LOTH English Antiphons with Gregorian Melodies?
  • adjpanderson13
    Posts: 23
    Hi everyone, I have a technical inquiry regarding the Divine Office.

    I am revising my Parish's previous handouts (used annually) of The Office of Readings and Lauds for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Let's just say MD before me left loads of errors. Anyway, I am hoping to prepare English chant melodies with square notation for the antiphons, since we're making good progress with exposing them to chant. I'd do this in a Samuel Weber kind of style, as I've been dabbling with GABC engravers. Unfortunately they still gag at Latin.

    Onto the situation: I've found that the antiphon texts in the English translation for the LOTH often do not match the Latin, Gregorian Melodies found in the 2015 Ordo Cantus Officii nor the Antiphonale Monasticum. For example, the second Antiphon for Lauds on Good Friday reads in the English edition: "Jesus Christ loved us, and poured out his own blood for us to wash away our sins" where the Gregorian musical sources read "Ait latro ad latronem: Nos quidem digna factis recipimus, hic autem quid fecit? Memento mei, Domine, dum veneris regnum tuum" which is an entirely different, dialogical text.

    So onto my questions (and pardon me if answers are found elsewhere on the forum. I did search!)

    1. If we were to sing the English translation, we'd have to do it on a Meinrad tone, as with the following psalm, instead of its own melody, which I find to be pretty lame. So, am I allowed to use an English translation of that Latin antiphon with its own melody crafted from the original? I personally assume that the principle for Mass Propers appliesto the situation, as in, "you can use A. The chant found in the GR, or B. the antiphon found in the Missal" (which may be totally different), etc.

    2. Where did this "translation" come from? Not just this antiphon bust several others that don't seem to be rooted in the musical tradition.
  • DCM
    Posts: 70
    1. I can't cite a canon on this but I'm fairly sure that, for public liturgy, any English translation you use has to be the officially-approved one. Consult your diocese about this.

    2. The English antiphons are all translations of the official Latin text of the LotH. (The antiphon you cited is: "Iesus Christus dilexit nos et lavis nos a peccatis nostris in sanguine suo.") The Latin contains a lot of antiphons which were newly introduced by the reformers and don't correspond to the old antiphonaries. This was necessary because of the decision to expand the ferial cycle to four weeks and divide many psalms across the hours, among other options, requiring a larger body of texts than was available to them. The OCO 2015 is an alternative schema that departs from the editio typica to provide only antiphons from the Gregorian repertoire. (However, many of its choices are so extremely obscure that they've never been published outside of private initiatives.)

    If Latin isn't an option, you can sing the official English antiphons. People like Paul Rose of the Sing the Hours youtube channel, Fr. Aaron Williams and, obviously, Fr Weber have done excellent work at composing Gregorianesque melodies for these, and you may want to reach out to obtain use permissions if such are available (or for advice and guidance, if not) if you aren't able to compose them yourself.

    We could really use an official English antitphonary (I believe there's one in German?). Hopefully the new translation, whenever it's released, can spur something.
    Thanked by 1adjpanderson13
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,381
    For both Mass and LoTH the Universalis app will, if asked, show both English and Latin, the Latin will be the official text, for copyright reasons the English is not always the official translation.
    Thanked by 1adjpanderson13
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 1,975
    Worse: they chose antiphons in order to merely recite the breviary. There’s no indication that they even cared about chant.
    Thanked by 2adjpanderson13 tomjaw
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,381
    While it does not excuse the "reformers", very few secular clergy chant the office, and most regulars have their own variants.
    Thanked by 1adjpanderson13
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 1,975
    And? Sunday Vespers was one thing that people were already doing and which was made impossible if you wanted to use the new books.

    In any case, many (most, perhaps, certainly of active communities — including the Jesuits) regulars use the Roman office, and most active women (or a large number) used the Little Office of Our Lady. And many of these had parishes. In any case, even ones with their own rite or different practices dropped them in whole or in part to adopt the Liturgia Horarum.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • DCM
    Posts: 70
    @a_f hawkins ibreviary, however, somehow, is able to show the official translation freely on its site. I don't know why.

    If I had a copy of Stanislaw Campbell's From Breviary to Liturgy of the Hours, I'd be better able to answer questions like this. Unfortunately it's out of print and absurdly expensive on the used market. I've only ever been able to track it down through interlibrary loans but didn't have time to finish it before I needed to return it.
  • RoborgelmeisterRoborgelmeister
    Posts: 139
    Stanislaw Campbell's From Breviary to Liturgy of the Hours sounds like a candidate for Archive.org where some items are available for a few short hours, but often enough the glean that which is desired. I've gone back day after day to find what I wanted.
  • igneusigneus
    Posts: 354
    So, am I allowed to use an English translation of that Latin antiphon with its own melody crafted from the original?


    In the liturgical law concerning the Divine Office there is no provision for using the OCO antiphons translated to the vernacular, even less so in an unauthorized translation.

    I personally assume that the principle for Mass Propers appliesto the situation, as in, "you can use A. The chant found in the GR, or B. the antiphon found in the Missal" (which may be totally different), etc.


    Mass and Divine Office each have their own norms, norms of the Divine Office being less permissive in this point.

    There is IGLH 244-252, but Triduum falls under the restrictions of IGLH 247. There is the last sentence of IGLH 274, but IGLH 274 as a whole really deals only with sung celebrations in Latin and does not apply to vernacular ones. (But whoever wishes to have a loophole allowing basically any sort of text replacement as long as chant is involved, rejecting my restrictive interpretation and reading the last sentence of IGLH 274 as applying to sung celebration in any language is the way.)
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