Creator Ineffábilis chant setting

[Geremia]

I have attached View attachment 12642 a PDF of my finished chant setting of Creator Ineffábilis to this post. Deo gratias! You can download it here, too.

I was using LilyPond, but it doesn’t support chant notation very well. Then, after a long hiatus, I discovered on The Chant Café the Caeciliae Gregorian chant OpenType font, which I used to notate the setting.

Please let me know how its formatting can be improved; I’m sure I violated chant notation rules in some places; e.g., there are currently no vertical episemas. Please also check for errors in my Latin syllabication.

Thanks & happy Epiphany!

 

[Geremia]

Brian Kenny:

I’m a musician, but I’m not at all, much to my misfortune, familiar with Gregorian Chant, especially the notation.

I’m not an expert either, especially at the fine details of interpretation. The basics are very easy to master. I actually know some people (myself included) who know both chant and modern notations, but when singing chant they prefer chant notation. One reason I don’t sing in the choir at my current parish is because they refuse to learn chant notation, but it’s not hard.
Brian Kenny:

Is there an online resource I could access that would help me in reading this musical format.

Yes, MusicaSacra.com is the best resource, especially their “Sheet Music, Chant Books, Hymns for download” page.

To begin:

• Read the introduction of the freely downloadable [PDF of the 1961 Liber Usualis (http://musicasacra.com/pdf/liberusualis.pdf). It compares, inter alia, modern and chant notations. It is also a handy reference for all the types of neumes.
• Read “Singing Gregorian Chant: Pitch and Mode.” The Liber’s intro doesn’t go over modes much at all, so this is a good supplement for it.

Interestingly, there is online a scanned PDF of [Paul VI’s Jubilate Deo (Registrant WHOIS contact information verification | Namecheap.com) hymnal in chant notation that he sent to all bishops in 1974 and which unfortunately fell on completely silent ears, contrary to Sacrosanctum Concilium’s saying chant should have “pride of place” in the Mass…

Another interesting tidbit about chant is that the phrase “actuosa participatio” unanimously meant, before Vatican II, “singing Gregorian chant.” (source: intro of “The Mass of Vatican II”).