Views from the Choir Loft

Flos Carmeli for a Carmelite Novena

Veronica Brandt · July 7, 2018

OVENAS give a bit of variety to our family prayers. Today we are starting a Novena to Our Lady of Mt Carmel for a new monastery.

The prayers are beautiful, but I recognised the closing prayer as the Carmelite sequence Flos Carmeli – the name always reminds me of dessert, but maybe that’s just me.

Trawling the internet I found the words, the music, but nothing arranged for pleasant printing. A few hours later, and a little wiser about LaTeX and Gregorio, I can present you with this:

* * Flos Carmeli

For those who like the technical side, I used the package marginnote to put the translation in the right column. There were a few variations in the Latin words on different sources – it would be good to know the history of these. I went with the version on Gregobase, but changed consonantal “I“s to “J“s and split the ae ligatures to make it easier to notate the accents.

Our Lady of Mt Carmel, pray for us!

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

Follow the Discussion on Facebook

About Veronica Brandt

Veronica Brandt holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering. She lives near Sydney, Australia, with her husband and six children.—(Read full biography).

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