Recent recordings of plainchant

Extract

The latest entry in the traversal of Graduale Novum 1, the AISCGre edition of restitutions of Mass Propers, arrived too late for last year's roundup of new recordings (no. 1 in the list below). It offers the Propers for the eleventh to the fifteenth Sundays in Ordinary Time. The title, ‘Gustate et Videte’, comes from the incipit of the communion for the fourteenth Sunday. The chants are sung in the best semiological interpretation with superb choral tone. The notes are interesting for a wry explanation of the lack of correspondence between the new liturgical calendar and the old. The first four sets of Propers on this disc match the fifth to the eighth Sundays after Pentecost, but the last set come from the tenth Sunday after Pentecost (with the exception of the communion). Because of the imprecatory introit of the ninth Sunday after Pentecost, averte mala inimicis meis . . . disperde illos, this set was passed over. The editors of the 1970 Roman Missal, on second thought, decided, upon reaching the sixteenth Sunday of the Year, to restore the missing chants (except the communion) to that service, while removing the offending lines in favour of another verse from the same psalm. (As the Graduale Triplex shows, the text of the introit escaped the tampering.) At this moment, EOS has three more CDs awaiting issue by three of the directors who have contributed earlier discs to the series. The second volume of Graduale Novum is expected to be published in 2017.