Climbing the Musical Ladder - Just What Are These Things Called Propers?

The other day I spoke with Adam Bartlett of The Chant Cafe about his new venture, The Sacred Music Project.  Adam is a visionary when it comes to the future of sacred music in the Church.  Whereas many people tend to see the ideal, he proposes and implements a mechanism for arriving at it.  The Sacred Music Project is no exception.  I have written quite a bit lately about the use of the Propers in the Mass, but two things gained clarity after my conversation with Adam.  First, most people, including those in music ministry, have never heard of the Propers, hence any reference to these chants gets glossed over.  Second, in the quest for perfecting the Sacred Liturgy it is easy to hold out Gregorian Chant as the goal, but it is much harder to give people direction on how to get from point A to point B.

The perfect place to begin the discussion is to reference to appropriate directive from the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, the norm that governs the music to be played during the processional.  Paragraph 48 states,

“The singing at this time is done either alternately by the choir and the people or in a similar way by the cantor and the people, or entirely by the people, or by the choir alone. In the dioceses of the United States of America there are four options for the Entrance Chant: (1) the antiphon from the Roman Missal or the Psalm from the Roman Gradual as set to music there or in another musical setting; (2) the seasonal antiphon and Psalm of the Simple Gradual; (3) a song from another collection of psalms and antiphons, approved by the Conference of Bishops or the Diocesan Bishop, including psalms arranged in responsorial or metrical forms; (4) a suitable liturgical song similarly approved by the Conference of Bishops or the Diocesan Bishop.”

The first thing to notice is that there are four options listed in a deliberate order for the entrance.*  The second thing to notice is that virtually every parish in American opts exclusively for the very last choice, “a suitable liturgical song.”  Talk of the “Propers” or the “Proper Chant” is a reference to choice number one.  The texts in Mass can be broadly funneled into two categories, the Ordinary and the Propers.  The Ordinary are those texts which are said (or sung) every Sunday, for instance the Gloria or the Agnus Dei.  The Propers are those texts which change from Sunday to Sunday based either on the liturgical season or the cycle of feast days and solemnities.  Included in this would be the Collect (the prayer to close the entrance rite) and the prayer after communion.  These texts are provided by the Church to form a unified celebration that highlights both the scriptural readings from the day or the nature of the feast.  What most people don’t realize is that the Propers include five chants, each selected by the Church for that particular celebration: an introductory chant (Introit), a responsorial psalm (Gradual), an Alleluia, an Offertory chant, and a Communion chant.  Obviously we have retained the use of the Responsorial Psalm and Alleluia, and the communion antiphon appears in many of the missalettes (though rarely used).  The offertory is the least known because, for whatever reason, it has been almost universally eliminated from musical publications in the United States.

Two things are worth mentioning.  First, these texts are provided by the Church in much the same way the the various prayers are provided for each celebration.  Second, the Church herself provides the music for these chants in her official songbook, the Graduale Romanum.  Pope after Pope has exalted the use of the Proper chants and held them up as the standard by which all liturgical music should be judged.  It seems to me that these chants, then, should form the beginning of the weekly conversation about “what to sing” in Mass.

The best way to show people that the Church has given us musical assignments for every Sunday of the year is to show people the Gregorian Missal.  The intent of the Missal is to be the songbook that sits in the pews for the congregation and it contains all of the chants for each Sunday of the year.  The people can open up the book to any given Sunday and see the music that the Church has not only provided but also recommends.

As an example of this, let us examine the Introit chant for the First Sunday in Advent.**

At the top of the ladder is the ideal, the goal of our liturgical music, and the text/music that should guide our choice for an entrance song.  The Introit chant given by the Church int the Graduale Romanum is Ad te levavi.  The same chant is found in the shorter Gregorian Missal .  Notice that the text is in Latin, the language of the Church that is to be given pride of place, and that the format consists of a refrain, a Psalm verse, and the refrain repeated.  I would classify this Introit as a strong “medium” in terms of difficulty.  There are certainly Gregorian Chants that are easier and others that are harder than Ad te levavi.  While this is the ideal, it is clear that most parish choirs will not be able to immediately jump into this selection.

What follows is a recording of the chant.

The Church has always held Sacred Polyphony, particularly that of the great composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, in high regards.  While Gregorian Chant is consistently mentioned in Church documents as both the norm and ideal of sacred music, polyphony is often mentioned in the very next breath.  In fact, whenever the Church states her allowance of “other types of music” she almost always does so in the context of the polyphonic tradition.  This rung of the ladder is more complex than the Gregorian melody and would take a talented choir indeed, but it is positioned below the official Introit simply because the former is official.  The composition below is by none other than Palestrina and is composed for five voices.  It can be found on the Choral Public Domain Library.  You will notice the label for the piece indicates that it is for the Offertory Chant on the First Sunday of Advent (Offertorium, Dominica prima Adventus).  For this particular Sunday, the texts for the Introit and the Offertorium are from the same Psalm and bear nearly identical lyrics.  In the Graduale the two nearly-identical texts are set to different melodies.  While Palestrina composed this for the Offertory, it is certainly appropriate for an entrance piece as well.

The following is a beautiful recording of the composition directed by the remarkable Domenico Bartolucci, former director of the Sistine Chapel Choir.

The next selection comes from the Anglican Use Gradual.  It is the very same Psalm translated into English; moreover, it is also set to the same melody as the original Gregorian Proper.  Look back at the first selection and compare the neumes.  Because it is translated into English it is more accessible to a choir untrained in Latin.  It also has the possibility of congregation response.

Fr. Columba Kelly has given the Church some very beautiful alternate settings.  The following selection for Psalm 25 is a simpler arrangement than that found in the Graduale and the Anglican Use Gradual.    As we mover further away from the Gregorian Missal we will find less resemblance to the original Proper but perhaps more accessibility.

For the next sample we return to the Anglican Use Gradual.  In addition to the melody from the Graduale, the Anglican Use provides a much simpler intonation.  People familiar with the Graduale will notice that the melody used in the refrain is the same that often appears in the verse for the Gregorian Introits.  (The Christmas Puer natus est comes to mind, thought this is one of many.)  Because of the simplified melody, this chant should be accessible to most choirs.

Moving down the ladder we come across a surprising source from a Lutheran resource: Introits and Graduals for the Church Year by Healey Willan.  This collection was originally pointed out to me by Jeffrey Tucker of the Chant Cafe.  You will notice that this is much more “hymn like”.  Strictly speaking it is not a hymn because of the lack of strict meter.  The counts in each measure vary anywhere from three to five.  It is intended to be sung in a more fluid “chant like” style.  It differs form the other options (excepting the Palestrina piece) in that is is written for multiple voices.

At the bottom of the ladder we find the fourth option from the GIRM, a “suitable song.”  The first thing to notice is that the choice was inspired by the Introit from the Graduale.  This is deliberate and emphasizes the ideal as the starting point.  Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth of the ICEL (the committee that dealt with, among other things, the new translation of the Roman Missal), in a recent address said that the Church offers the Propers as a sort of lectio divina for the liturgy of the day.  To approach music selection with a sort of tabula rasa approach is to impose one own’s interpretation on the Scriptures.  Instead, the texts proper to the Mass, given in the Gregorian Propers, should serve to motivate the choice of hymn.  The choice below is a beautiful hymn attributed to Jacques Arcadelt, available at the Choral Public Domain Library

By no means is this intended to be an exhausted list.  There are some notable omissions including settings by Richard Rice and Fr. Samuel Weber.  Lesser known selections come from the American Gradual and the Arbogast Propers.  Further, there are other Latin polyphonic pieces available at the Choral Domain Public Library by the likes of Alessandro Scarlatti and Franz Xaver Witt.  My aim is not to present every viable option, but rather to demonstrate the “ladder approach” to choosing sacred music for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Two things become apparent in this sort of presentation.  First, music directors are able to see “where” they are on the ladder and gain some insight on how to progress up the ladder towards the ideal.  Second, it makes clear that ideal at the top influences the lower rungs.  In other words, in choosing music for the Mass, directors should begin by studying the Gregorian Propers always with an eye towards reaching that top rung.  As a side note, every piece listed above is available free on the internet as part of either the Public Domain or the Creative Commons.

Whether or not the Sacred Music Project. will have a similar presentation for each Sunday of the year remains to be seen.  What is clear is that the project will undoubtedly serve as a a tremendous resources for the reform of sacred music in the Church.  I, for one, can’t wait.

* Similar norms govern the Offertory and Communion chants.

** Adam has been doing similar presentations at the Chant Cafe for the pending Sunday, so I wanted to pick something far enough away in the liturgical cycle so as not to step on his toes.