  • smvanroodesmvanroode
    Posts: 1,000
    Next to the Vidi aquam and Asperges me, only the antiphon Fontes et omnia has a genuine Gregorian melody: see Graduale Simplex, 150 and 449, or Antiphonale Monasticum I, 308.

    All other antiphons from the Missale Romanum are new text compositions with no corresponding chant in the corpus of Gregorian chant.
  • awilliamsawilliams
    Posts: 101
    Thanks. I didn't even think about looking in the Simplex. I imagined that if it wasn't in the Graduale it wouldn't be in the Simplex.

    I went through and re-wrote that one. If only the others existed.
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