{"id":16182,"date":"2012-09-16T10:15:22","date_gmt":"2012-09-16T16:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=16182"},"modified":"2012-09-23T23:55:20","modified_gmt":"2012-09-24T05:55:20","slug":"chanting-abbots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2012\/09\/16\/chanting-abbots\/","title":{"rendered":"Chanting abbots"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Congress of Abbots at Sant’ Anselmo<\/a> in Rome began yesterday with orientation for new abbots, and today the full assembly of Benedictine abbots is here. On the agenda this year is election of a new Abbot Primate as Abbot Notker Wolf\u2019s term comes to an end.<\/p>\n

Each Benedictine monastery is autonomous, we never tire of reminding people. We lived our entire history with no order-wide confederation until Pope Leo XIII said at the end of the 19th century that we are an \u201cordo sine ordine,\u201d why can\u2019t we be more like the Jesuits and so forth, so the office of Abbot Primate was created \u2013 with the understanding that he has no real authority over abbots or monasteries.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m at the congress as translator (English-German), and also as choirmaster.<\/p>\n

All the services, daily Mass and four offices each day, are entirely sung in Latin chant. At past congresses the booklet layout has been expertly done by the venerable Abbey of Solesmes. The bar has been set high with their very attractive layout. But after the last congress, the bright idea of slightly revised layout, more user-friendly for abbots who aren\u2019t singing Latin every day, came from someone \u2013 moi.<\/p>\n

And so chant booklet preparation has occupied most of my waking hours for the last 3 weeks. (Huge shout-out to Fr. Michael Peterson, OSB, and our graduate student Christy Condyles, for their huge help with the huge layout task.) Thanks to Saint Meinrad Archabbey for allowing the use of its chant font for the Gregorian notation.<\/p>\n

The Antiphonale Monasticum<\/em> gives the psalm antiphon with its melody, and then just the proper \u201ctermination\u201d of the psalm tone, the final melodic cadence, for use with the psalm tone of the proper mode. Then the psalm text, with no \u201cpointing\u201d to indicate which syllables to put under which notes at the cadence. It is understood that everyone memorized all the Gregorian psalm tones at the beginning of novitiate, and that everyone knows the rules of text underlay for every termination of every mode. The termination is given with the vowels \u00a0\u00a0E u o u a e \u00a0\u00a0which stand for the end of the doxology, \u201c\u2026s\u00e6culorum. Amen.\u201d It looks like this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(Btw, I’m told that that some Russian choir recorded the antiphon and then sang the syllables “E u o u a e,” but I haven’t been able to get my hands on it. I suppose I should note how little I know about Russian chant too.)<\/p>\n

With my 2012 reform, it looks like this<\/a>.<\/p>\n