Evening Prayer
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    A small but committed group led by Deacons is gathering for Evening Prayer on Wednesday evenings.

    They have subscribed to eBrievary and print out each Wednesday's order.

    So for two months now we have been working together and sing a hymn and chant the antiphons, psalms, canticle and Magnificat and Salve Regina.

    Here's the difficulty, pointing the psalms for the 4 weeks cycle and getting them to work is finished but as feasts overtake the prayer of the day, what do we do about the psalms? We still sing the canticle and the Magnificat. But read the two psalms.

    Suggestions, since the eBreviary is not pointed.
  • Paul F. Ford
    Posts: 857
    The Mundelein Psalter?
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    I'd like that, but the expense would be a hard sell...awfully hard sell, in fact.
  • JamJam
    Posts: 636
    This doesn't compare to pointing, but... some Catholic friends and I wanted to be able to chant the psalms for the liturgy of the hours from an unpointed text (the one volume/four volume Office). So, we adapted some psalm tones... Gilbert could probably tell you more about it, because he invented the system. Basically it consisted of chanting recto tono until the second to last word in the line, and then changing pitch there on that word, and then changing pitch again on the last word. It's really easy to catch on and doesn't depend on syllables, just words. And it sounds all right, too. Better than just reading it.
  • mjballoumjballou
    Posts: 993
    Point Sunday week one psalms to the same pattern that you use for the Wednesdays. Jam's plan is an option. In the Russian Orthodox Church, readers chant through volumes of material, using the same technique as Jam and her friends. Because it's so simple, you can stay together and attention stays focused on the text.
  • WGS
    Posts: 297
    It sounds as though you could use the settings of "Simplified Anglican Chant". Its function is somewhat (or perhaps exactly) like what Jam refers to.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    This is all helpful.

    What I have done is to set Psalm 1 and 2 to psalm tones, the same tones for each week,at first the children from the choir and a few adults sang the Magnificat to a single chant by Barnsby.

    Then we added the Canticle, set to another psalm tone, then I composed antiphons for all that mesh with their tones.

    We have also sung the Magnificat in Latin from the PBC and alternate that now.

    I am keeping this simple so that eventually i will not need to be there. I hate it when a music director fails to build a program that will fall apart when he/she leaves because it was all built around them...I have followed those people.

    I suppose I was hoping that someone would tell me that I could go to place A, download what they have already done, print it up and be done.

    Aristotle's work on this for what I believe was a Sunday evening prayer was a tremendous help in my understanding of this all....
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