At what became my home parish back in my native place, on Saturday mornings there was always a modest sung Mass in Latin, with incense and Gregorian chant.
People would file into the chapel and take from a basket to the left of the door a copy of the Kyriale (if they didn’t have one of their own). A small schola, just three or four of the larger Sunday group, would sing the Propers.
The whole congregation sang the Ordinary. Before Mass the director of the choir would simply announce which Mass setting was to be used, ("Today we are singing Mass IV.") and people simply sang it.
Over the years many people no longer needed to use the Kyriale: they knew the chants by heart.
Want to talk about congregational singing? This was no assembly being hounded by an arm waving wanna be American Idol contestant with a mic. Over one hundred people singing chant: blue collar workers and old ladies, students and execs, women religious, children and a scattering of seminarians on a stealthy foray from what we called "The Hole" just to learn and recharge batteries.
Growing up as a Lutheran, I remember the congregation singing in four part harmony from a hymnal. Can’t Catholic congregations can’t sing a one part Gregorian chant setting from a Kyriale?
This is not rocket science. Chant is not hard. Singing Gregorian chant can and should be entirely normal for a parish. The Council said that Latin was to be retained (SC 36) and that the faithful should be able to sing and speak the parts that pertain to them (SC 54). Gregorian chant should have pride of place (SC 116).
Are we going to pretend the Council didn’t mean what it promulgated?
In this time when people are reassessing the Second Vatican Council through a hermeneutic of continuity, in this time when people are stressing fidelity to the Council in the face of a resurgent traditional worship, Gregorian chant must be more widely embraced.
With a biretta tip to NLM I visited a site designed to help people learn to sing Gregorian Chant Ordinaries for Holy Mass.
Saint Antoine Daniel Gregorian Chant Ordinaries
The site is beautifully designed. You can listen to recordings of each of the chants in the Kyriale, which is a small book published my Solesmes and which contains these settings (Kyrie, Gloria, Creed, Sanctus, Agnus Dei).
Since the Kyriale simply numbers these settings with Roman numerals, it could be hard for newbies to figure out which setti
ng to use for which Mass, and also how to sing them. Appropriate recommendations are made for which Mass setting to sing for different seasons or feasts. For example, if it is a Sunday of Advent you should use Missa XVII and can use Credo IV.
The site is very well designed and easy to navigate. They provide mp3s of the individual pieces sung both by an individual and a schola. The schola versions are, I believe, mostly from recordings, such as those made by the monks at Solesmes. It looks like they will eventually have a YouTube link. This is a site under construction. You can also download the musical score with the Gregorian chant notation and also for organ accompaniment.
The site could be useful for both people who want to sing chant for both the older, traditional form of the Roman Rite as well as for the Novus Ordo.
Let us not forget that Gregorian chant really is the official music for the Novus Ordo. Hopefully more and more priests and parish music directors will come to realize that and use sites like these to bring Gregorian chant to their congregations.
Finally, on the site in question there is a description of who St. Antonie Daniel was and why his name was chosen for the site.
