How do you decide what psalm tones to use for which psalms in the Daily Office?
stonespring
Shipmate
I think Anglo-Catholics, Traditionalist Roman Catholics, and Monastics might have an easier time finding sources that prescribe what psalm tones to use for which psalms in all offices of the year in their breviaries, but for Roman Catholics using the post-Vatican II Liturgy of the Hours with a four-week psalm cycle and largely wholly new antiphons that were written at first without melodies to accompany them (and therefore without psalm tones based on the mode of the antiphon to use with the accompanying psalm), there has been little guidance until recently.
The Benedictines at Solesmes have in the past decade or so published two volumes of the new post-Vatican II Antiphonale Romanum (only 40-50 years after the new breviary was introduced!) but they only tell you how to chant Morning and Evening Prayer (2 out of the 5 daily offices in the Post Vatican II LOTH), and only on Sundays and Feasts (leaving the whole rest of the year without any official guidance). And it only tells you how to chant it in Latin.
Because the psalm cycle and the antiphons of the current Roman LOTH are so different from what Monastics, Traditionalist Catholics, and Anglo Catholics use, it’s not very useful to use the Antiphonale Monasticum, the Liver Usualis of 1962, or Anglican Sources like the St. Dunstan’s Psalter to try to come up with how to chant the LOTH in English. So I’m at a bit of a loss. There is a podcast called Sing the Hours where an RC layperson makes an attempt to chant Lauds and Vespers every day, but even he admits that he has to improvise a lot given the lack of official proscriptions of even something as simple as what psalm tones to use which each psalm in the four week cycle (without even taking into account how the psalm tone for a psalm might change based on how the psalm’s antiphon changes in different seasons and on different feasts).
Does anyone have any advice on how to come up with a schema of what psalm tones to use for what psalms absent any official guidance? Is anyone else in a similar situation?
The Benedictines at Solesmes have in the past decade or so published two volumes of the new post-Vatican II Antiphonale Romanum (only 40-50 years after the new breviary was introduced!) but they only tell you how to chant Morning and Evening Prayer (2 out of the 5 daily offices in the Post Vatican II LOTH), and only on Sundays and Feasts (leaving the whole rest of the year without any official guidance). And it only tells you how to chant it in Latin.
Because the psalm cycle and the antiphons of the current Roman LOTH are so different from what Monastics, Traditionalist Catholics, and Anglo Catholics use, it’s not very useful to use the Antiphonale Monasticum, the Liver Usualis of 1962, or Anglican Sources like the St. Dunstan’s Psalter to try to come up with how to chant the LOTH in English. So I’m at a bit of a loss. There is a podcast called Sing the Hours where an RC layperson makes an attempt to chant Lauds and Vespers every day, but even he admits that he has to improvise a lot given the lack of official proscriptions of even something as simple as what psalm tones to use which each psalm in the four week cycle (without even taking into account how the psalm tone for a psalm might change based on how the psalm’s antiphon changes in different seasons and on different feasts).
Does anyone have any advice on how to come up with a schema of what psalm tones to use for what psalms absent any official guidance? Is anyone else in a similar situation?
Comments
A Russell Stutler has done his own chart of psalm tones (by number) that work well with each psalm. He used the Saint Meinrad tones to do this, and the Hebrew psalm numbering, but the numbers work with Gregorian tones as well. Not official, but useful. Have a look.
Here's his page with psalm tones and other guidance to use with that list.
If you want to get an idea, a pdf of the 1993 edition of the BCW is available online here. (See starting at p. 601.) Like the 1983 BCW, the 2018 BCW is available in a Daily Prayer edition as well as the full edition. (The same tones are in both editions.)
If it's Tuesday it must be ...
I dunno. It all seems very complicated.
I simply read the Psalms aloud or intone them in the hope that I am approximating to how I've heard it done. No idea what tone I'm using or whether indeed it is a recognised one.
I would like to know more about chant, both Eastern and Western.
I have no idea whether there is a chronological pattern to the tones used in Latin chant or in the Coptic and other traditions.
That applies irrespective of whether you are using the 1662 BCP Coverdale version or any modern language psalter provided it splits each verse into two. It's an extra help possibly if it marks in the pointing, but it's not that difficult to manage even without.
Many Roman Catholic liturgical scholars, including ones mentioned in the links above, agree with you. English is a stress-timed language, whereas Latin is a syllable-timed language, etc.
My personal feeling is that for the psalms at least, since most of the chant is on a straight tone, the mediants and finals don't cause such violence to the syllabic structure of the English language that the beauty of the sound of the Gregorian tones cannot be appreciated. And it makes it easier to go back and forth between chanting common texts like the Gospel Canticles in English and Latin if I use the same tones. There are some very well-educated RC Benedictine monks who spend a good portion of their life chanting that would strongly disagree with me on this, but suffice to say there is diversity of thought on this issue.
Thanks! I have already encountered these spreadsheets, as well as the ones you linked to above made by Russell Stutler, in the time I've spent over the past month or so looking at whatever resources I could find online regarding this question of mine. I think they are useful (the Mundelein Psalter is also useful if you just want simple melodies to use to start chanting Morning and Evening prayer without having to think too much), but they don't address the issue that in the RC Liturgy of the Hours, the same psalm will be chanted with different antiphons at different times, and that the tone of the psalm comes from the antiphon. Still, in the absence of any other guidance, I think that the spreadsheets these people have made are very useful as a starting point.
An Anglican resource I have found (which works for C of E and Anglican Church of Canada breviaries but oddly enough not the US Episcopal one (it does work for the ACNA breviary, so that may something about the people who prepared it)), that gives fully annotated chants for every office for every day is https://singtheoffice.com . It seems to be based on some scholarship at some institute in Canada about the Sarum Rite. It's very useful if you want to chant the Anglican office, but I'm trying to chant the RC Liturgy of the Hours instead.
German liturgical publishers are way ahead of those in the English-speaking world. Their Christuslob gives a fully chanted day office (so not including the Office of Readings) in one volume, with traditional psalm tones and notated antiphons.
Monastic composers have written modal psalm tones that are more clearly matched to the stresses of English. They tend to be simpler than the Latin Gregorian tones.
Such as the St. Meinrad, Fr. Weber, and Mundelein Psalter tones alluded to above. They don’t try to give a tone based on the antiphon. They either give one tone for each psalm each time it is used, or in the case of the Mundelein Psalter they use two tones on weeks I and III and two tones on Weeks II and IV regardless of the antiphon or psalm. If you want to chant the monastic office (rather than the LOTH) there are more resources.
The problem with matching the tone of the psalm to the mode of the antiphon is that for much of the Latin antiphons in the 1971 Liturgy of the Hours, let alone any vernacular translation, there is no music, and there is no pre-Vatican II equivalent to draw the music from. It just seems that even though the post-conciliar LOTH was made with the intent of encouraging laypeople to start praying it (and simplifying it for clergy and non-monastic religious), no one really thought anyone would care much about chanting it. Monastics would still have their own separate breviary to chant, and people who wanted to stage choral vespers would probably use the pre-Vatican II breviary (as is still often the case). Decades later, we now have music for the antiphons (and hence tones for the psalms) for Lauds and Vespers on Sundays and Feasts. That’s it.
For your average layperson, it is quite complex especially if you try to pray the hours using books. But if you use an app like ibreviary, Divine Office, or Universalis, or subscribe to monthly Liturgy of the Hours Booklets that tell you exactly what to pray without page turning, it isn't that complicated, just a bit time consuming if you want to pray all of the 5 current daily offices (in total if you add up the time for all the offices it might take an hour and 15 minutes or a little longer on Sundays and Feasts). This is a significantly shorter length of time and a shorter number of offices than was the case before Vatican II. And laypeople aren't required to pray all the offices, so they are welcome to pray as many of them as is practical or even to combine part of the Hours with their own private devotional prayers (this is quite different than the case for much of the period after the Council of Trent when laypeople were discouraged from praying the breviary at all).
The Mundelein Psalter in the US is the result of an attempt to find a way to get people to easily set Morning and Evening Prayer to music in a congregational setting, and it has been used to some extent in seminaries to try to get future priests used to praying the office in this way so they can encourage it among the laity. But I don't think it's simplified psalm modes (it calls them modes rather than tones) are really that much simpler, or better suited to the English language, than the Gregorian tones. The same with the various tones that different Benedictine Abbeys have come up with to try to adapt plainsong to the English language.
But I am not an expert on music, linguistics, or liturgy. I tend to identify with melody and text more generally than with finer details such as whether a melody moves on a stressed syllable or not. And I really like the melodies of the Gregorian tones! And I like that I can hear echoes of them over centuries of music. So it's just a matter of personal taste for me. One result of the relative lack of guidance on how to chant the post-Vatican II Liturgy of the Hours in the vernacular is that laypeople especially are free to find the way that works best for them. I just get overwhelmed by too much choice. That is why I wish there was at the very least a mode and corresponding psalm tone assigned to all of the antiphons used in the 1971 LOTH, and it strikes me as odd that now over 50 years later we still don't have that (not even, as far as I can tell, in the Ordo Cantus Officii of 1983 - but maybe I am just having trouble making sense of it).
What do you mean by Anglo-Catholics? It's a very slippery term even in a liturgical context. But most churches or individuals who might accept that description would use either Common Worship: Daily Prayer (ie along with most Anglicans, at least those who haven't ditched liturgy altogether) which uses a modern version of the psalter, or the Book of Common Prayer (1662), or the RC Liturgy of the Hours (particularly individual priests or laity).
Or maybe it's a pond difference. And not much to do with the subject of the thread.
Not being particularly musical I've no comments on that, except to say that plainchant sung to English words (either Cranmerian/Coverdale or contemporary) sounds fine to me.
You’re right. I am aware (from the Ship
of all places!) that some C of E clergy and laypeople use the RC LOTH to pray the daily office. So rather than Anglo-Catholics I should have said Anglicans using the 1662, Common Worship, or other psalm cycle from their own province, as well as Ordinariate types (who I know are no longer Anglicans) who if they use their Book of Divine Worship to pray the office are also using a different psalm cycle to the 1971 RC LOTH.
I think I was referring specifically to the “sing the office” website/app, which seems geared towards a certain type
of Anglo-Catholic or High Church Anglican (which I know are different things).
The psalms are usually not chanted to any particular tone in the Byzantine rite. They are usually just "read" (which generally means intoned).
The system of eight tones in the west works slightly differently and the psalms are chanted to set tones.
In the restored Gallican rite, at Vespers there are three psalms, which are usually chanted in tones 2, 4, and 1. At Lauds, there are two psalms, in tones 2 and 1. On Sundays, in both cases, these are followed by the Ecclesiastical Psalm (a doctrinal text) in the tone of the week.
Certain feasts have different tones that are used, and the Little Hours have appointed tones as well.
In addition to the psalms that vary daily, there are certain psalms and canticles that are fixed parts of the office, such as the Psalm of the Lucernarium (Psalm 140), the Magnificat, and so forth. The may be chanted in the tone of the week but more usually they are sung to set tones for the duration of the season: tone 3 for Advent, tone 4 for Lent, tone 6 during Paschaltide, and other prescribed tones on certain feasts.
I am assuming you are asking about Western Monastics, and I don’t know much about the answer to your question, even less so if it’s for Eastern Monastics.
Non-RC and RC Benedictines may not have formal Eucharistic communion, but they do have quite a bit of fellowship, so I wouldn’t be surprised if many non-RC Benedictine monastics make use of the same Benedictine monastic breviary that RC Benedictines use (which is different from the Roman LOTH), for at least part of their daily prayer, along with services from their own traditions.
I know of a small ecumenical Benedictine community in Illinois that started out RC, wanted to let non-RC monks and monastic priests in, left the oversight of the RC bishop and went under the oversight of an Episcopal bishop, and then had its Abbott consecrated an Independent Catholic bishop with lines from ICAB (a breakaway group from the RCC from Brazil, the Catholic Apostolic Church of Brazil - no relation to the Catholic Apostolic Church in the UK!). They use a combination of prayer books - including I think the RC LOTH which is unusual for Benedictines, as well as an abridged breviary called Benedictine Daily Prayer from St. John’s Abbey’s (Collegeville, MN, which is RC) Liturgical Press, and also resources from St Michael’s Abbey, Farnborough, UK, which is also RC, especially for the chants.
The 1979 US Episcopal BCP includes a service for Compline and one for Daytime Prayer, so some Anglican monastics here might use those in addition to BCP Morning and Evening Prayer.
Many RC Franciscans I think use the a modified version of the RC LOTH with their own Franciscan propers. The RC Benedictine breviary (called the monastic one) is completely different from the RC LOTH though.
For eg the Sisters of the Love of God are a Carmelite-inspired enclosed community of women in Oxford, and they sing all the canonical hours aside from Matins which they pray privately in their own cells. They use the RC LOTH as far as I can tell, except for the Eucharist where they use Common Worship - there is afaik only one Ordinariate convent in England, but Anglican religious communities in England are overwhelmingly not Society/Traditionalist aligned even if they are more small-t traditional in terms of singing the office etc and therefore would be unlikely to use the Ordinariate LOTH.
Personally I have been chanting Lauds and Vespers every day for the last 10 years from the French Heures Gregoriennes, which is twin language Latin & French, and very easy to use. It has full proper Gregorian antiphons, chants and propers, but expensive (it now costs around Eur 240 + postage for the set), heavy (3 huge volumes), day hours only and of course no English.
The Germans have really good chant books - both the Antiphonale zum Stundengebet for personal use, and the 3 volumes of Benediktinisches Antiphonale which is really easy to use for the monastic day hours but of course in German only. Munsterschwarzach Abbey (4 towers press) who produced them do online live transmissions from the abbey which thoughtfully show both the Volume and Page number to look at.
If you want some really authentic music propers to beef up your singing, I would recommend the new Antiphonale Monasticum from Abbazia di Praglia in Italy. For each proper or item, they quote the Source: the Library, Manuscript and Folio of the manuscript so you can go and look it up yourself (electronically of course - no need to visit the library in person). You may or may not like it, but it was what they specified in the 10th or 11th century. All Latin, and psalms are Fuglister B. Beautifully computer typeset in 2 colours, gilt edged and leather cover. Psalter is less elaborate and Latin/Italian and less elaborate.
They sing the psalms to the traditional Gregorian chants and you can Google to find PDFs of their full offices.