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Views from the Choir Loft

PDF Download • “Liber Brevior” (1954)

Jeff Ostrowski · November 18, 2015

106 LIBER BREVIOR 1954 URING THE 1990S, my Schola Cantorum sang from the LIBER USUALIS of Solesmes. Each of us had a slightly different edition—meaning the page numbers seldom matched—but for some reason that never bothered us.

The print size of the Liber Usualis was minuscule, but I cannot recall experiencing difficulty reading it. Perhaps my eyesight was better 20 years ago. One day, our Pastor (ordained in the 1950s) showed up at Church with a book called the LIBER BREVIOR. He exclaimed, “Jeff, I bet you never knew that everything essential in the Liber Usualis could be printed in a much smaller book, eh?” He showed me the book, but I was used to the Liber Usualis and had no plans to jump ship.

I failed to realize that the final pages of the Liber Brevior contain a very special arrangement of all the Graduals, Alleluia verses, and Tracts:

    * *  PDF Download • Final Pages of the LIBER BREVIOR — 3.6MB

Almost ten years ago, Jeffrey Tucker scanned & uploaded the entire LIBER BREVIOR (1954) of Solesmes:

    * *  PDF Download • Complete LIBER BREVIOR (1954) — 29.4MB

The reductions found in the Liber Brevior are nice, but Solesmes produced an even nicer collection in the 1920s called CHANTS ABRÉGÉS, and Jeffrey Tucker scanned & uploaded this book about five years ago:

    * *  PDF Download • CHANTS ABRÉGÉS (1926) — 11.9MB

Without question, however, the supreme version of the CHANTS ABRÉGÉS was produced in 1955. Jeffrey Tucker also scanned & uploaded this book:

    * *  PDF Download • CHANTS ABRÉGÉS (1955) — 8.4MB

The publications produced by Solesmes during the 1950s are quite staggering, and give witness to the vibrancy of Gregorian singing in those days. We will have to forgive the rather silly warning appearing in the front of several of these books:

“All Rights Reserved on the rhythmic signs and the rhythm they represent…”

Much of “the rhythm they represent” is given by signs in the Editio Vaticana, which cannot be copyrighted. The whole point of the Vatican Edition (published by Pius X) was that no individual publisher could claim the rights to it. Nevertheless, Solesmes is not the first publisher to overstate their claims in an effort to sell books…

P.S.

Reducing the Graduals, Alleluia verses, and Tracts was quite common. For example, in the 1917 Graduale by Schwann, they mix “recto tono” with more ornate melodies—which will hopefully get the “feel” of the chant into one’s ear in spite of the simplification—as you can see in this example from Ash Wednesday:

105 Schwann 1917 GRADUALE


Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles, PDF Download Tagged With: Chants Abreges 1926, Chants Abreges 1930 Solesmes, Chants Abreges 1955, Solesmes LIBER BREVIOR 1954 Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Jeff Ostrowski

Jeff Ostrowski holds his B.M. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas (2004). He resides with his wife and children in Los Angeles.—(Read full biography).

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Quick Thoughts

16 May 2022 • Harmonized Chant?

This year’s upcoming Sacred Music Symposium will demonstrate several ways to sing the CREDO at Mass. This is because—for many parishes—to sing a full-length polyphonic CREDO by Victoria or Palestrina is out of the question. Therefore, we show options that are halfway between plainsong and polyphony. You can hear my choir rehearsing a section that sounds like harmonized plainsong.

—Jeff Ostrowski
14 May 2022 • “Pure” Vatican Edition

As readers know, my choir has been singing from the “pure” Editio Vaticana. That is to say, the official rhythm which—technically—is the only rhythm allowed by the Church. I haven’t figured out how I want the scores to look, so in the meantime we’ve been using temporary scores that look like this. Stay tuned!

—Jeff Ostrowski
14 May 2022 • Gorgeous Book

If there is a more beautiful book than Abbat Pothier’s 1888 Processionale Monasticum, I don’t know what it might be. This gorgeous tome was today added to the Saint John Lalande Online Library. I wish I owned a physical copy.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“We must say it plainly: the Roman rite as we knew it exists no more. It has gone. Some walls of the structure have fallen, others have been altered—we can look at it as a ruin or as the partial foundation of a new building. Think back, if you remember it, to the Latin sung High Mass with Gregorian chant. Compare it with the modern post-Vatican II Mass. It is not only the words, but also the tunes and even certain actions that are different. In fact it is a different liturgy of the Mass.”

— Fr. Joseph Gelineau (1978)

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