The Latin chants appointed to be sung with the Roman Missal of 1970. The foundations for a general revision of the Roman Missal of 1570 were laid by the Second Vatican Council in its Constitution De sacra liturgia (22 November 1963). Paul VI promulgated the new missal in an Apostolic Constitution, Missale romanum, of 3 April 1969; three days later the new order of Mass was published by the Sacred Congregation Pro cultu divino, together with a first draft of the introduction to the new missal, the Institutio generalis missalis romani. The new missal itself was published in 1970 and necessitated some considerable revision of the gradual: the Ordo cantus missae (1972) was the result. The Ordo was followed in 1974 by a new edition of the Graduale romanum. All this work was achieved under the Consilium, a body made up of several hundred specialists divided into 30 study groups. The group chiefly responsible for the Ordo was no.XXV, ‘De libris cantus liturgici revisendis et edendis’, but the other groups also influenced the final draft.
The Ordo followed the revised rubrics and calendar and made provision for a daily sung liturgy in Latin. It appointed chants for the Proper of the Time and of the Saints, and many additional Mass chants for optional use. The Common chants were reorganized to include Masses for new categories of saints, such as religious, teachers, those who exercised works of mercy, and public leaders. A whole section was devoted to ritual Masses, another to Masses for special necessities, and a third to the customary votive Masses. Most of the chants in the new schemes were borrowed from existing Masses. The Ordinary chants include settings of the new or revised portions of the Mass, such as the introductory rites and the acclamations after the readings and after the consecration. Three tones are provided for the Lord’s Prayer, one being the so-called Mozarabic, stripped of its interjected Amens.
In their choice and redistribution of Proper chants, the editors aimed wherever possible to retain the most authentic pieces of the oldest layers of the chant. Some inferior compositions of more recent date were discarded. 20 additional pieces of authentic Gregorian chant were introduced and printed in full in the Ordo, such as the introit Memento nostri Domine (p.29) and the gradual Posuisti Domine (p.78); the texts of 11 of them are contained in the Antiphonale missarum sextuplex (Brussels, 1935/R), a comparative edition by R.-J. Herbert of six manuscripts dating from the 8th century to the 10th, and thus belong to an early layer of the chant. Most of the alleluias, such as the one with the verse Benedictus qui venit (p.34), are early adaptations or slightly later compositions.
The principles underlying the provision of musical settings for new or revised texts may be summarized as follows. If a new text already had a musical setting, this was automatically adopted. If no musical setting existed, the new text was adapted to a simple pre-existing tone, such as a collect tone or the Te Deum. Occasionally, following an ancient technique of chant composition, a new text was adapted to the music of another text that it closely resembled and that already had a musical setting. ‘Mortem tuam annuntiamus Domine et tuam resurrectionem’, for example, was cast into the same mould as ‘Crucem tuam adoramus Domine et sanctam resurrectionem tuam’ from the Good Friday liturgy; and the ending ‘donec venias’ was modelled on ‘donec veniam’ from the antiphon Hic est discipulus meus for St John the Evangelist (AM, p.256), following another time-honoured principle, that of centonization.
De sacra liturgia (Rome, 1964; Eng. trans., 1967)
Constitutio apostolica Pauli PP VI ‘Missale romanum’ (Rome, 1969; Eng. trans., 1973)
L. Sheppard, ed.: The New Liturgy (London, 1970)
Missale romanum ex decreto sacrosancto oecumenici concilii vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Pauli PP VI promulgatum (Rome, 1971)
Ordo cantus missae (Rome, 1972)
Graduale romanum (Solesmes, 1974)
P. Ludwig: ‘Les sources des chants réintroduits dans l’“Ordo cantus missae”’, Notitiae, xci (1974), 92–4
MARY BERRY