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Views from the Choir Loft

“Proper Of The Mass” (Ignatius Press) • Part 1 of 7

Andrew R. Motyka · April 15, 2015

921 Samuel Weber Proper English Ignatius Press ATHER SAMUEL WEBER’S new resource, The Proper of the Mass for Sundays and Solemnities, may not be a game-changer in its novelty, but its execution sets an extremely high bar for those of us interested in the musical proper of the Mass. The usefulness of this book to the average 1 choir is evident even at first glance.   (View Images)

As its title suggests, this is a full set of the Proper of the Mass for each Sunday of the liturgical year. What sets this book apart, however, is the approach which Fr. Weber took in his treatment of each psalm. He is undoubtedly one of the modern masters of setting English chant.

Most propers in the book have four (!) different settings:

1. A MELISMATIC SETTING (sample video) that is not a direct transcription of the Gregorian original, but quotes it extensively, making modifications to elucidate the English text rather than the Latin.

2. A SIMPLIFIED SETTING (sample video) of the above, which is through-composed but much more accessible to singers who are not quite as strong at chanting. I would say these are comparable to the Graduale Simplex in their difficulty.

3. A GREGORIAN PSALM TONE (sample video) setting of the text.

4. AN ENGLISH PSALM TONE (sample video) setting of the text.

Overall, I would say this is the closest thing I have seen to an English spiritual descendent of the Graduale Romanum. Furthermore, each setting contains several psalm verses. These are extremely useful since they are not printed in the Latin Gradual (just the Scriptural citations). Being so closely adapted from the Gregorian originals, these “smell” of the liturgy, which is always a good thing. Recalling Pope Saint John Paul II’s statement that the sacrality and liturgical appropriateness of a piece can be judged by comparing it to the Gregorian form, we have here a strong contender.

What does this mean for your choir (and mine)? For me, it adds yet another option for singing the Proper of the Mass, which is something I am always on the lookout for. At my parish, we use a combination of St. Meinrad psalm tones, hymn settings of the Introit texts, chants from the Simple English Propers, my own Communion settings, and settings from the Graduale Romanum as rehearsal time permits. Fr. Weber’s new book is one I will gladly add to the above, in any iteration of the text.


This book could actually be a great way to teach a beginning schola how to chant from Gregorian notation. By beginning with the simplest settings, one could easily introduce the early concepts of mode, neumes, and the style of proclamation, gradually (get it?) progressing to the more ornamental settings. This book is not only useful as a liturgical resource, but a pedagogical one.

We here at Views from the Choir Loft will have a lot more to say about this wonderful resource in the coming days, and all of it will be deserved. It calls for three cheers from the liturgical music community.

This article is part of a series on Fr. Weber’s Book of Propers:

Part 1 • Andrew Motyka

Part 2 • Richard Clark

Part 3 • Veronica Brandt

Part 4 • Fr. David Friel

Part 5 • Andrew Leung

Part 6 • Dr. Lucas Tappan

Part 7 • Jeff Ostrowski



NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   Or above average, or even advanced!

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

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Proper of the Mass in English, Propers Ignatius Press by Fr Samuel Weber Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Andrew R. Motyka

Andrew Motyka is the Archdiocesan Director of Liturgical Music and Cathedral Music for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.—(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

From 1827 until the last month of his life, Liszt gave lessons in composition and piano playing. He wrote in 1829 that his schedule was “so full of lessons that each day, from half-past eight in the morning till 10 at night, I have scarcely breathing time”

— Re: Abbé Franz Liszt

Recent Posts

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

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