Proper of Feasts Celebrated in the Dioceses of England & Wales
The texts and music contained in this book are set out for the convenience of singers accompanying celebrations, in the Extraordinary Form, of feast days peculiar to England and Wales, or having specific texts or chants in England and Wales.
FROM THE PREFACE:
Because of the long and sometimes stormy history of the Catholic Church in our countries, there are many saints and beati associated with them who are not widely known elsewhere, from St Alban, the protomartyr of Britain under the Romans, to St Oliver Plunkett, the most distinguished martyr of the Titus Oates conspiracy, who died in 1681.
As Catholics in England and Wales it is our duty and privilege to honour these saints and beati, and our more immediate predecessors in the Faith, the Bishops overseeing the restoration of Catholic life and liturgy in England and Wales over the century or so from 1850, eagerly applied to the Holy See for permission to include a considerable number of them in the ‘particular calendar’ of their dioceses, along with the feasts of certain devotions of special significance to their dioceses. The result is a calendar enriched with more than 150 National and Diocesan feasts.
The Latin Mass Society’s annual Ordo includes these feasts, but as they are not in the Universal Calendar they are not always found in standard editions of singers’ books, the Graduale Romanum and Liber Usualis. In most cases it is simply a matter of directing singers to the chants needed in the pages of the Liber, and the present volume has been designed as a supplement to the Liber, with page references to it. In a few cases, however, chants are needed which do not appear in the standard Liber, and are given here in full. They have been found in other printed supplements to the Liber or Graduale (the USA Supplement to the Liber, the Order of St Benedict Supplement to the Swann edition of the Graduale), in other chant books (older editions of the Graduale, the Carmelite Graduale), and in loose printed sheets found inside old copies of the Liber.
In a very few cases, no chant setting has been found for proper texts for diocesan feasts.These may be sung to a setting of the singers’ choosing, such as a psalm-tone. This is the case whenever the text is given below for an Introit, Gradual, Alleluia or Tract, or Communion, without music.
Basing itself on the conventions of the Liber Usualis, this volume has included the full Latin texts of each Mass and some other useful information, such as the liturgical colour and the rank of the feast. However, it is not designed as a guide to what can or should be celebrated on each day, since this depends upon the rank of the feasts and ferial days of the Universal Calendar which coincide with these local feasts. The Latin Mass Society’s Ordo is the definitive guide here.
Cover picture: Stained glass window by Miss Margaret Rope in the Relic Chapel of the Benedictine Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre, at Tyburn, London, used with permission.
