Advent Lauds hymn "Vox clara ecce intonat"; where to find office hymns?
  • Aristotle EsguerraAristotle Esguerra
    Posts: 1,185
    [Cross-posted on CantemusDomino.net]

    I've made a PDF transcription available of the Lauds hymn "Vox clara ecce intonat" (square notation sans Solesmes markings) for those interested. The sources I used appear in the PDF attached to this message.

    The reason I did this is because the Adoremus Hymnal contains very little Latin hymnody for Advent, the Liber Usualis doesn't include Lauds most of the time, and even though we are currently celebrating Low Mass, we would like to retain as much Latin as possible.

    Which brings me to the question: which chant volume contains the most comprehensive collection of office hymns?
  • Jan
    Posts: 242
    Aristotle

    Thank you. I have been looking for music from the terrific Anon 4 CD Christmas Music from Hungary. If you
    have any more music from that CD...I would be most grateful.
  • Aristotle EsguerraAristotle Esguerra
    Posts: 1,185
    Jan

    You're welcome. Unfortunately, I myself don't have a copy of that CD, having lifted the melody of the hymn from an online CD purveyor's preview page.
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    GIA prints the Liber hymnarius, which has all the hymns of the Office. It is set in Solemnes square-note notation, but I'm not entirely sure it covers all the hymns of the Classical Rite. There should be older books with this same name or Hymnarium.

    moconnor
  • David Sullivan
    Posts: 355
    Last Thursday, at a 'private', low TLM for the feast of St Cecilia, we sang the Vespers hymn, Jesu, corona virginum (at Offertory). In preparing, I noticed slight variations in my 3 sources, Liber Usualis, old Antiphonale Monasticum, and new Liber Hymnarius. All three had slight variants in text and the LU had an added note as well. Using these different sources, one can't assume all sources are identical--it can cause confusion and frustration.

    In the end, we used the LU version for the practical reason that both chanters had copies of the Liber. The new Liber Hymnarius attributes the hymn (text) to St Ambrose (with a ?).
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    Yes, Ambrose (like Gregory) was credited with a lot of music that he never wrote. His main contribution was the practice of hymnody to ward off heresy.

    moconnor
  • jrm_tomburg
    Posts: 5
    In addition to the very good Liber Hymnarius mentioned by another member, the Solesmes Antiphonale monasticum contains the hymns for the old Benedictine hours (in part preserved from the classicizing program of Urban VIII). It's no. 818 in the Solesmes series, published 1933 but subsequently reprinted (I bought my copy new in the 1980s).
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    Oh my, should we even sanction that ill-advised program of Urban VIII? It took years to undo the damage.

    moconnor
  • jrm_tomburg
    Posts: 5
    Actually, I meant to say that Benedictine texts _resisted_ Urban's changes--I haven't done a line by line comparison with the restored hymn texts in the Liber Hymnarius, but the Antiphonale should show less Barberini influence than the Liber Usualis versions of the office hymns. "Quod non fecerunt Barbari, fecerunt Barberini." (Hope this doesn't count as a flame!)
  • tdunbar
    Posts: 120
    The Anonymous 4 sing a version of this chant on their album: On Yoolis Night: Medieval Carols and Motets and a somewhat different version on A Star from the East: Christmas Music from Medieval Hungary. I prefer the On Yoolis Night version which starts with less ornamentation, as in Liber Hymnarius, rather than the version in the PDF above.
    The strong, steady VOX at the start matches the theology better, in my opinion.

    Both Anonymous 4 versions area available on iTunes.
  • Stella611
    Posts: 112
    Esguerra,
    Did you create the PDF chant notated hymn yourself, and if you did, what program did you use to do it? I have gregoire on my computer right now, but it's so hard to try to figure out how to use it efficiently cause all the directions are in French. Do you or does anyone else know of a chant notation program that i could use, i could really use one.
    thanks,
    Kimberly
  • Carl DCarl D
    Posts: 992
    Note, Kimberly, that there is a setting in Gregoire to change the language to English. It doesn't change EVERYTHING to English, unfortunately, but it's a help. I also took the help file and ran it through the BabelFish translator - the result is intelligible enough that you can figure it out. If you'd like a copy drop me a line... carl@dierschow.com

    I've found learning Gregoire to be worth the trouble; I haven't found another solution which does as nice a job of laying out chant. That said, I have to admit that I export the results into PowerPoint and do some additional cleanup before giving it to my schola: I haven't found the printed output of Gregoire to be all that great.
  • Aristotle EsguerraAristotle Esguerra
    Posts: 1,185
    Kimberly and Carl: I've started another discussion on this topic, since I think it deserves its own thread.
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