Benedictine Ordo for 2019-20

Just to let you know that the Ordo for the upcoming liturgical year is now available from Lulu in PDF (ebook) or hardcopy format.

The Ordo provides detailed notes on the variants for feasts and seasons for those saying the Office according to the 1962 rubrics and General Calendar for the Benedictine Order.

The Ordo provides short summary guides, with page numbers to the Farnborough editions of the Monastic Diurnal, for Lauds to Vespers of the the ferial Office.

It also provides instructions for each day of the liturgical year on what changes should be made for seasons and feasts for all of the hours from Matins to Compline

Guides to the Office during each of the liturgical seasons of the year have also been included.

The schedule of dates for feasts, and instructions that go with them, can be can be used in conjunction with any older breviary or Diurnal for the Benedictine Office, although the older the book, the more feasts and other texts that may be missing.

The Ordo itself provides page number references for the Monastic Diurnal (Farnborough editions) and Antiphonale Monasticum (1934), as well as other key chant books such as the Liber Responsorialis for Matins.

Solesmes interim Nocturnale

A reader recently alerted me to the existence of the Solesmes Nocturnale (aka Liber Antiphonarius pro vigiliis cura scriptorii Paeographici solesmensis praeparatus Nocturnale ad interim, Solesmes, 2017), and asked if it was worth buying in terms of putting together Matins.

The short answer, particularly from a 1962 Office point of view, is no.

The slightly longer answer follow by way of an addition to my collection on Resources for Matins.

Why not to buy...

Despite the title, the book is not actually a full Nocturnale.

It does not provide the ferial texts or chants for Matins and provides only a limited selection of chants for thirteen feasts, all of which are readily available in other sources.

And the few 'new' responsories (for Tenebrae) are not used in the 1962 (and earlier) version of the Office.

It does include the texts of the psalms, but in the Neo-Vulgate.

And the selection of responsories and other texts often does not reflect the 1962 breviary, instead it rearranges them and in some cases replaces them with alternatives.

The changes

The book provides the texts for Tenebrae of Good Friday and Holy Saturday for example.  But it rearranges the order of some from that of the older breviaries, and adds alternative responsories in.

It is not really obvious to me why they have made these changes: while some of the 'new' responsories do seem to have been reasonably common in the manuscripts, a quick look at the Cantus Database suggests no more so than those that have been used in the Roman and Benedictine Breviaries since Trent.

Similarly, why has the last responsory of All Saints (Vidi angelum ascendentem) been dumped in favour of a responsory ascribed in the manuscripts to the Feast of the Holy Innocents?

Updated chants?

As far as I can see the book largely brings together updated versions of the chants that have already been published in other places, such as the Liber Hymnarius and assorted other Solesmes publications, rather than providing anything new.

Whether you like the updated versions will depend on your attitude to Solesmes methodology of building composite chants from the manuscripts, rather than simply selecting the best version from one.

We do need a true Benedictine Nocturnale - the best source for the ferial Office remains, as far as I know, an informal draft by Peter Sandhofe, and there remain at least fifty responsories included in the breviary for which I have been unable to find published versions of the chants for example.

Unfortunately, this is not it!