Plea for proofreading

I've corrected Modes VIIIa and VIIIg according to Scott's suggestions; the new recordings are in the list at the bottom of the blog. This also makes me realize that the Lord's Prayer is all wrong, and I don't know how to correct it. The Fa clef thing really throws me, and the explanation in the MP doesn't make sense to me or to my wife. (What does "start with Fa" mean, if you don't know how Fa corresponds to notes on a keyboard or flute?)

Anybody interested in giving a listen and double checking our work?

Liturgical Institute recordings

Today I spoke with Fr. Douglas Martis of the Liturgical Institute, which publishes the Mundelein Psalter. He said there are plans to put recordings of all the modes, and a sample office, on the Web site this fall. That's good news!

Corrigenda

If Scott's comments are right, and I assume they are, the recordings for modes IIIb, VIIIa, and VIIIg are wrong. I'll try to get those corrected soon.

And that means that our chanting in the demo, which has the first Psalm in VIIIa, is wrong.

And it reminds me that in all of this I forgot a cardinal rule of medieval writing, which is to ask my readers to correct my mistakes. Please do let us know if you see or hear something that grates!

Beginner's guide to chanting the Liturgy of the Hours with the Mundelein Psalter

My wife and I have been using the Mundelein Psalter (MP) to pray the Liturgy of the Hours for about six weeks. We had quite a learning curve, since I have no musical training and we were also new to the Liturgy of the Hours. We relied heavily on my wife's high school band experience. After poring over the MP for several hours and comparing her conjectures to the recordings on the MP's official website, she finally figured out how the tones and notations differed from modern musical notation.

The problem is that the official website only has recordings of the hymns. If you are completely musically illiterate like me, or only semiliterate like my wife, then even learning simplified Mundelein chant can be a challenge.

So then the hard work began. She taught me how to pick out the notes on a keyboard, and we would spend a good half hour for each office just trying to get the tunes right and match them to the text. We spent much of our summer vacation time in long, frustrating prayer offices, during which very little actual praying got done.

I realized that it would be much easier if I had all of the modes recorded, so I could just pray with my computer or iPod open each morning, rather than spending fifteen minutes trying to get the tune right on the keyboard.

So this Web site is for those in our position. It's sort of like the deaf leading the deaf, and it could be we are doing everything wrong. But I'm pretty sure the recordings of the modes, below, are right.

And here is a brief demonstration of how we use the recordings to chant the office.

Mundelein Psalter Chant Modes

Here are all of the modes used for daily Psalms and canticles, played on a synthesizer keyboard. You can find the notation for them on p. 53, and of course at the top of each psalm or canticle. The first note of each bar is held to indicate that it is the starting note, to be chanted for each syllable before the italics indicate the change. The last note of each bar is held to indicate the extra beat, which is represented in the notation by a dot after the note.

Each verse is played three times.



















Boomp3.com







Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

A feeble, but fairly accurate, effort to sing the Lord's Prayer (since I'm not good enough to play it smoothly on the keyboard), on p. 50 of the MP: