The Chants of the Mass for Sundays, Solemnities, and Feasts.

This is a major revision of The Anglican Use Gradual, 2007 which follows the structure of the Graduale Romanum and draws upon the musicological work of Dr. Palmer (G.H.P.), Francis Burgess (F.B.), and Winfred Douglas (W.D.). Since The Plainchant Gradual of Palmer and Burgess is again available in a reprint, I have eliminated most of the occasional melismatic chants and have included simple psalm tone chants based on Burgess' The English Gradual in order to provide a practical book that can be used in most churches. This expanded volume follows the structure and text of Divine Worship: The Missal, 2015, and covers all of the minor propers called for in that Missal. An index is included to adapt this book to the Ordinary Time lectionary sequence.

How does the Bible form our worship practices? How does liturgy incorporate the Bible? The Liturgy and Life Study Bible explores these questions and provides answers for today’s church. This indispensable guide includes essays from the world’s top liturgical and biblical scholars on a variety of subjects, including Jewish liturgical traditions, Psalms as liturgical prayer, early church worship, social justice, sacraments, the Last Supper, and more. Throughout the biblical text, brief comments flag passages that contain something of liturgical or personal prayer interest. A correlation chart highlights the intersection between biblical passages and the Catholic liturgy, listing every place where a verse of the Bible appears in any liturgical book: the Missal, the orders of sacramental rites, even the Roman Gradual and the Martyrology. This one-of-a-kind tool will serve researchers, catechists, preachers, and anyone studying the Bible for the purposes of prayer and meditation. Uses the New American Bible, Revised Edition. Cover art by Jan Richardson. Includes eight full color map images.

In response to many requests for a book descriptive and explanatory of the Gregorian Mass chants, the monks of St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minn., undertook the translation from the German of Dom Johner's work under the above title. In the foreword the author indicates the scope of his work. He writes: "The present work is intended chiefly to serve as an aid to the prayerful rendition of the variable chanted parts of the Mass. At the same time it aims to be a guide for the worthy and artistic rendition of those chants which have been handed down to us from an age of strong faith and noble taste." Chant is essentially a form of worship offered by the faithful and as such is an integral part of the liturgy. It is intimately connected with the very source of all Liturgy, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and attempts to interpret and express in music the sentiments which the text expresses in words. Individual consideration is given to the texts of the Introit, Gradual, Alleluia-verse, Tract, Sequence, Offertory, and Communion. These texts are given in Latin and in English, and are arranged in parallel columns. They are studied in their historical and liturgical setting, and their sentiments of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, gratitude and penance, are pointed out and developed. In this sense also the intimate relationship existing between these various texts is indicated; all are integrated into a unified whole and referred to the life of Christ and His Church. Following this short meditation, the author analyses the musical score accompanying the text, and attempts to show how Gregorian Chant interprets these various sentiments and gives adequate expression to them in short, how Gregorian Chant is the prefect yet simple medium of translating religious emotion into the language of music. An indispensable condition for the intelligent use of this book as a guide Jor interpretation is the simultaneous use of the Vatican Gradual, since musical notation has not been included in the present work. However, only a minimum and very elementary knowledge of Gregorian Chant is necessary for the fruitful use and understanding of the book. Further knowledge is given in a very significant Introduction, which describes the structure and expressiveness of the variable Mass Chants. The original German, as also the English manuscript, have been made the basis for a very successful summer school course in the study of Gregorian Chant. The book might adequately be described as "a study in the appreciation of Gregorian Chant."

The Latin liturgical music of the medieval church is the earliest body of Western music to survive in a more or less complete form. It is a body of thousands of individual pieces, of striking beauty and aesthetic appeal, which has the special quality of embodying, of giving voice to, the words of the liturgy itself. Plainchant is the music that underpins essentially all other music of the middle ages (and far beyond), and is the music that is most abundantly preserved. It is a subject that has engaged a great deal of research and debate in the last fifty years and the nature of the complex issues that have recently arisen in research on chant are explored here in an overview of current issues and problems.