Beatitude Settings
  • bkenney27bkenney27
    Posts: 444
    When the Propers are related to the Beatitudes, I tend to default to Haas' "Blest Are They" because the parish knows it well. I would like to go with something a bit more formal and a bit less contemporary for All Saints this year. Anyone know of better hymns or accessible 2-part polyphony for the Beatitudes? I haven't done too much research, so I'm sure there is something in the collections I have.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,510
    Worship III has a neat Eastern-Rite style setting. It's chant, so it respects the rhythm of the words. It's a nice challenge for the choir to all move together.
  • bkenney27bkenney27
    Posts: 444
    Thanks for the tip! I'll take a look.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,510
    (This belongs under guilty pleasures)
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    "Blest are the Pure in Heart"

    First time I heard it was at an EF Mass!
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    I'd love someday to do the Arvo Pärt setting, but I'm not holding my breath for any time in the next five years or so, unless something totally unexpected happens to me.
  • Fr. Jim Chepponis
    Posts: 220
    The Worship IV hymnal has a metrical version of the Beatitudes at #742, "O Blest Are You." The text is by Mary Louise Bringle, in Common Meter, and is set to the tune ST. COLUMBA.

    The version that Kathy referred to above is also in Worship IV at #738. It is an adaptation from the Russian Orthodox Liturgy by Richard Proulx.
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • bkenney27bkenney27
    Posts: 444
    Thanks! I'm also going to take a look at the Antiphon in the Simple Choral Gradual as well, since my choir very much likes to chant the verses in Alstott's Respond & Acclaim.
  • Bobby Bolin
    Posts: 420
    I immediately equate Beatitudes to "We Are the Light of the World" but it's probably not more formal like you are looking for.
    Thanked by 1Jani
  • bkenney27bkenney27
    Posts: 444
    Oh, I used to sing that all the time in children's choir! I forgot that even existed, hahaha. Ah, memories.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    Worship III has a neat Eastern-Rite style setting.

    It's at No. 620 in Worship III. A more satisfying version is in The Hymnal 1982 at No. 560, with the Antiphon. Both adaptations are by Proulx, but the chant is a classical Russian Orthodox chant.
  • Josh
    Posts: 103
    While in the Holy Land, at the Church of the Beatitudes I found a copy of a chant setting of the whole eight Beatitudes, which I have recently transcribed as follows - does anyone know its source? is it Franciscan?
    Beati pauperes Antiphon.pdf
    22K
    Thanked by 6M. Jackson Osborn ClemensRomanus CCooze janetgorbitz CHGiffen Heath
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    Once in a great, very very great while a years-old thread is dug up and brought back from the dead with genuinely worthwhile developments and offerings. This is one of those very rare ones. Many thanks for this. It will find much use.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,093
    Josh

    You might check sources noted at ##187 & 188 here: http://gregorien.info/music_publish/piece/fr
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • Josh
    Posts: 103
    Unfortunately, Liam, neither of these match in text nor music. Still, I'm very glad to have been gifted a link to the responsory (#188) - thanks!
  • Heath
    Posts: 966
    Bumping . . . Beatitudes coming up in a week and a half (4 OT-A)
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,799
    I'll see your bump and raise you a CPDL link. As mentioned above, H82 560 and Paart can be useful, and if you're going to learn Slavonic, a running start would be Victor Kalinnikov's Во Царствии Твоем
     for year C's Christ the King.
    Thanked by 2Heath CHGiffen
  • JonathanKKJonathanKK
    Posts: 542
    The Byzantine Catholics sing these.

    See for example HERE.

    Or an harmonization of the same HERE, from a "work in progress".

    (Great amounts of Byzantine resources are available HERE.)
    Thanked by 2Heath bonniebede
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