Nocturnale Monasticum

 

 Two new resources for the Matins responsories are now available.

THE CHANTS FOR MATINS

First, the Nocturnale Romanum Project is working to provide a revised and more generally available version of the Nocturnale Romanum.

As a first step, they are publishing all the non-copyright chants from the Standhofe edition of the Nocturnale both online and in PDF form, and you can find the chants posted so far here.  These are of course aligned to the Roman Office, not the Benedictine, so you will still need to use the listings provided here (or do the task yourself) to work out which ones fit where in the Benedictine Office (and of course there will be gaps).

NOCTURNALE MONASTICUM

The second big step forward is the publication of the Latin texts (as well as a Latin-French version) for Matins in the Benedictine Office as a joint project between Le Barroux and Le Garde monasteries, thus solving the problem of the scarcity of 1962 Monastic Breviaries.  

What it is

The Nocturnale is a joint a joint project of Le Barroux and La Garde monasteries, and essentially provides the sections of the 1963 Monastic Breviary that relate to the Night Office (Matins).

There are two versions - Latin only (one volume), or Latin-French (three volumes).  I'm going to look at the Latin only volume here.

Is it for you?

Before I look at the book itself, let me just say a few things about who its target audience is.

This tome is a wonderful gift to monastic communities who use the 1962 Office and Mass, as well as those who want to say the full Benedictine Office in Latin, since the corresponding two volume breviary is long out of print, extremely difficult to get hold of, and very very expensive when you do find a copy.

For laypeople who use the breviary though, keep in mind that Benedictine Matins is extremely long (depending on the day and season, and whether you say or sing it, it can amount to around the same amount of time again as all the day hours combined, or even more).  So unless you have a lot of spare time, stick to the Diurnal!

Secondly, keep in mind also that it is entirely in Latin.  But if you really do want to tackle Matins, there are other resources around which could help support you using it, such as:

• the Latin-English  Matins Psalter published by Clear Creek; 
• English translations of many of the Patristic readings; and 
• Divinum Officium.
  

Thirdly, and most importantly from my perspective, this book is not, alas, the equivalent of the Antiphonale Monasticum, in that it provides the texts only (aside from an appendix with Te Deum, Te Decet Laus and final blessings).

Contents

The Nocturnale is divided into four sections: Ordinary, Temporale, Psalter, Commons, Sanctorale and Matins of the Dead.

The material is essentially identical to that contained in the 1963 breviary save for some (sensible) reordering of the material, and use of the calendar specific to the Le Barroux group of monasteries.

As Le Barroux includes all of the feasts of the Benedictine General Calendar, as well as quite a few Roman ones as well as some local feasts, the sanctorale is quite rich, including, for example, a few important feasts often now added back by monasteries such as the Most Holy Name of Jesus (Jan 2/Sunday between Circumcision and Epiphany), Finding of Holy Cross (3 May) and Most Precious Blood (1 July).

In a few cases it makes particular choices among options about feasts, but few will quibble with them: St Agnes, for example is Class II, although in the General Calendar it is listed as Class III for monasteries of men; and May 1 is the Solemnity of St Joseph rather than St Joseph the Worker!

Layout and presentation

The print size and layout of the text is, in my view, excellent.  The print size isn't quite as large as Psautier Monastique, but the difference is small, and the type face contrasts well with the yellow colour of the page, working well for my poor eyes!

There are also some sensible reorganisations of the material designed to reduce the number of page turns, such as providing a summary listing of all the Invitatories for days, seasons and Commons in the Ordinary upfront, including some of the texts for Our Lady on Saturday in the psalter section, and moving the canticles for throughout the year to the fromt of the Sunday Nocturn II section. 

Although there is no rubrics section, so you will need to work your way through the notes on the Learn Matins blog, and use an Ordo in conjunction with it, there are clear and useful rubrical prompts throughout.

Physical presentation

The book is well bound, and looks like it will stand up to being propped open on a stand well.

The pages look quite tough, so should stand up better than my poor rather battered breviary!

It is slightly larger than the Antiphonale Monasticum, measuring about 22cm*15cm*5.5cm, and comes in at 1236 pages (compared to around 1289).

But it is significantly heavier, at 1.5 kgs, so will be hard to hold for an hour or two through Matins.

I really hope they will consider printing the psalter section in a separate volume at some point in the near future, as I think as it stands, it would be more practical to use it for the readings only, and use a separate psalter book, which is a shame as the layout is very nice.

It doesn't contain any ribbons though.

A plea for English and the chants...

This is a great book, and a wonderful first step in supporting Matins.

But I really hope it is only the first stage in this project, and the next one will be to provide the chants for Matins.  

I realise most communities recto tono Matins, but its chant repertoire, particularly the responsories, is the richest in the Office, and they really deserve to be revived in my view.

Personally I have a collection of a lot of plastic folders, with cut and paste printouts of things such as the Ordinary chants mostly from Peter Sandhofe's draft Monastic Psalter, psalms downloaded from one of the online psalm pointing aps, and listings of books and page numbers for responsories. I  do hope a day will come when all this is available in a well edited equivalent of the Antiphonale!

And of course, for English speakers, a widely available Latin-English version of Matins would be nice... 

Where to buy...

You can purchase the book through the Le Barroux online bookshop

It is worth knowing that the Gower nuns have also produced a set of Matins books, in a Latin-English version, but the work is not yet publicly available.

Hopefully the next step will be to publish the chants...

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!

Book review: Monastic Breviary Matins**updated

I've left this book to last because, as you will have gathered from my comments through the series, my view is that it is better to use Latin for Matins, and use officially approved books as far as possible.

Accordingly, my personal recommendation is that if you want to pray this hour liturgically, you buy a 1963 breviary (or if that is unavailable, one to as close to that date as possible).  If there is a group of you, just buy one breviary, and use the Psautier Monastique for the psalms and standard prayers.

If you are happy to do it devotionally (in English), the best options in my view are to:

• use Divinum Officium; or 
• the Clear Creek booklet for the psalms and main prayers, in combination with the Liturgical Readings book.

But I am well aware that for many people, this book will seem a more practical option.

Monastic Breviary MATINS according to the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict With additional rubrics and devotions for its recitation in accordance with the book of Common Prayer and Monastic Diurnal, Society of the Sacred Cross, 1961.

What it is

The book (MBM) is published by Lancelot Andrewes Press, an Orthodox printing press, using an Anglican text.  The psalm translation is Coverdale; Scriptural readings King James Version.

The rubrics largely reflect the pre-1955 breviary, so the calendar includes many Octaves, as well as a lot of very distinctly English and Anglican feasts.

What it contains

MBM contains all of the texts necessary to say a form of Matins in English only.

The Sunday cycle does not always align with the Roman/Benedictine 1963 calendar - the Sundays after Trinity Sunday for example contain quite different Gospels and Third Nocturn readings (presuambly it is an older Anglican schema).  It also omits many of the feasts of the 1963 calendar.

Pros and cons

As noted above, if you want to pray some form of Matins devotionally, want more than just the psalms and weekday texts that the Clear Creek book provides, and your Latin is not up to the task, then this is an option to consider.  As a traditionalist Catholic, however, I can't recommend it!

My basic problem with it is that while the translations are often very beautiful, they are often quite at odds with the Vulgate.

The book is potentially a useful source of translations of the readings and responsories for study purposes, but personally I have found the translations of many of the texts just a little looser than seems desirable to me. I have to admit I had hoped to use this as at least a reference point for translations for missing responsories from Divinum Officium, as these at least seem to be out of copyright.  But on the feast of St Benedict, for example, where most of the responsories are adaptations of St Gregory's Dialogues, the versions provided in the MBM have often left in words cut out in the Latin, or otherwise failed to reflect the text of the responsory, as opposed to the text of the Dialogues.  Accordingly I gave up and went back to the Dialogues and a standard translation of them, and started from scratch again for myself.

From a practical point of view, like most breviaries it is not particularly user friendly, made even less so than others by separating out the responsories for Sundays into a separate section for much of the year.

In addition, the rubrics, for some strange reason, are in black, not red.

Nonetheless, others have successfully used this book, and many take a much more positive view of it, so if you would like to read a more positive appreciation of it, go here.

Book reviews - Matins only psalters** (Matins according to the Benedictine Ritual & Stanhofe draft Psalter)

As I have previously noted, there are essentially three types of options when it comes to books containing the psalms and main texts for Matins: psalters containing all of the hours; Matins only books (Nocturnale); and breviaries.  I will leave consideration of breviaries and the Monastic Breviary Matins book until we look at the readings for Matins.

There are, though, two other useful sources of the psalms and common prayers that it seems timely to look at now, both of which I think are worth considering acquiring.


(1) Matins According to the Benedictine Ritual with a Supplement Latin-English, Clear Creek 2008.



The Clear Creek Matins book was originally intended primarily to help visitors to the monastery to follow Matins there, but is also available through Lulu.

What it contains

The book contains texts for Matins each day in Latin and English, other than the readings, responsories and collects.  It includes the main seasonal antiphons but not all of the variants (such as the Sunday invitatory antiphon during Lent for example).   The supplement actually mainly deals with the other hours, but does include some Matins texts.

The translation of the psalms is (I think) one of the Challoner-Douay-Rheims versions (though not the one that I have).

Pros and cons

This is an especially useful book for beginners as it lays out all the texts (such as Psalm 94) exactly as it is said for most of the year in full.  This layout means the repeated texts appear in each day's pages, reducing the need for page flipping.

Of course, the downside is that this makes it slightly harder to use for feasts and other occasions when some of the texts change.

In addition, unlike the Psautier Monastique, it doesn't contain many of the seasonal texts.  Still, if you are praying Matins devotionally, primarily in order to extend the number of psalms you are saying, the seasonal texts are not essential.

As it is put out by a monastery, though without a formal imprimateur, it can be argued to satisfy the requirement for official approval (in these days when many monasteries have used plastic folders and ad hoc editions for years, it is hard to insist on the letter of the Code when it comes to deciding what constitutes official books in my view!).

A reader has noted though that it only comes in paperback form, so it is unclear how well it will stand up to daily use.

(2) Holger Peter Stanhofe, Psalterium dispositum per hebdomadam pro nocurnis horis secundum regulam SS Patris Nostri Benedicti, 2002.


What it contains

This is a draft of a Benedictine Nocturnale produced by the late Holger Peter Standhofe, who put together the Nocturnale Romanum, and unfortunately never quite completed.  It is Latin only, but includes the standard texts and chants for the psalter section of Matins each day.

It can be freely downloaded here.

Pros and cons

The text is a draft only, and unfortunately there are quite a few errors scattered through it - missing initials and mistakes in the psalter.  Most of them are fairly obvious though, and it is not a big deal to go through and correct them.

Its big advantage over sources is that it provides the chants needed to sing the Ordinary of Matins (ie invitatory antiphons, hymns and antiphons), the only publicly available source I've found for these.

One option would be to do a cut and paste job, and use the chants in conjunction with the Psautier.