Questions or suggestions?

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Questions and suggestions are always welcome — just leave a comment on this post, or any other that seems more relevant.

By providing feedback, you are helping to make this project a more useful resource.

Thanks!

28 thoughts on “Questions or suggestions?”

  1. Thank you for this very worthwhile project!
    Do you have any suggestions for beginners trying to learn the chants? I am very familiar with Gregorian chant, having sung for Mass in the Extraordinary Form for about 10 years, but not well enough versed to pick up a new piece of chant and read it, since I am more familiar with standard notation (from four years of collegiate choir). I have found the information on this site useful, but am still unsure how to navigate the different tones and chants for the first time.
    Thank you!
    Sarah

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  2. Being able “to pick up a new pick up a new piece of chant and read it” is skill that can, and should be learned. Solfege syllables, i.e. Do-re-mi are the number one tool for this, but I think that in trying to acquire this skill one also uses every other possible way of looking at things to try to program the brain to be able to translate notation to singing, and vice versa.

    For example, you could use:
    Solfege syllables – Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do is the major scale, and Do can be any pitch
    Letter names – for fixed pitches; C D E F G A B C, and so forth
    Numbers for the notes of the scale – 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 for the major scale
    Whole-steps vs. Half-steps – and well as minor 3rd’s, major 3rd’s, perfect 4th’s / 5th’s, etc.
    Square notes / 4-line staff – chant notation
    Round notes / 5-line staff – modern modern
    Curwen-Kodaly Hand signs
    Colors – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Brown, Red (my preference!)
    The mechanism of any instrument – what buttons do you press?

    One way to think of the problem is that you are trying to do is develop a repertoire of things that you can sing which includes every possible interval combination. Thus, if I said “here is Do; now sing me Do-re-mi”, you could probably do it; you just need to broaden to be able to pull out of a hat “Do-mi-sol”, or “Re-mi-fa” or “Re-la-te-la” and so on.

    By the way, the FSSP has a site with solfege exercises in square notes, together with mp3 recordings, here: http://www.fsspolgs.org/liturgical3.html

    You can also check out the Musica Sacra Forum, here: http://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/

    Thus far for now.

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    • Yes, learning the skill is my end goal.

      It can be easier said than done though, since I don’t have much experience in more advanced music theory. I am a homeschool graduate, though, so I’m used to self-teaching, and I found the link to the Fraternity’s chant page extremely useful! I plan on working through some of the exercises soon. I have recently been directing my younger sister and her friends for choir for our small Latin Mass congregation, and have found it extremely problematic to not understand the notation fully. This helps a lot – I think I understand when I think of the notes in terms of the ‘do, re, mi…’ scale. Pulling out various intervals such as ‘do’ to ‘fa’ will definitely take some practice, but I now know where to begin.

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  3. Would gladly pay a monthly fee for the streaming of all or most of the office. The Monastic Breviary has multiple sites, but, the Roman Breviary only has this site and one office. It was very well done, and, I could readily follow the cantor, but, had to use my wife’s windows machine. I never got it to play on my iMac and couldn’t use the NG player that was referred too. Incidentally, the player surreptiously loaded MacKeeper which I thought was an invasion of my privacy.

    Well done, and remember there are those who would love to follow the entire day of office.

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  4. I was very pleased today to have the Lauds play on my iMac, I don’t know what I did but it played withot a problem. You do a great service, and the office is always sung with great reverence. Deo gratias.

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  5. I am glad to hear that it worked today; I have thought that maybe a different mp3-hosting site might help with things like this, but have been reluctant to do anything about trying one.

    Regarding doing more of the office: at present, just keeping the Lauds going is proving to be about as much as I can handle some times; however, I would welcome anyone wanting to post recordings of other hours.

    So, the expansion is foreseen, but not yet practical.

    What would be really good is a community singing this Roman secular form of the office who could post their daily office after the manner of Le Barroux or Norcia. Then we’d be all set.

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  6. Congratulations on this amaing project! I follow you sometimes with my Baronius breviary. By the way, I need to brush up on my Latin. Do you have any textbook suggestions? Again a thousand thanks for your wonderful initiative.

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  7. I don’t really have recommendations for Latin textbooks, though I can give you what I have used:

    In highschool / homeschool, I did Henle, the first two books and a grammar (though I didn’t finish the second book). Then in college, I did what were the 2nd and 3rd semester courses offered there using Wheelock, which book I don’t remember at all.

    The emphasis in college was to get you to the point where you could translate anything using a dictionary, which is a good goal to have in mind. Nowadays, when I need to understand something precisely, this is indeed how I operate; just that the dictionary I use also has a guide to grammar in the front, consisting of all the tables of noun, verb, adjective endings, etc. which one tends to forget. What I have on hand happens to be a cheap paperback entitled “The Bantam New College Latin & English Dictionary Revised and Enlarged”, which has the name of Traupman on it. On the other hand, when I want a more antiquated perspective, I sometimes look up things in an 1891 Lewis & Short Dictionary which I downloaded from archive.org.

    For pronunciation, the guides in Rossini and the Parish Book of Chant are the ones I remember using, and I think these are pretty satisfactory (though, I mostly tend to hand out my own reworkings of these when I need to give people something).

    Thus far for Latin resources that I have used or still use.

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  9. Hi I am a big fan. Thanks so much I sing lauds everyday, although I would say I am a beginner so the recordings are much appreciated. I have had the PDF of the antiphonal for a while . I would love a hard copy.Do you know anywhere that would be available?

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  10. Hi Jonathan. I was wondering if there’s a way to search for previous recordings. For instance today is the day before quinquagesima and I’d like to find last year’s so that I can practice before tomorrow morning. Please let me know. Thanks

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  11. Hello Steve,

    Just now saw this comment about previous recordings. The free site I use to store the recordings has limited storage, so all the Lauds mp3’s get taken down after about 2-3 weeks to make room for more. If you need anything specific, let me know, and I’ll see what I can do, since I do still have all the old recordings still on my computer.

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  12. Do you have a booklet for Laudes for the Little Office of the BVM that you could share?

    I notice on your other blog that you have a number of booklets for some of the little hours but I didn’t see one for laudes.

    Thanks

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  13. Hello. I cannot seem to find out how to reach except this way. I did not mean to include my full name on my last comment. Could you please not allow it to be posted as the moderator, and then I will repost it later? I just do not want my full name online.

    Thank you and sorry for that.

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  14. HERE IS THE COMMENT TO WHICH THE ABOVE RELATES:

    Hello! Just a few quick questions:

    I am trying to pray to full Office (except for Matins, in which I only do one nocturn) while also being a layman. I want to begin chanting, and your site is a great resource to help.

    I currently use the Baronius Breviary. When I incorporate chant, I use a PDF of the 1960 Antiphonal on my Kindle. The biggest question I have is this: is there a way to learn, with practice, how to assign the notes of the tones to any Latin psalm verse text without any extra markings that appear in books like the Liber Usualis (e.g. italics and bold marks)? Eventually, I would love to learn how to just read through my Baronius breviary without reference to other works except for a) the antiphons and b) some hymns I am not used to.

    Secondly, in your humble opinion, how fast can one chant Lauds while still remaining reverent? I know this differs for everyone, and that in a sense this is not the way we should approach prayer. However, in terms of practicality, it will help me determine if I should even attempt to chant Lauds in my current state of life. I am assuming once you get very experienced, it can be done in 20 minutes on a regular day.

    Thirdly, ever consider a podcast?

    Thank you and God bless.

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  15. Greetings from Chile, Jonathan. I would like to congratulate and thank you for this outstanding project. Can I have your email address? I would like to help with some more daily Offices, starting with Compline, if you would welcome a new collaborator. Thanks in advance!

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  16. I very much appreciate your site! We have a group trying to learn Compline and this has been so helpful for us. I have been trying to listen to Advent tones from last year, but they aren’t working on this site as far as I can tell. Is there another way to access them so we can try to be ready for Advent? Thank you so much!!

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  18. The 1962 Liber Usualis that I have in hard copy, in Latin, says:

    Hic tonus servandus est ad Completorium per totum Adventum usque ad vigiliam Nativitatis exclusive, in Officiis de Tempore tantum.

    So you would only use it on Sundays and ferias, when no feast was being observed.

    Note: apparently this is a new rubric, because older Libers have a different rubric, which you can still see in the one the CMAA has scanned.

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  19. Please could you let me know if Lydia will be creating a new Lenten calendar this year. It is integral to my kids’ Lenten journey each year! Thank you!

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  23. We are going to be doing it with the priests on Good Friday, but I have since seen that it’s just recto tono so need for much more on that one 🙂 Thanks!

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