The Oldest Gregorian Repertoire

Program: #03-42   Air Date: Oct 20, 2003

Preservation of this program is made possible by a generous grant from Dana Wipperman.

NOTE: According to Fr. Jerome Weber, this program represents the early  layer of Roman chant composition in its surviving Frankish state. A group  of ten Norwegians sings under the direction of Schweitzer, a German pupil  of Johannes Berchmans Göschl. He began working with the Oslo group in  1998 and made this recording two years later, although the notes are only  dated this year. He was a Benedictine monk until 1994 (and Göschl’s co-director for his last five years), but he has been teaching chant in the secular world since then. (Godehard Joppich made a similar move a few years earlier.)

Schweitzer is active in the International Association for Gregorian  Chant Studies (with German and Italian branches), a group of Dom Eugène  Cardine’s pupils who are revising the melodies of early chants based on their  own determination of what is best in the manuscript sources. The chants are  arranged in the order of Mass, Vespers, and Compline, but the selections do not correspond to any particular feast. Hence the format of the Mass includes ordinary and proper chants as well as lesson, gospel, and preface, but he introit is taken from  the feast of the Purification, the gradual from the 19th Sunday after Pentecost, and the  offertory and communion from the fourth Sunday after Pentecost, while the ordinary  chants belong to Easter.  

These programs are made possible in part by support from the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Washington, D.C.  For more information about Norwegian cultural events in the United States or for travel and tourist information, you may consult:

www.norway.org

Holy Mass

• Introit Suscepimus
• Kyrie
• Lectio: Isaiah 55, 6-11
• Graduale Dirigatur
• Alleluia Deis iudex iustus
• Evangelium: Matthew 21, 10-17
• Offertorium Illumina
• Oratorio super oblata--Praefatio--Sanctus I 
• Agnus Dei
• Communio Dominus firmamentum meum

Vespers

• Deus in adiutorium
• Hymnus Plasmator hominis
• Antiphon In ecclesiis & Psalm 110
• Antiphon Clamavi & Psalm 130
• Antiphon Dominus legifer & Psalm 117
• Capitulum: 2 Corinthians 1, 3-4
• Responsorium breve Benedicam
• Antiphon Bene omnia fecit & Magnificat
• Kyrie--Pater noster
• Oratio--Benedictio--Benedicamus Domino

Compline

• Iube, domine benedicere--Benedictio
• Lectio brevis: 1 Peter 5, 8-9
• Confiteor--Misereatur
• Psalm 4
• Hymnus Te lucis
• Capitulum: Jeremiah 14, 9
• Oratio--Benedictio
• Antiphon finalis B.M.V Regina caeli