Thanks! I definately agree with you on the Tu Mandasti. It's particularly close to my heart. Just finished choir practice on it!

Thanks for this thread--it gives me a chance to raise a question I've wondered about for a long time.

Look at the English adaptation of Si Ambulavero. It's set to the mode 2 psalm tone, while the chant from the Graduale uses mode 8. Any ideas on the rationale for changing the mode? The Fr. Rossini psalm tone propers also often change the mode. To my mind, the psalm tone settings of the propers are an expedient to allow beginning or time-taxed scholas to sing the proper texts. I also think that there is some value buried or hidden in the tradition that chose a particular mode for a particular text and/or Mass. In other words, aren't the modalities used for particular propers of some value? The commentaries of Dom Johner and others would seem to indicate that they are.

So does anyone here have any insight on why the psalm tone settings so often change the mode of the chant being set? I can't see in the example given for Si Ambulavero that the psalm tone for mode 2 is easier than that for mode 8. If I were setting propers to psalm tones, it would never occur to me to use another mode other than the one of the chant from the Graduale.

"Si ambulavero" illustrates perfectly the idea that a melody can be composed with the following in mind:

- intimacy between melodic contour and textual meaning
- lack of gratuitous ostentation or sentimentality
- chastity of tone
- reverence for the text.

Evidently such considerations must strike some sacropop composers as bizarre, countercultural, and insufficiently "marketable."