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Views from the Choir Loft

PDF Drafts • Ten (10) Gregorian Chant Litanies

Jeff Ostrowski · June 6, 2021

HE FOLLOWING DRAFT COPIES are somewehat “ugly,” and I feel embarrassed releasing them—but they’re all I have access to at the moment. As time goes on, I’d like to make very nice copies, similar to what my colleague, Veronica Brandt, did with the Litany of Saint Joseph. I believe the Latin title (“litaniæ”) is plural, but in English we usually say (singular) “litany.” 1 By the way, polyphonic composers—such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina—composed litanies, as I once stole an invertible Kyrie from one! We will use a litany for our Corpus Christi procession this coming Sunday (since the “external solemnity” requires a procession) but I suspect Palestrina’s litanies would have been sung inside an oratory. It was surprisingly difficult to find litanies notated with Gregorian Chant. Several texts are in the Rituale Romanum, and numerous organ accompaniments for the litanies have been uploaded here.

*  PDF Download • Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary
—Print this out on a double-sided sheet of paper.

Litanies I Currently Possess:

Perhaps readers can help re-typeset these? The best would be if each invocation could be written out, or at least made more clear:

*  PDF Litany • “Litany of the Saints” (1957)
—“Litaniæ Sanctorum”

*  PDF Download • “Litany of the Saints” (1928)
—“Litaniæ Sanctorum”

*  PDF Download • Litany of Saint Joseph (1949)
—“Litaniæ Sancti Joseph, Sponsi Beatæ Mariæ Virginis”.

*  PDF Download • Litany of Saint Joseph (1957)
—“Litaniæ Sancti Joseph, Sponsi Beatæ Mariæ Virginis”.

*  PDF Download • Sacré Cœur (1924)
—“Litaniæ Sacratissimi Cordis Jesu”—see note below.

* That file from 1924 actually has two (2) versions of the Litany of the Sacred Heart — click here to have just the first one formatted for easy printing on front/back pages.

*  PDF Download • Sacré Cœur (1957)
—“Litaniæ Sacratissimi Cordis Jesu”.

*  PDF Download • Sacré Cœur, Version B (1902)
—“Litaniæ Sacratissimi Cordis Jesu”.

*  PDF Download • Sacré Cœur, Version C (1902)
—“Litaniæ Sacratissimi Cordis Jesu”.

*  PDF Download • MOST HOLY NAME (1928)
—“Litaniæ Sanctissimi Nominis Jesu”.

*  PDF Download • Blessed Virgin Mary (1891)
—Six different Gregorian Chant versions of the “Litany of Loreto.”

Someone in a foreign country seems to have composed a Litany of the Most Precious Blood and here is the source of that file.

KEYWORD SEARCHES:

“Litaniae In Expositione”
“Litania Preces Et Orationes”
“Cantu Litaniarum Ad Omnes Sanctos”
“Dicuntur Cum Cantu Litaniae Sanctorum”
“Cum Litaniis Sanctorum”
“In Litaniis Majoribus”
“Litaniæ Sanctissimi Nominis Jesu”
“Litaniæ De Sacro Corde Jesu”
“Litaniæ Lauretanæ B. Mariæ Virg.”
“Litaniæ De S. Joseph”
“Index Litaniarum”
“Litanias Ordinarias”


NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   It’s kind of like the Latin word “vexilla” which in English means “flag” or “standard”—but Father Fortescue translated it plural as “banners” in his translation of the VEXILLA REGIS.

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

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Filed Under: Articles, PDF Download Tagged With: Gregorian Chant Litanies, Litany of Saint Joseph, Litany of the BVM, Litany of the Sacred Heart Last Updated: August 17, 2021

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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 Michigan. —(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    “Yahweh” in church songs?
    My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Truly Great Processional” • (Pipe Organ)
    I stumbled upon this live recording of a PROCESSIONAL I played on the pipe organ in 2002. It’s an excerpt from a much longer composition by Sebastian Bach. In those days, there weren’t sophisticated recording devices allowing one “fix” wrong notes. (Perhaps they existed, but we didn’t have machines like that.) So it was necessary to play the entire piece from beginning to end. If you’re a church organist, feel free to download the PDF score. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until some joker uses “artificial intelligence” to play music at church … but there’s something so satisfying about playing an organ in real life.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962
    There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop
    —Veronica Brandt
    The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum
    Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.
    —Daniel Tucker

Random Quote

“Even after 1600 A.D.—despite major changes in musical taste—the compositions of Father Cristóbal de Morales were reprinted at Venice. Indeed, and as late as 1619 A.D. one Venetian publisher found his magnificats still in sufficient demand to make a profitable commercial venture out of issuing a new transcribed version for equal voices.”

— Dr. Robert Murrell Stevenson (d. 2012)

Recent Posts

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  • “Yahweh” in church songs?
  • “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
  • “Participation” • Recovering its Receptive Dimension
  • “Breathtaking Photographs” • First Mass of Father Michael Caughey, FSSP (Muskegon, MI)

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