A new collection of plainchant in English is now available, in the Saint John’s Gradual edited by Rev. Steven Lewis of the Diocese of Rochester. The collection is named for St. John’s Seminary in Boston, where he studied, and it is available for download from the Seminary’s website, complete with ecclesiastical approbation by Cardinal O’Malley.
This collection provides simple, singable English versions of the graduals, tracts, and alleluias, so it serves as a complement to works such as Simple English Propers by Adam Bartlett or Fr. Samuel Weber’s The Proper of the Mass, which provide settings of entrance, offertory, and communion chants. The texts come from various liturgical books and chant editions.
Congratulations to Fr. Lewis on this accomplishment!
Occasionally in classic Latin hymns we find texts that don’t fit the poetic meter perfectly but have an extra syllable, and these are often notated so as to draw attention to the discrepancy, as here (“digitus”) in the Veni Creator Spiritus:
Some choir directors adjust these “hypermetric syllables” to fit the meter: that is, they may “elide” syllables by omitting the vowel of one syllable and combining the rest of that syllable with the next (or the previous one!). For example, in the doxology at the end of a long-meter hymn, the phrase “cum Patre et almo Spiritu” can be sung in eight syllables as “cum Patr-et almo Spiritu”. On the other hand, some choir directors sing these lines exactly as notated, out of a sense of duty to sing the hymn as directed in the church-approved book.
Today I stumbled on this document in the old (1949/1960) Antiphonale Romanum (page 64*), which addresses the concern about what is permitted.
The question addressed to the Congregation of Rites (back in 1915) was whether these lines should be pronounced distinctly and the added notes sung rigorously as indicated in the Antiphonale, or whether it was permitted to elide those syllables; and the answer from the Congregation came back, “Negative to the first part; affirmative to the second”; that is: it is not required to interpret those lines rigorously, and it is permitted to elide the affected syllables.
So when a text occasionally doesn’t conform to the meter of its tune, it’s fine to make it fit: I hope this helps ease any scruples of worried singers.
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A little about Watts and Co.:
Traditional hand embroidery remains a key part of Watts & Co.’s offering.
Founded in 1874, Watts & Co. has grown from a small firm of Gothic Revival architects to the purveyor of the finest vestments, choir wear, fabrics, and furnishings to churches worldwide.
Heir to his fifth-generation family business, Robert Hoare, took on the prestigious mantle and continues to guide its growth into the 21st century.
Robert’s ancestor, Sir Gilbert Scott Jr, one of the founders of Watts, converted to Catholicism through his encounter with St John Henry Newman. Since then, Watts has seen its relationship with the Church blossom, supplying priests, parishes, choirs and religious communities worldwide with unique vestments, choir wear and liturgical fabrics of timeless beauty.
‘People who come to us discover a craftmanship here which has been carefully preserved from generation to generation,’ explains Robert. At the heart of Watts’ practice is the message of Pope Benedict XVI: beauty is not mere decoration rather an essential element of the liturgical action.
The Watts showroom in Westminster, London, England.
Celebrating its 150 years anniversary this year, Robert Hoare is passionate to maintain and develop the company’s mission of contributing to the beauty of the liturgy far into the future.
