How are psalm response, and its locations, decided?

[Digitonomy]

At mass yesterday I was surprised that the psalm was sung with only 3 responses, rather than the 5 I saw in the missalette (same as here, I assume). I’m guessing the musical director, or even the composer, took some illicit creative license with the song.

But my questions are

1. 
   *]How are the responses chosen?
   *]How is it determined where in the psalm the responses should interrupt?
   
   For instance, yesterday’s scheduled psalm was 122, about 10 verses long, is it standard that a response will occur every other verse? And how is it determined which particular verse, part of verse, or alteration of verse is chosen as the response?
   
   Is it simply an editorial decision in Rome? Do these choices ever vary from language to language, or country to country?

 

[japhy]

At mass yesterday I was surprised that the psalm was sung with only 3 responses, rather than the 5 I saw in the missalette (same as here, I assume). I’m guessing the musical director, or even the composer, took some illicit creative license with the song.

I was a bit disappointed with that too; it happened at the Mass I was at. We heard Psalm 122 the Sunday before (Christ the King, Year C), and it’s used on Advent 1 (Year A). The difference is that on Advent 1 (A), two additional “stanzas” or “strophes” (two couplets of two verses each) are included that are not used on Christ the King (C). These two strophes are about peace in Jerusalem, which, if you hadn’t noticed, is what the First Reading is about! So it’s a really excellent Responsorial Psalm to use.

But the setting used had a long and redundant response (where the response is sung twice in a row, presumably to give the congregation more to “do”…) and, because of that, I think the music director decided to cut the Psalm verses short to just the first three strophes.

On a side note, this particular official arrangement of the verses into strophes was a bit unfortunate. Verse 4 (“To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, according to the decree for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD.”) is split in two, and the result is a sentence fragment at the beginning of the third strophe: “According to the decree for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD.”

1. 
   *]How are the responses chosen?
   *]How is it determined where in the psalm the responses should interrupt?

1. 
   Each Responsorial Psalm has its response (although the same psalm may have a different response on one liturgical day than it has on another liturgical day – that is, the same set of verses can be used with more than one response).
   
   The breaking up of the verses into strophes is determined by the Lectionary itself. It’s not always an ideal distribution, though, as the example from this past Sunday shows.

 

[Digitonomy]

But the setting used had a long and redundant response (where the response is sung twice in a row, presumably to give the congregation more to “do”…) and, because of that, I think the music director decided to cut the Psalm verses short to just the first three strophes.

We heard all the verses, it’s just that the second and fourth responses were not sung.

japhy:

Each Responsorial Psalm has its response (although the same psalm may have a different response on one liturgical day than it has on another liturgical day – that is, the same set of verses can be used with more than one response).

The breaking up of the verses into strophes is determined by the Lectionary itself. It’s not always an ideal distribution, though, as the example from this past Sunday shows.

So the response itself, and the division into strophes, is determined in Rome and roughly identical throughout the world?

One more thing about this particular psalm; I recall in earlier years the response “I rejoiced when I heard them say, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Was this an earlier NAB psalm translation, or just poetic license of the sort questionable at the time of composition and clearly not permitted now?

 

[MarkThompson]

One more thing about this particular psalm; I recall in earlier years the response “I rejoiced when I heard them say, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Was this an earlier NAB psalm translation, or just poetic license of the sort questionable at the time of composition and clearly not permitted now?

We also used that response the last two weeks. And that’s how it appears in the 1970 Lectionary for Mass, so it seems to be perfectly allowable.