Customer Reviews

The Gregorian Missal for Sundays

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderful book for anyone who has the opportunity to regularly attend the Latin Mass with Gregorian Chant: the Novus Ordo as Vatican II intended it. In addition to the Ordinary of the Mass in English and Latin, it contains those parts of the service that are rendered in Gregorian Chant, with a reasonably easy musical notation and English translations. It includes all Sundays and Solemnities.

While the Latin Mass can be an impressive experience even to someone without any Latin, the meaning is obviously much richer if you can understand what's being said and participate in the chants.

And, not unimportantly, the book itself is of very high quality, with sewn pages and sturdy covers: it will not be falling to pieces after one or two uses!

Highly recommended for devout Catholics.

I attend a parish where the Novus Ordo Missae (1970) is celebrated in Latin, using the chants from the Graduale Romanum.

This book is geared to facilitate the singing of Mass with Gregorian chant. The book contains the Order of Mass in Latin and English, with the chants for the responses, settings for the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus-Benedictus, and Agnus Dei, and the chants for the Sundays and major Holy Days. The Latin texts of the chants are all set with Gregorian chant notation. However, there is no explanatory or devotional material included in the book. Scripture readings (and their lectionary cycles) are cited but not included.

Having the original Latin prayers side-by-side with the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) "translation" is alone worth the price of the book! Readers who can read Latin will be able to judge the ICEL's work for themselves.

Gregorian Missal belongs in the hands of every person interested in Chant. The Gregorian Missal includes the Chants for every Sunday and Feast Days, as well as the Chants for parts of Mass.

The Missal also includes the Order of the Mass. Included are English translations of the texts of the Chants.

The Gregorian Missal is perfect for anyone looking for a simple, easy to understand introduction to Chants for Mass. The price on Amazon is far cheaper than anywhere else. There is no need blowing hundreds of dollars on the Liber Usualis or Graduale Romanum unless you lead a schola. For the layman, Gregorian Missal is perfect.

This is a good reason for Protestants to rediscover our roots in ancient Christian worship and devotions. Get a unique perspective on the Psalms.

The Gregorian Missal Solesmes 1990 is a very good resource if you attend/sing Mass in the Post Vatican II rites, you would be hard pressed to make the direct link between pre V2 and post V2. If you are looking for chant for the Tridentine tradition this is not the one for you.

This is a great resource for anyone wanting to know or use the propers for Sundays throughout the year. Many won't ever hear these sung at Mass but now you can at least put them in your hands and receive the benefits of their richness. You can even use this as a Sunday Missal and not a choir book. It may even spark conversation after Mass which would help spread knowledge and use of Chant.

The Gregorian Missal's music (in neumes) is fine, the Latin easy to read and user friendly--but the English translations are embarassingly bad, and willfully inept. The ICEL deliberately stripped the poetry and theological depth of the original Latin into feeble, politically correct dumbed-down English devoid of the power & majesty of the prayers' crisp theological nuances.

Anyone who does not have even basic Latin is going to think the language of the propers is plodding, vague, and boring; and that you wouldn't talk to anybody this way, least of all God. I had two years as a mediocre High School Latin student, but I find I can still translate the Latin better than the schlock I'm offered in this book.) Fortunately the Vatican ordered the ICEL "back to the drawing board", -- to translate the Mass propers into English truer to scripture's original meaning.

Meanwhile this is the book I must sing from until we get a more accurate translation. As a plainchant soloist, I'm grateful I'm only singing the Latin, --not the feeble "translations" which have the have the linguistic grace of a wheelbarrow with a flat tire. You can't say the translations don't matter: for the cantor or chantress must first understand the prayer to sing it with conviction and reverence.