Honestly Fr., I’m not really sure if there exists any other English responsorial psalm music that would fit your needs. It’s either banal and contemporary, or it’s traditional, of which I only know the Chabanel psalms, which you don’t like. Anyone else? You might look in to using the graduals instead (perhaps?).
However, I must ask, why do you have to sing the resp. psalms yourself? Does not the organist or a cantor or even the choir do that?
Yes, the choir does it.
It’s not just a matter of personally not liking them. The issue is that they just don’t sound like chant. They’re very difficult to sing. There is a certain natural flow to chant—one can do it without any reference to musical notes.
I remember back in the 70s our missallettes used to have all the psalms and antiphons. The whole congregation could chant them all based just on the printed words because there was a natural flow to them. They were always the same tune day to day.
Here’s an example
Introit Sun. Feb. 5
Come let us sing to the Lord
Let us make a joyful noise unto God our Savior
Without being able to read music, I can chant that immediately without even thinking about it.
Co----me let-us-sing TO the-Lord
Let-us-mak-a-joyful-noise-unto GOD our sa—vior
alternately:
Co—me let-us-sing-to THE Lord
(although the emphasis on “the” doesn’t make a lot of sense, so it gets moved to “to”)
I couldn’t write the musical notes if I wanted to, so bear with me here. It’s the best I can do to describe it. If you hand me ANY introit from any Mass, any Gospel acclamation, any antiphon, I can chant it immediately just like the above.
It comes out very naturally. It’s the second to last syllable of the first line that gets emphasis, and the 4th to last syllable in the last line. (at least I think so. I can do it easier than I can describe it).
Back in the 70s our missallettes had all the antiphons printed for every day (even weekdays). We never chanted the psalms (literally never).
Even as schoolchildren, we could chant every day’s antiphons based on nothing more than the written words and the fact that they were printed with some emphasis on that syllable that gets it (bold or all caps, I don’t recall, maybe it was underlined?). The whole congregation could do this quite easily and most of all, naturally.
That’s what I’m looking for today. All the psalms I can find use a musical form that is just “unexpected” All of them sound “forced.” It’s that dissonance I mentioned earlier. I don’t know what it means, but that’s how it’s described to me.
If you know an Eastern priest (Catholic or Orthodox won’t matter) ask him about this. He can chant any text–anything at all–without even thinking; because there’s a natural flow to chanting. You can hand him a book of the Gospels and he can chant it immediately. You can hand him a copy of whatever happens to be at the top of the best-seller list in fiction or economics and he can chant it without any thought. I’m not kidding here. Any text. Hand him a copy of Last of the Mohicans and say “in the first tone” and you’ll see what I mean.
That’s what I’m looking for. The kind of chant that is so natural that the whole congregation can just follow along without giving any thought to the actual mechanics of the music.
I only wish those psalms from the 70s (even though we didn’t use the psalms themselves) were available today–and according to the current lectionary (so much for finding an old printing). Alas, they’re not. I’ve already looked. The closest thing is what’s now being used in certain missallette printings, but those versions are “adapted” and they’ve replaced the natural ending with dissonance.
Much frustrated.
