Genealogy of Christ According to Matthew in Dominican Chant

In time for Christmas, we are making available the Dominican Chant for the Genealogy of Jesus Christ According to Matthew, found in the appendix to the Missale Ordinis Praedicatorum. Traditionally part of the Office of Matins for Christmas, when it is sung after the last Responsory, the Genealogy may also be used with the modern Liturgy of the Hours. According to the Proprium Officii Ordinis Praedicatorum (1982), p. 692, it may be sung after the second Responsory of Office of Readings, especially when this Office is sung just before Midnight Mass, or it may be transferred and sung in place of the Short Reading at First Vespers of Christmas.

The chant may be downloaded here, or from the left sidebar.

Dominican Chants of Good Friday

Among the most beautiful chants of the Dominican Office of Tenebrae (Matins and Laudes on the days of the Pascal Triduum) are the responsories used with the Lamentations and other readings. By provision of the Proprium Officiorum Ordinis Praedicatorum (1982), these may also be used with the modern Liturgy of the Hours. This excellent video, made available by Bro. Lawrence Lew, O.P., shows the friars of Blackfriars Oxford chanting the responsories Velum Templi and Tradiderunt Me, as well as the Benedictus (in English).

We at St. Albert the Great Priory in Oakland have also been celebrating Tenebrae, but, unfortunately, I have no videos or recordings.

May these beautifully performed chants inspire other Dominican communities to take advantage of the chant treasures of the Order approved for use with the Liturgy of the Hours.

Dominican Chants of Lenten Compline

I am happy to make available to our readers the following presentation by Bro. Innocent Smith, O.P., of the St. Joseph Province, about some of the most famous and beautiful distinctive Dominican chants for Compline during Lent.

I would also mention these three chants are also sung at St. Albert the Great Priory, our House of Studies in Oakland. We sing the Evigila with the Nunc Dimittis daily from Ash Wednesday to the Third Sunday of Lent; we sing O Rex with the Nunc Dimittis from the Third Sunday to the Triduum. The Media Vita is sung in place of the short responsory In Manus tuas after the reading on First and Second Vespers of Sundays and Solemnities and everyday during Holy Week. On other days of Lent, we sing another Dominican responsory, the In Pace in place of the short responsory.

I hope this provides readers with a spiritual meditation on the spirituality and liturgy of Lent in anticipation of Holy Week and Easter.

With special thanks to Bro. Innocent!

13th-Century Stabat: Text and Music

Through the kindness of one of our readers who converted the PDFs of this music into JPGs I can now post this newly discovered 13th-Century Sequence version of the Stabat Mater for viewing by readers. The PDFs may still be downloaded here.

I am aware that these images are a bit blurry; if you click on them or download them, you will get a clearer image. I had hoped to have an audio file of this ready today, but this was not humanly possible. In any case, may God grant you all a blessed feastday.

Dominican Stabat Mater (XIII century)

As the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows is approaching on September 15, I thought it would be suitable to present to our readers a transcription of the text and music of the thirteenth-century version of the Stabat Mater, recently discovered by Cesarini Ruini in a manuscript that once belonged to a convent of Dominican Nuns in Bologna, Italy, and on which I have recently posted. A miniature of the Bologna nuns, from their manuscript, decorates this post.

I have transcribed the manuscript version of this music and made it available here. Unfortunately I cannot post it as an image on the blog because I have been unable to create a jpeg from the pdf file. Those interested can download a copy. I have taken the liberty of transposing the music to match the do-clef which would be more common today. The manuscript used a fa-clef in unusual positions to avoid the use of the b-flat, the usual Dominican medieval practice. It seemed better to avoid this oddity, which has not been used in Dominican music books since 1890.

In the current Liturgy of the Hours, the Stabat is prescribed for us, divided into three parts, as the Office hymns of that day. Use as a hymn was the most common medieval use. It is also preserved, in its more common modern liturgical use, as the sequence of the feast.

The discovery of this manuscript, as explained in the article available here (in Italian), shows, by the date that the traditional ascription of authorship to Jacopone of Todi can no longer be sustained. The date, however, leaves open the possibility, often mentioned, that it is the work of Pope Innocent III.

This new version is interesting for a number of reasons. First, this is the earliest use of the text as a sequence. Until the discovery of this version, it was only known as a hymn until the late middle ages. This manuscript shows that the earliest known use of the text as a sequence was among Italian Dominican nuns in the late 1200s.

Next, the text includes not only a number of verbal variants, but also includes two verses absent from the commonly received version. Those who wish to examine these can download my transcription and compare the text to the received version here.

Even more interesting is the music. As pointed out to me by the nuns of Summit NJ, this ancient sequence borrows, with the exception of one stanza melody (cf. verses 19 and 20), the melodies of the Sequence of St. Dominic in the Dominican Rite. There are a number of minor musical variants as well. Those interested might want to compare the music to that found in the Dominican Gradual for the Mass of St. Dominic.

Perhaps some Dominicans (and non-Dominicans) may want to make use of the ancient version on the up-coming celebration of Our Lady of Sorrows.

Thirteenth-Century Dominican Stabat Mater Found

It has been called to my attention that an important article has been published, announcing the discovery of the famous Stabat Mater used as a sequence in the Gradual produced by a convent of Dominican nuns in Bologna in the later thirteenth century. This is by far the earliest known example of this hymn used as a sequence rather than as a devotional hymn. It has been commonly believed that the hymn only became used as a sequence in the late middle ages. It is also interesting that the melody provided matches neither the received Roman one nor that found in the printed Dominican books. This text is found in Bologna: Museo Civico Medievale MS 518, fo. 200v-04r.

The news was published in Cesarino Ruini, "Un antico versione dello Stabat Mater in un graduale delle Domenicane bolognesi," Deo è lo scrivano ch’el canto à ensegnato: Segni e simboli nella musica al tempo di Iacopone, Atti del Convegno internazionale, Collazzone, 7-8 luglio 2006, ed. Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi and Stefania Vitale, Philomusica On-line, 9, no. 3 (2010). Those who would like the full text of the chant may find it at the end of this article.

For those who do not wish to read the article in Italian, here is the English summary:

The discovery of a Stabat Mater version set to music as a sequence in a late 13th-century Gradual from a Bolognese Dominican nunnery, makes it possible to advance new hypotheses about the origins and history of this renowned text. Untilnow there was no evidence that it was used as a sequence before the mid 15th century. The analysis of the piece highlights previously unidentified peculiarities regarding the historical and the liturgico-musical context in which it was used, whilst the comparison with the wealth of textual variants offered by its complex tradition points to concordances with later sources, mainly originating in Veneto and Emilia. As one of the earliest witnesses of this popular composition (there is only one other contemporary version, also from Bologna, but it is unnotated) there can be no doubt about its importance for textual criticism, and, inter alia, it does not favour the disputable paternity of Iacopone da Todi.

Here is the image of the manuscript with the beginning of the chant.



Careful readers will not that there are textual variants in this version as well. The Dominican Rite used by the friars added the Stabat Mater as a sequence on the feast of our Lady of Sorrows only in the 15th Century, conforming the rite to the Roman, which had already added it. But the melody is not that of the thirteenth-century version. Here it is for comparison:



And here for additional comparison is the first verse with the melody as found in the 1961 Roman Gradual:


I would hope that some attempt will be made to use this chant.

I thank Bro. Innocent Smith, O.P., for calling this article to my attention.

Chant Chant at Thomistic Conference

I t may interest our readers to know that music extracted Vol. 3: Tempus per Annum I of the Antiphonarium pro Liturgia Horarum iuxta Usum Ordinis Praedicatorum available on the left side bar of Dominican Liturgy, is being used for the singing of the entire office during the Thomistic Institute Meeting Dominicans and the Challenge of Thomism in Warsaw Poland, July 1-5, 2010.

Six members of my Western Dominican Province are attending this conference; and Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P., our blog editor, was asked to provide the music program. A copy of this music program may be downloaded here. Links to download recordings of the papers are available at the confrernce website.

Solemn Requiem Mass for the Dead

Our readers have seen still photos of the Solemn High Dominican Rite Mass for the Dead at Blessed Sacrament Church in Seattle last All Souls Day. We now have a very well done video with excerpts from the Mass and the chant of the Dies Irae:



If you liked this video and the Dominican Chant in it, check the new publication of the chants for Compline with the Dominican Rite chants approved for the Liturgy of the Hours, available here.

This Mass was celebrated by priests of the Western Dominican Province.

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.

New Holy Week Chants now available for download

I am pleased to announce that, through the kindness a friar reader of this site, we can now make available in PDF format for download the chant book Cantus Gregoriani ad Ordinem Hedomadae Sanctae Iuxta Ritum Ordinis Praedicatorum (Rome: Santa Sabina, 1959).

As many of our readers know, and as I have explained in my history of the Dominican Liturgy post on this site, the Dominican Rite Holy Week rituals underwent extensive revision in the 1950s to make them conform to the reformed Roman Liturgy. As our rite is a monastic rite and did not have any provisions for blessings of the font (non-existant in monastic churches), baptisms, and other aspects of the secular liturgy, this was a major revision. To supply chants for the reformed rites presented great challenges. The editors of the Cantus Gregoriani sought out as many authentic medieval versions of the chant as they could find and adopted others from the modern Roman tradition.

This set of chants represents the last effort to conform the Dominican Rite Holy Week to Roman practice using medieval music. In 1965, this material would be consolidated into the last edition of the Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae, but in that edition they music would be drastically revised to conform to the Solesmes methods of execution and notation. Those interested in the music of the Dominican Rite before accomodation to the Solesmes regime will find this download especially useful.

The music may be downloaded on the side bar under Hebdomadae Sanctae Cantus Novi.

Dominican Nuns of Marbury Alabama

I promised the Dominican nuns of the Monastery of St. Jude in Marbury, Alabama, that I would mention them to our readers and emphasize their dedication to Dominican Chant. But I also want to pay tribute to the community's commitment to racial justice. At the time of their founding in 1944, they were among the first cloistered nuns to break the color line in the Deep South, something very difficult at that time. To the right you can see a picture of the some of the youngest and oldest members of the community.

I have often been asked whether there are any houses of cloistered Dominican nuns in the United States who are dedicated to preserving the chants of the Dominican Order, and I have always answered that all the monasteries of nuns preserve the chant to a greater or lesser degree. But my friends, the sisters of Marbury, are especially dear to my heart because I have been collaborating with them for almost two years in the revision of their music.

Like most of the Dominican monasteries in the U.S., the sisters at Marbury were then using the "Neo-Gregorian" music produced back in the 1970s in the monastery of Buffalo N.Y. When the Dominican nuns, following the friars, adopted the new Roman Liturgy of the Hours back in 1970, they discovered that many, if not most, of the antiphons and other chants of the Liturgia Horarum were new creations and had no music in the medieval chant tradition. In a heroic project old melodies were adapted to fit the new texts. Monasteries of our nuns adopted this music around the world, when they did not convert to vernacular chants.

About two years ago, the sisters of Marbury contacted me asking if there were any way to replace the Neo-Gregorian music with authentic Dominican chants. I assured them that it was possible and we began the project of compiling a new Antiphonal using the order of authentic antiphons given in the Ordo Cantus Officii published by the Sacred Congregation in 1983. Almost all these antiphons have Dominican variants and the substitutions were made. Parts of this project were already in use by the nuns last spring, and when I visited Marbury to celebrate a Missa Cantata in the Dominican Rite for Ascension Thursday. I was then able to hear the Paschal Time Office, with its traditional Alleluia antiphons, in use with the Liturgia Horarum for the first time in my life. The chants for that Mass were those from the Dominican Gradual, which the nuns also use at their regular Extraordinary Form Masses according the Roman Missal of 1962.

The Marbury sisters have always maintained the chant as part of their life of prayer, and it is central to their daily Horarium. When complete, the Advent-Christmas volume of the new Antiphonal will contain the complete music for all the Hours, not just Vespers as at present. The sisters plan to begin introducing this restored music on the First Sunday of Advent. The only thing lacking will be the "prolix responsories" for use at the Office of Readings, but I have included those responsories appointed for use in place of the short responses at First Vespers of Solemnities by the 1983 Proprium Ordinis Praedicatorum. And page references are will be provided for those not included. They can be found in the Dominican Antiphonals of 1863 and 1933, both available for dowload in PDF format on the side bar here at Dominican Liturgy. When complete this new Antiphonal will be available there too.

The Marbury sisters are a small community, but they have been blessed recently with an increase in vocations. They have asked me to call their community to the attention of young Catholic women who feel called to the Dominican spiritual tradition of study and prayer in the form of the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, but especially to those women who have a love of Gregorian Chant. Those interested may find the vocation page here. Even if you are not thinking of a vocation to the sisters, their web page is still worth a visit.