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Views from the Choir Loft

EF Divine Office Resource • Daily Recordings of Lauds

Guest Author · February 28, 2017

338 Jonathan Kadar Kallen MAGINE WAKING UP one morning and being able to listen to an mp3 of the day’s Lauds while you prepare breakfast or get ready for work. Or perhaps today you have time to spare, and can follow along with a handy translation from DivinumOfficium.com, or the chant notation from the PDF of the 1949 Antiphonale Romanum. Maybe it’s even your responsibility to get next Tuesday’s recording done and posted in time, like you signed up for. Sound unrealistic?

    * *  Dominus Regnavit Blog

You might be surprised. Since November 27th, 2016, the Dominus regnavit blog has indeed been posting daily recordings of sung Lauds, according to the liturgical books in effect in 1962. Not having a monastery on hand (and anyhow, using the Roman secular form of the office), this project is setup in such a way that everyone is encouraged to help out with providing the necessary recordings. And the great thing is, because the whole site is based on free resources, keeping the project going is quite as simple as making sure that someone will record and post the next mp3. (It could be you!)

Be that as it may, whether you incline to listen to a day’s Lauds, poke around the explanatory materials, or consider contributing a recording, I hope you may find this new blog project a useful contribution to the many great chant resources already available. Do stop by sometime!

I would like to append, as something of a footnote to the picture which accompanies this article, a passage quoted in Britt’s The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal (1922):

“Cock-crowing had for the early Christians a mystical significance. It said ‘The night is far spent, and the day is at hand.’ And thus the cock became, in the Middle Ages, the standing emblem of the preachers of God’s word. The old heathen notion that the lion could not bear the sight of the cock, easily adapted itself to this new symbolism. Satan, the roaring lion (I Peter 5, 8) fled away terrified, at the faithful preaching of God’s word. Nor did it pass unnoticed, that this bird, clapping its wings upon its sides, first rouses itself, before it seeks to rouse others.”

Thus, for example, it is still sung as part of the hymn for Sunday Lauds in the fall and winter months, “Gallo canente spes redit. / At the crowing of the cock, hope returns.”

…which is a cheering thought.


We hope you enjoyed this guest article by Jonathan Kadar-Kallen.

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

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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Quick Thoughts

Surprising Popularity!

One of our most popular downloads has proven to be the organ accompaniment to “The Monastery Hymnal” (131 pages). This book was compiled, arranged, and edited by Achille P. Bragers, who studied at the Lemmensinstituut (Belgium) about thirty years before that school produced the NOH. Bragers might be considered an example of Belgium “Stile Antico” whereas Flor Peeters and Jules Van Nuffel represented Belgium “Prima Pratica.” You can download the hymnal by Bragers at this link.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • To Capitalize…?

In the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, there is a question regarding whether to capitalize the word “christi.” The Vulgata does not, because Psalm 27 is not specifically referring to Our Lord, but rather to God’s “anointed one.” However, Missals tend to capitalize it, such as the official 1962 Missal and also a book from 1777 called Missel de Paris. Something tells me Monsignor Knox would not capitalize it.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • “Sung vs. Spoken”

We have spoken quite a bit about “sung vs. spoken” antiphons. We have also noted that the texts of the Graduale Romanum sometimes don’t match the Missal texts (in the Extraordinary Form) because the Mass Propers are older than Saint Jerome’s Vulgate, and sometimes came from the ITALA versions of Sacred Scripture. On occasion, the Missal itself doesn’t match the Vulgate—cf. the Introit “Esto Mihi.” The Vulgate has: “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in domum refúgii…” but the Missal and Graduale Romanum use “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in locum refúgii…” The 1970s “spoken propers” use the traditional version, as you can see.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“The authority of the Pope is not unlimited. It is at the service of Sacred Tradition. Still less is any kind of general ‘freedom’ of manufacture, degenerating into spontaneous improvisation, compatible with the essence of faith and liturgy. The greatness of the liturgy depends—we shall have to repeat this frequently—on its lack of spontaneity.”

— Josef Cardinal Ratzinger (2000)

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