Here in the Diocese of the Extraordinary Ordinary, we are getting ready for a solemn Palm Sunday and Triduum. There are many details to work out ahead of time so that the rites can run smoothly and prayerfully. Happily, I have the best crew anywhere! They will perform expertly.
Among those tasks on my To Do List is the extraction of my pre-Conciliar Passionale which is in 3 parts: Chronista (the “narrator” who handles all the text that is not of a person speaking), Christus (who sings only the words of Christ), and Synagoga (who sings all words spoken by anyone not Christ) The duties of the Synagoga are sometimes divided between a single singer in the sanctuary, who takes the words spoken by one person, and a choir which sings the words spoken by crowd, called the Turba, sometimes in polyphonic settings.
Here are my books, which pre-date the 1955 chances to Holy Week. They therefore have the Chronista’s haunting ad libitum Passion tone for the part of the Gospel that the reformers in 1955 (Bugnini et al.) denied us. I fully intend to do it anyway.
Each volume has the chant notation only for the part that that person is to sing. Handy.
Here is the first page of the Passion of St. Matthew, sung on Palm Sunday.
Here is page from Christus. You can see that the Chronista has text without notation.
From the Synagoga book. He has a lot less to do. His parts are marked with S., but the Turba is SS.
Some years ago, as a service to priests and deacons preparing to sing the Passion, I recorded the Passion of Matthew and of John. They are at my PRAYERCAzT page. Matthew is HERE.
