We're not in the league of the above posts, but here's our 2026-7 rehearsal schedule for a unison group that sings chant and congregational hymns.

Today we had I Vespers of St Bartholomew

Chant office, with the Victoria Domine ad adjuvandum, Asola falsobordone for the hymn and Magnificat, Salve, For all thy saints in warfare (AURELIA).

We do have somewhat regular threads about feast day programs, so I'm diverging a little from the OP and just posting our complete planned repertoire for 2027, excluding hymnal rep (CBW III and Traditional Roman Hymnal) and Gregorian propers. I'm hoping this might be useful to someone, and it is indeed something that would have been useful for me 3 years ago when I started.

Tuned it up a little since yesterday, not finalized, but I knew I would forget if I waited. There's no schedule here a la Probe, just a list.
-12 pieces will be removed from the 2026 rep; 19 pieces added; 49 keepers.
-About 40% of the polyphonic rep is 16th C. and that bothers me.
-Tenebrae rep not included.
-The difficulty is fairly dialed in to be attainable (bearing in mind how much is retained and repeated over years) for an amateur choir with at least 1 solid voice in each section and weekly practice (with occasional extra practice).
-The Schola Supplement (selected polyphonic propers, polyphonic antiphons for occasions like Ash Wednesday and Candlemas, and some prelude/postlude stuff) is a little aspirational and we aren't likely to sing all of it.

About 40% of the polyphonic rep is 16th C. and that bothers me.

We’re basically only interested in that at the moment. (Renaissance in general I mean). We don’t have the resources to do classical. We also don’t like it as much. Baroque, especially early or very cantus firmus/chant like, yes (I just discovered a late baroque Ave Maris Stella where they sing the chant ornamented by instruments). But again, no resources, not at the moment.

I don’t have anything really against it; St Joseph’s in Detroit often does Rheinberger in summer. I know that Stimson likes Gounod. But the polyphonic repertoire is incredibly vast, and that’s where our interest really lies.

I mean, sure, but the vast majority of repertoire at the big NO programs is still Renaissance. Yes, Westminster even commissioned works that are now in standard repertoire both in TLM and NO contexts, but even so, a lot of that stuff is so hard too.

Different strokes for different folks and all, or de gustibus etc.

I agree that the score situation isn’t the best. One particular CPDL contributor has essentially ruined the possibility of using the Trent Codices.

I agree the Conditor is easy as that gets, but for some reason the choir couldn't get it down and actually had an easier time with Burchard's Creator, which on paper seems harder.

@Chant_Supremacist bless your capable choir! I see you've included Media Vita (1995) arr. Michael McGlynn - with drum like Anúna ;) ?

@probe We've sung it the past two years as the processional hymn for Passion Sunday. Unfortunately we don't have a drum or I would most certainly use it for this. Instead I have a few of the men stomp the drum rhythm. It works better than you might think.

@NihilNominis Gorgeous!

"You might consider a faster tempo on the 16th cent. music if your singers are up to it."

I am hypersensitive and would have been annoyed in the moment, probably, but I think that it’s good advice. We wind up doing a lot in 4/4 or very slow cut time. I still haven’t figured out mensuration and proportions, but I am interested in doing more HIP with polyphony. And we don’t drag chant, but now I really am sensitive to rushing, like, feeling like a note was just skipped entirely in a descending passage, as the comical (except not) example of what Dom Gajard warns about.

I am hypersensitive and would have been annoyed in the moment, probably, but I think that it’s good advice. We wind up doing a lot in 4/4 or very slow cut time. I still haven’t figured out mensuration and proportions, but I am interested in doing more HIP with polyphony. And we don’t drag chant, but now I really am sensitive to rushing, like, feeling like a note was just skipped entirely in a descending passage, as the comical (except not) example of what Dom Gajard warns about.

I mean the, “if your singers are up to it”, was entirely unnecessary in my opinion.

In our practice, tempo in this repertoire is something we most often arrive at as a choir by encountering the piece in itself and in its intended context during rehearsal. I show up with an idea of what I think I want them to do, but then tweak that after hearing it on the voices and feeling it as a choir. We certainly don’t show up and hack it out day-of. Fundamentally, we are an open ensemble capable of real expressive variety across a broad repertoire, and treat Renaissance polyphony with sensitivity, individuating the pieces, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-HIP approach. This is something I feel very strongly about.

And that was what was fundamentally so jarring to me about the experience. The performance deeply resonated with the choir, you could see it on every face. It did everything we asked it to do, the singers approached it competently and with technical skill. The effect was beautiful, serene, sensitive, and served at the liturgy very well. And yet, his mindset had been formed in such a way that the only thing to say was a critique on a “technicality” (itself speculative) with implicit shade thrown on the choir’s competence?

But it reminded me of nothing so much as what I see in the world of chant, where extremely speculative positions and then applications on performance practice seem to overwhelm musical and liturgical considerations. Fundamentally, the plainsong that comes down to us is an extraordinarily vast repertoire. It comprises many genres and the pieces are composed over a long timespan. I am certainly interested by discussions about possible historic performance practice of the chant, but some of these are based on the witness of particular monastic manuscripts and their unique notation systems, which are not available for the entire repertoire, or on the fairly sparse textual witness, and can become quite idiosyncratic.

The historic witness of the notation that we have certainly seems to be that the chant was a changing reality across the centuries, and, based on the information manuscripts appear to carry or don’t carry, we see that its performance practice varied significantly in time and place, and we even see a lot of melodic variety.

And yet, how we talk about it / think about it / insist upon it being done in such particular ways...!

I mean the, “if your singers are up to it”, was entirely unnecessary in my opinion.

I don’t really disagree, although I see the point behind it, and also that he seems to live in a vacuum (which gets to your other points) and lack some social skills.

In my case we just rehearsed something that, frankly, needs to be faster or be in two; otherwise, we won’t be able to do it again and will be asked to do the plainchant for the longest portion, which to me defeats the purpose of the repertoire selection.

As to chant: it’s why I’m quite happy with Mocquereau and Gajard in contrast to my more open-minded views of polyphonic music, although original pitch, or a conventional transposition like down a P4 often has a practical element: doing the chant alongside it as normal, keeping the solfège the same visually and in the mind: we did the Palestrina Missa Regina Caeli for four voices with one flat (in F, I suppose). That’s a goofy piece to do in another key given that the chant and therefore the motet on which the setting is modeled are also with just the one flat.

At the very least, a reasonably articulated, coherent view of rhythm is important, versus just vibes. (I can live with someone else doing something different: it’s their house!) Someone asked about the non-usage of the ictus and he asked for the short answer (he’s also been, FWIW, under ICRSP care for the last two years): 1) people knowingly don’t use it or move it around, which, OK, so long as it’s coherent and relatively consistent 2) people don’t read the materials designed to instruct those using the Solesmes editions, which is a problem that Dr. Weaver has addressed many times, for example. I’ve run into that in some wonderful exchanges with other musicians elsewhere, just as I have myself.