Dominican Antiphonal Completed

The Antiphonarium pro Liturgia Horarum iuxta Usum Ordinis Praedicatorum, is now complete for the entire liturgical office of the year. The six PDF files of this music are available gratis for download on the left sidebar. Readers are reminded that these are large files (about 9 megabites, over a 1000 printed pages each). So be patient when downloading.

This antiphonal, created for singing the Divine Office in Gregorian chant according to the Dominican musical tradtion, has all the chants needed for Office of Readings (including the Invitatory Psalm), Lauds, the Midday Office (including Terce, Sext, and None), Vespers, and Compline.

The only chants lacking are the Prolix Responsories for the Office of Readings, although references to where to find these in the Dominican chant books are inserted, and these responsories are included for all days of Holy Week and the Triduum. According to Dominican tradition, preserved for use with the new office in the 1982 Proprium approved for the Order, many other Prolix Respsonsories are inlcuded for optional use at Vespers. The Dominican chants for the Lamentations and the prayer of Jeremiah, as well as the Litanic Prayers, are found in the section for Holy Week. Thus, that music of Tenebrae approved for use with the Liturgy of the Hours is complete. Compline may be downloaded in a separate file.

This project began three years ago. The music was transcribed from Dominican (available for download on the left sidebar) and Roman sources, and, in the case of the Dominican music, corrected from the Poissy Antiphonal, a "certified" fourteenth-century manuscipt. The chants have been sung and corrected by the cloistered Dominican Nuns of Marbury Alabama. As they continue to sing through the music, corrections will certainly be made in these files.

The page of the Poissy Antiphonal with the Salve Regina decorates this post.