Calling all fellow schola members!
I am curious about your experiences in the schola and how your parish uses the schola. Our schola consists of probably 8-10 men. We usually have two cantors, though sometimes use a third if our group is large enough. We are all vested in cassock/surplice. We are in the choir loft, not the sanctuary, though the schola director says we should be in the sanctuary. It’s more a practical decision; our sanctuary is small and all the schola members are also in the polyphony choir.
For the Kyria, Gloria, and Creed we alternate verses with the ladies. For the Asperges and Sanctus, men and women chant together. Of course the propers are schola only.
Is anyone in a schola that sings for the OF? There is a priest who has approached me about this but I have no idea how that would be done (I have such little experience in the OF). Is there an equivalent of a Liber Usualis for the OF that contains the chants for the propers?
St. Ceclia and St. Gregory, pray for us!
Hi, I chant in an OF schola; we ONLY do Gregorian chant except for the responsorial psalm which we do in French on the Gregorian modes.
There are two official chant books for the OF Mass: the Graduale Romanum (1974) is the main one and contains the entire propers and ordinary for every day of the year including memorials and feasts, both propers and commons.
Here’s a link to where you can purchase it:
Graduale Romanum
If your schola is more advanced, from the same source you can also get the Graduale Triplex; it has the neumes from two ancient manuscripts (Laon and St. Gall) overlaid above and below the chant score. It can help with advanced interpretation.
Both these books were produced by the Benedictine Monks of Solesmes who have the mandate to keep Gregorian chant alive.
There is also the Graduale Simplex, from 1999, also available from
paxbooks.com. It’s for minor churches, and includes simpler antiphons (many borrowed from the Divine Office) and psalmody instead of the Propers from the GR.
I would avoid using the Liber Usualis. It will be hard to adapt to the OF Mass particularly for Year B.
For the rest, not really much difference compared to the EF. Our schola is all-male, we have about 20 members of which a dozen or so show up for any given Mass (I myself haven’t participated much this year due to a job change making it hard for me to attend rehearsals). We have about 4 good cantors, about 3 of which can be counted on to be present at any time; together they do the cantor’s role, and sometimes we cycle a less experienced cantor through the group to help him build experience. We also occasionally do the LOTH in Gregorian chant usually during Lent or Holy Week.
Where you place yourself is really a matter of room, acoustics, etc. Given our mission to promote chant in an increasingly chantless Church, we consider being heard clearly to be of the utmost importance. We rotate through different parishes of the diocese each month so dependent on the building, we’ve been in the sanctuary, the choir loft or pews near the front and off to the side. One of my favourite churches to sing in would be considered by most a modern abomination (well at least the tabernacle is on the main altar), and we sing off to the side in the sanctuary, but the acoustics are great and more to the point it is a very dynamic parish where even the 5pm Sat. evening Mass is jam-packed, especially when we chant there.
We do not wear cassock and surplice (this has been a point of contention between choir members and our board of which I am chairman); some want it, others don’t. We’ve settled on everyone wearing black trousers and black long-sleeved shirts. Given that 3 of us (all on the board) have Benedictine roots, it kind of makes sense
There are some simplification in the OF propers but not many. The main one is the abandonment of the verses for most offertories. A couple have kept them but there’s no reason NOT to chant them; you just need a good source as the GR only has those that remain (De Profundis is one). The rest is exactly the same as in the EF, and the same Kyriale is used.
