MusicaSacra Forum

I would love to see that happen. Every year, we get subjected to "Were You
There" and weird stuff from OCP. At least the Roman Missal now heavily suggests the Stabat Mater. If anyone is doing this, please add me to the list, as I want to suggest it for Good Friday down here.

I'm working on a setting of the Reproaches and of the 10 Intercessions for this year. My pastor has enough on his plate during Holy Week without those, so I told him we would relieve him of some of the burden by singing the intercessions. When I am reasonably satisfied, I'll post it here for anyone to use.

It’s not the new translation, but The Plainchant Gradual of Burgess & Palmer has a nice adaptation into traditional English prose.

The one that I've ended up using is Fr. Weber's. There are two versions; one being pretty ornate (adapted from the Gregorian original), the other being a simple psalm-tone setting.

I kinda wish there was a more intermediate version (like the one from the old sacramentary), but I'm confident that my parish can pull off the ornate version.

Sorry. Duplicate post.

Jonathan, I've rhymed "choir" with "aspire," making the last syllable of each word cover two syllables. So I hear ya. I'm going to look at Fr. Weber's Reproaches, thanks!

I am willing to set the new translation of the Reproaches and will do so during the next week. I'll post a .pdf here.

I included the a setting of my own translation in The American Gradual.

Bruce, this is the most amazing gift, thank you! May I use it this year?

Bruce, I've sent you a message through the forum (inbox) in case you don't see it. Thanks again! I just love this. It's so very different from the tune in the old sacramentary and is just like the Latin chant. Incredibly, soberly moving.

I've made a page with Victoria's polyphony.

Mr. Ford, would you mind (or welcome) a square note version of your setting? Because I'd like to do one.

WJA: I would be pleased if you were to set my adaptation in square notes; but would you please let me see what you've done before you post it?

See the comment you are about to add before you start.

WJA:

When I wrote, "See the comment you are about to add before you start," I meant to write "See the comment I am about to add..."

The comment to which I was referring is the one above. Please use the revised version as the basis for you square note transcription.

Bruce, thank you—from another Bruce. Richard, thanks as well: it's nice to have the Victoria on one page.

Mr. Ford, thank you so much for posting these. Are you the self-same composer of the plainsong in the '1982' ?

I will echo my choirmaster-organist, Felipe Gasper, at Walsingham, who above commended the Plainchant Gradual with complete mass and ritual propers by Palmer and Burgess. We, in fact, will be using the impropreria, the mandatum antiphons, and all chants from The plainchant Gradual for all of Holy Week. The Plainchant Gradual is available from CMAA. While the translation is not the modern one (It is Elizabethan English) it may be quite licitly done, and add some needed gravity to the various rites of Holy Week. The original plainchant melodies are preserved with their texts put into Anglican English. Every Parish should have copies of The Plainchant Gradual by Palmer and Burgess, which may be had from the CMAA by special arrangement with the Anglican nuns at St Mary's, Wantage, who are the copyright owners.

There are those, though, who object that these chant repertories are poorly matched to English words. They aren't. English has different vowels and consonants than does Latin, but there is nothing inherently artless or malapropos in matching them up to chant. If one is determined to sing chant as artfully in English to chant music as he does in singing Latin to chant, the result will be different artfulnesses applied to chant, yielding two equally artful performances. In brief: If one is as careful of English vowels and consonants as he is of Latin ones, the English version will be quite as admirably artful as the Latin. Producers of Catholic chant books, actually, would perform for the Church a Great Service if they provided English translations of all texts - translations which, having been fashioned with care and musical sensitivity such that they could be sung to their respective chants with an artfulness so fine that one would not have guessed that it wasn't the original language. This way we would have a sensitively written body of chant that would work in English or in Latin to the same historic chants. For this we need literary scholars, chant scholars, poets, and musicians all working together to produce all the chant repertory that could be performed (while being recognised as really good stuff) in the language that was best in a given parish at a given time. This would be an unimaginable boost and commendation for a really widespread and well received Chant Revival. We have one now... but it needs to be more directed, focused, more aggressive, and less identified (perhaps inaccurately) with an oft-percieved narrow ultramontanism

Let me try again. I am a hopelessly careless typist.
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Many who do not oppose adaptation of chant melodies to English words question your assessment of the Palmer/Burgess Gradual.

First, it is a compilation that includes adaptations of several persons. G.H. Palmer was a serious student of chant composition. He employed the compositional techniques that were employed during the "golden age" to fit chant melodies to words, or (sometimes regrettably) adjusted the texts to the music, and in by one method or the other usually achieved concord between the two. Francis Burgess and R. L. Shields obviously were not students of chant composition. They simply took the notes out of the Vatican edition of the chant and strung English words under them. They sometimes padded the texts so as to produce an adequate number of syllables, but they largely ignored accentuation. Furthermore, they failed to recognize and make proper use of "set-forms" in the Latin chants they were adapting. ("Set-forms" are musical formulas that undergo predictable changes in response to changes in the length and accentuation of texts. Psalm tones are set-forms; but so are many ornate melodic formulas.)

Now that we have the results of Cardine's research at hand, we are more aware than ever that chant is sung speech, ars recte loaquendi. Burgess's adaptations often constitute ars male loquendi. Rather than serving as vehicles for the declamation of the texts, they distort the texts badly.

Good English adaptations exist--Palmer's and Winfred Douglas's, for example. Burgess's are not among them.

For a highly-informed discussion of the issues involved in adapting chant to English words, see John Boe's dissertation, The Ordinary in English (Ph.D., Northwestern University), which is available from ProQuest (formerly University Microfilms).

Thanks for doing this! I hadn't had the chance to try myself.

Personally, I think that nothing beats the amazing setting by John Sanders:

Yes, it's for eight-part choir (SSAATTBB), but like any setting of the Reproaches, it has just a few brief sections that all get many repeats. It's astoundingly effective for Good Friday. Having done it 11 years in a row with my volunteer choir (sometimes in the six-voice reduced scoring, depending on who was around in a given year), various congregants would approach me as Good Friday drew near, and say, "are you going to do that scary Good Friday piece again? Yes? Good..."

Also, I wrote a paper for a Master's Level course a couple years back on the history of the Reproaches and their recent seeming-disappearance from the liturgy, which I'd be happy to send to anyone interested.

Last year, when I had even fewer people, I wrote my own four-voice setting. I like it very much - but I employed the same text as Sanders, which seems to be neither the 1985 nor the 2010 text. (I suppose it's an Anglican variant, though I have not sourced it.)