It’s from the Divine Office and goes back to the Medieval Latin Rite.

My notes are that Variae Preces, 2nd edition (1889), p. 136 is the earliest I was able to find it.

Cantus Selecti has notes on the sources of many chants, and for this it says: "Textus psalmi 40, v. 1. Auctor melodiae est Dom Pothier O. S. B. († 1923)."

Thanks, all.

It's nice to know that our good old friend Dom Pothier cobbled this one together himself. Matthew, I certainly have mixed feelings about his setting as well. I actually like the melody, and don't find it too hard to sing; the beginning I find reminiscent of a fanfare, and the way it floats around between modes I do enjoy. The mode 8 intonation, cadence onto Re, shifting recitative throughout, cadance onto Mi and then final cadance onto Re again. But the problem I have is that it doesn't really follow the traditional logic of gregorian chant, as far as I can tell. What I mean is that the first millennia chants have a certain rationale which allows reconstruction, shows consistent structure, and has certain "rules" that each genre follows. This chant seems to be cobbled together free of much in the way of modal or rhythmic requirements. It seems entirely free rhythm in its compositional rational.

I've had a look at the choral settings at IMSLP, but none of them are what I'm looking for. If someone knows of a choral setting which could be easily learned by a congregation and sung robustly, please let me know. But almost all the choral settings I've seen so far are polyphony, not appropriate for a congregation. And I'm not a fan of the Schubert...

But digging a little deeper, I've found what appears to be an Ambrosian setting, in an appendix of the Ambrosian Vesperale. If anyone has more information on this setting, or has an idea what "centon" means, please share.

There are a few which don’t have an attribution (or otherwise I have to go check) and I wonder who it is if it wasn’t Dom Pothier.

The familiar Cor Jesu sacratissimum is unattributed. So is the one that shares a melody with the Litany of the Sacred Heart. (That might postdate Pothier, actually.)

I don’t think that I found the sources to which Cantus Selecti refers for the familiar mode V Adoremus in aeternum; I know that I went looking, as I put the sources in our booklets (I think that disambiguating mode, melody, and source helps, even if only passively: like, a handful of people probably read it in our booklets, but it shows that we’re not just making it up, even if the choices are arbitrary).

I wonder where that version of the Liber got its melody for the alternate Adoremus. And then the ton royal for ps 116 (modified by Solesmes to be more Gregorian) isn’t given a source, but, like, it’s obviously the ton royal in mode 6.