Simple Propers for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

Download Simple Propers for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

This week’s installment of “Simple Propers” are a continuation in our experiment in music resource production. As Jeffrey has so deviously shown, I am indeed still working on the melodic formulas that will eventually be used for an entire cycle of antiphons to cover the liturgical year. The plan is to have 8 formulas for each proper–the Introit, Offertory, and Communion–one in each mode for each set, so this will total 24 melodic formulas. The hope with these formulas is that they will be able to meet the diverse demands of the English language while remaining within the bounds of the laws of the Gregorian compositional language. The goal is to arrive at melodies that can adapt to virtually any English text, and the result, it is hoped, is that average parish musicians, even congregations, could learn these melodies and sing them easily to a variety of text settings. Compiling these formulas has not been easy, and the work is far from done, but with the guidance of Fr. Kelly I have great hope that they will be a success.

As Jeffrey has shown, the Introit formulas seem to be mostly stabilized, although there could be changes made to them in the coming weeks. I’m pulling together the communion tones, and the Offertories are still largely unfinished. So in the mean time I will continue with the “simple settings” always, which emply St. Meinrad tones, and there will be cases (such as this week’s Offertory) where this is the only setting available.

While we’re posting handwritten manuscripts today, let me add one more. Here is this week’s offertory harmonized in 4 parts according to the Meinrad Tone accompaniments given by St. Meinrad Archabbey:


It occurred to me this past week that this sort of arrangement may be incredibly useful to the “trained parish choir”. This sort of edition could be seen in continuity with many of the resources that parishes are currently used to, such as Respond and Acclaim, et cetera. There could be the benefit of having it in modern notation (accompanying, of course, a chant edition), the 4-part harmony could be a simple organ accompaniment, or even could enable 4-part singing for choirs that are used to singing figured choral music. Since many such choirs are not very familiar with the non-metered style, this perhaps could serve as a bridge to the chanted style, while retaining some of the elements of the current common practice. The benefits are that parish choirs could sing the propers in a somewhat familiar fashion, there could be an immersion in Gregorian modality, and a practice of singing non-metered music. I sense that if a parish choir could sing this beautifully then this would be a big step toward singing more elaborate settings of the propers.

Take a look at this arrangement and try to invert some of the harmonies. I found that this can add a very nice contrast. This arrangement can very easily be sung in the following ways:

1. Swap S and T (cantus firmus in the tenor)
2. A up an octave (becomes S), B up an octave (T), omit T, keep cantus firmus in A [becomes SAT with high soprano]
3. S down an octave (T), A up an octave (S), T up an octave (A), B unchanged [becomes SATB with high soprano]

There could be other possibilities such as harmony in just two voices. These harmonizations seem like a real treasure, and I’m glad that I’ve discovered this approach. I think that I will try it with my own parish choir!

Lastly, if anyone among our readers is able to typeset this score in an engraving program I would be most indebted to you. For the life of me I can’t find a reasonable way to do this. If anyone could find a solution and share a template I would be most grateful!

I also hope to get the propers for 29OT out within the next few days in order to keep us a little ahead of the game.

12 Replies to “Simple Propers for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C”

  1. Jeffrey;

    I have a bit of a full schedule today (at a retreat from 9:00- 3:00 and then choir practice at 4:00), but if I have a few moments tonight, I can set this up on FINALE (I create scores similar to this frequently)and send it to you. Are you looking to have a "template" in the sense of setting up a page-view where you can then just change the notes and type in new text?

    You can mail me at jaherbert@vzw.blackberry.net

  2. Chironomo–

    I would love to see how you do this. I can produce scores like this, but it is so laborious. If you have a simple way to do this please do demonstrate!

    I wonder if we could approach it from the standpoint of typing new texts into a template… There are only 8 Meinrad tones, and perhaps a few different arrangements for each tone. If new texts could be easily inserted into these scores that would be fantastic.

    I would love to see how you handle the problem!

  3. Can anyone produce this score in Lilypond? I would be most interested in this because of the programs ability to encode scores, and because it is is open source. Perhaps even a script could produce a score from a pointed text. What do you think, programmers?

  4. It's not that hard in Finale… you need to set up custom measure lengths based on ow many quarters are in the "measure" (in this case, your initial measure is 15/8), hide the time signature, get rid of the stems of the quarters, and use hard spaces to get more than one word to appear under one note (This tends to be the most fiddly part to get right visually).

  5. This is the same approach I have tried in Sibelius, but I don't there is an ability to create "hard spaces". This still is pretty laborious work, but perhaps if the same arrangement is used for various texts it wouldn't be too bad.

  6. Adam,

    It's possible to do this in Sibelius*, in much the same way as Chironomo describes the process for Finale. If you need to shift a note or chord to the right or left (e.g. to extend or reduce the space after a chanted chord you express with whole notes/semibreves), click on a note of the following chord and press [shift]+[alt] then right or left.

    BTW; you may wish to reconsider the progression from the first to the second chord, above.

    * I should add the qualification that I'm still on Sib 4, but (ceteris paribus) I wouldn't expect things to get harder in later versions.

  7. Ian–

    Thank you for the response. Interestingly, I'm also still on Sibelius 4, so we're on the same page in this regard.

    The issue that I am having with Sibelius is assigning an entire phrase to one chord or reciting pitch. It seems that syllables have to be aligned to individual notes, and I haven't found a way to create the "hard space" in Sib which Chironomo speaks of in Finale.

    Do you know how to achieve this?

  8. Also, I see that [control]+[space] creates space between words within one note, but this always is center aligned, and does not continue to the right as I would hope for it to do.

  9. The procedure is to use [control]+[space] then, when you've finished typing the words to be chanted, to select them and adjust their position as required.

    Incidentally, I wasn't trying to be funny about the first progression. The St. Meinrad original moves the bass down to C before the other parts move, so providing harmonic variety and avoiding parallel 5th movement between soprano & bass. I guess where possible you'd try to move the base on an accented syllable, in this case the 2nd of 'Remember'.

    Thanks for the work you're putting into this. It will be very useful.

  10. Thanks Ian. I still am not sure that this is a very efficient method, but I will do some more exploration of possibilities.

    Yes, I deliberated greatly over that first phrase and was aware of the parallel 5ths as well. I believe that the intermediary chords in the tone are supposed to be given to word accents in the middle of the phrase in order to give harmonic variety to long phrases. IN this case they form a 4-3 suspension between S and A. But I wasn't sure what to do in the case of such a short phrase. I don't mind the parallel 5ths too much, as they are not necessarily avoided in other places in the Meinrad accompaniments. I suppose the alternative would be to omit the second chord in such short phrases.

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