A short guide to chanting the psalms

Who is this guide for and what does it hope to do?

This guide is written for those hoping to introduce themselves, or a novice choir, to the singing of psalm tones. This may be for Mass, the Divine Office, or just for one’s own prayer life. It may sound complicated on the first read through, but hopefully with the sung examples to listen to as you go, you will be able to make sense of things. Do persevere, it very quickly becomes a natural process.

What is this guide not?

This guide is not intended to delve into Gregorian chant, its notation and the more complicated Modes of singing the psalms. We will stick to modern notation and a discussion of how to annotate lines of a psalm for chanting.

What is chant?

Firstly it should be said that chanting is not singing in the modern understanding. Singing has two fixed requirements of the singer: pitch and rhythm; Chant has pitch (though very easily changed) but rhythm is much more flexible. Think of it as a combination of speaking and singing. More on this shortly.

Why ‘tones’, not ‘tunes’?

A (hymn) tune is written for a specific number of syllables in each line. Each syllable has a note or notes attached to it. This means that they only work with the correct number of syllables.

A tone has ‘reciting notes’ which are used for most of each line, with a movement of pitch toward the end (and sometimes at the beginning). This allows it to be used for lines of different lengths, such as those of the psalms.

How are chant tones shown with modern notation?

Usually the reciting and final note are shown using the semibreve symbols, as these can apply to more than one syllable. The moving notes are shown as crotchet notes (usually without the stems.) The example we will use throughout this guide is shown below:

Many psalm tones, including the one above, are written to allow for the singing of different-length stanzas in the psalms. Older tones generally only include two lines.

How do I/my choir know when to move note?

With the text of the psalm written out, it is normal to indicate the syllable of the first moving note by changing the font (underling, emboldening, italicising, or even all three).

Let us take some examples from the responsorial psalm for the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year A), Psalm 26(27), with the moving notes underlined, in bold and italicised. Consider the response below, which uses only the first and final lines of our tone:

I am sure I shall sée the Lord’s goodness
in the lánd of the living.

The first stanza of this psalm has four lines, so uses the first, second, third and final lines:

The Lord is my líght and my help;
whóm shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
before whóm shall I shrink?

The next verse has six lines, so uses all six lines of the tone:

There is one thing I ásk of the Lord,
fór this I long,
to live in the hóuse of the Lord,
all the dáys of my life,
to savour the sweetness of the Lord,
to behold his temple.

How do I choose which syllable to move note on?

This is where it does get a little difficult. When preparing the psalms to be sung, one must decide which syllables to mark as the first moving notes. This is where the idea of thinking of chant like speech comes in: As we speak we naturally stress certain syllables, and we need to identify them.

The best description I have come across this comes from a Latin resource called the Liber Usualis, which includes the following image to relate the lilting rhythm of the text, with the high-points being placed over the stressed syllable:

These stressed syllables should be marked on a text, usually with small accents above the (first) vowel of the syllable. Consider this stanza from an earlier example, accented fully:

The Lórd is my líght and my hélp;
whóm shall I féar?
The Lórd is the strónghold of my lífe;
before whóm shall I shrínk?

That is the difficult bit, the next rule is simple: The final note is reached on the final (accented) stressed syllable, so to find the first moving syllable just count backwards by the number of moving notes. All of the lines in our sample tone have two moving notes, so the moving syllable is two before the last accent on each line. Our stanza therefore becomes:

The Lórd is my líght and my hélp;
whóm shall I féar?
The Lórd is the strónghold of my lífe;
before whóm shall I shrínk?

It is worth noting here that often in English the final note is only used for a single syllable, as is the case for all four of these lines. This is because we tend to stress the last syallable of a sentence; but it is fine for the final note to be used for two or even three syllables, depending on where the last stressed syllable falls. An example of this can be seen in the last line of the six-line stanza seen earlier, with the two syllables of the word ‘temple’ being sung using the final note.

Unusual Considerations

There are three complications which must be considered, all of which generally flag themselves up on a first attempt to sing through:

Firstly, you may have noticed in the first examples above that some lines had an extra syllable underlined, always that immediately before the moving syllable. Where the final syllable of the reciting note (that is, immediately before the first moving note) is a stressed syllable, it is natural to hold the note slightly. I add a simple underlining where this is the case as it draws the eye more clearly than a tiny accent. Consider the famous opening verses of Psalm 22(23), noting the holding of the syllables Lord, green, gives, and ‘war’ in the first, third, fourth and fifth lines, respectively:

The Lórd ís my shépherd;
there is nóthing I shall wánt.
Frésh and gréen are the pástures
where he gíves me repóse.
Near réstful wáters he léads me,
to revíve my drooping spírit.

A held note can also be used when a significant punctuation mark occurs mid-line. Again, for the ease of the singer(s), it is helpful to underline that syllable.

Secondly, it is not uncommon for a verse or stanza to have an odd number of lines – three or even five. Some psalm tones are written to account for this, but most are not. The thing to do here is to break the verse or stanza up into ‘pairs’ of lines using the meaning of the text, with one ‘pair’ having the extra (and therefore three) line(s). In the ‘pair’ with three lines of text, the reciting note is held all the way through to the end of the second line; the first line (on which the note is held) is usually marked with an ‘obelus’ or ‘dagger’. Two verses of psalm 94(95) are given as an example below:

Come ín; let us bów and bend lów;
let us knéel before the Gód who made ús:
for hé is our Gód and wé †
the péople who belóng to his pásture,
the flóck that is léd by his hánd.

O that todáy you would lísten to his vóice! †
‘Hárden not your héarts as at Meríbah,
as on that dáy at Mássah in the désert
when your fáthers pút me to the tést;
when they tríed me, though they sáw my wórk.’

Thirdly, and most rarely, some lines of text are very short. Some sources would have the moving note as the first syllable (with the reciting note not being used at all.) However it is acceptable, and easier for novices, to sing more than one note on a single syllable in this case. Consider the example of the last verse used on the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year A), which requires both moving notes to be sung on the word ‘his’ in the final line:

O Lórd, hear my vóice when I cáll;
have mércy and ánswer.
Of yóu my héart has spóken:
‘Séek his fáce.’

Conclusion

I hope this has not put any budding cantors or musical directors off. The best way to learn is to listen to some alongside the tone and listen for the different features. It does get easier and soon you’ll be able to annotate as you go on the first sing-through of a psalm (really!)

The other thing that will prove invaluable is having someone who already knows what they are doing. I hope you have someone like that to call on, but if not, you are always welcome to contact me with questions at martin@martincasey.uk.

Below, I’ll attach a Word document copy of this post, which will not have the recordings, but will include a few ready-marked psalms at the end for you to have a practice of. They get progressively more intricate as you go through them.

Download:

a-short-guide-to-chanting-the-psalms Download

The deacon’s bits…

Okay the title might be a little provocative, but once the Carry On fans at the back have finished sniggering, we can begin…

Since my ordination last summer I have fielded a number of questions from parishioners about the deacon’s role at Mass. In this post I hope to provide an overview of where deacons fit into the liturgical life of the Church, particularly at Holy Mass, and use ‘the deacon’s bits’ – that is, the parts of the Mass in which a deacon says or does something, to illustrate some wider truths about the diaconate as part of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

The first thing to say is that in the experience of most Catholics, the deacon appears to turn up and take some of the priests’ roles. That’s not strictly true – for the most part the roles I’m going to be discussing here are those proper to a deacon, which means that if a deacon is assisting at the Mass, then he should be the one to say or do that thing. For instance, it comes as a surprise to some people when I mention that you will never see the Pope read the Gospel in St Peter’s, because arrangements are always made for a deacon to be present at such large Masses. Of course, St Peter’s is not a typical parish church, and the Pope is not a typical parish priest. In the absence of a deacon at Mass, a priest steps into those roles, as he is also a deacon, having usually been ordained such about a year before his ordination to the priesthood. It was quite unexpected, but very nice, to be greeted as a ‘brother deacon’ by a number of priests following my ordination.

The deacon’s roles at Holy Mass largely fall under three identities: as a herald of the Gospel, as an image of Christ the Servant, and as the link between the Altar and the Faithful.

A Herald of the Gospel:

We have already mentioned the proclamation of the Gospel as a proper function of the deacon. Immediately after his ordination, a deacon kneels before his bishop and is handed a book of the Gospels as the bishop says to him; “receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you now are: Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.” The diaconate order has been associated with proclaiming and teaching the faith since ancient times, and although it lost something of its identity by becoming a precursor to the priesthood (until its restoration as a permanent order in the 1960s) it still existed within the liturgy, with the role of the deacon at a High Mass usually being filled by a second priest. This identity as a herald of the Gospel is also the basis of the deacon’s permissions to preach, including homilies at Mass; the graces of ordination allow us to share in our Bishop’s teaching authority, and he grants us the faculties to “exercise the ministry of preaching the Word of God, as a service to the people, and in communion with the Archbishop and the priests.”*

One of the differences that does apply to deacons is that before we proclaim the Gospel, we ask the blessing of the celebrant, by bowing to him and asking quietly, “your blessing, Father.” The deacon then receives a short blessing from the celebrant, which bears a number of similarities to the prayer which a priest would himself say before the Gospel. Following the Gospel the deacon reverences the book in the same way as a priest by kissing the opening words of the passage whilst praying quietly “through the words of the Gospel may our sins be wiped away.”

Chanting the Gospel.
Priestly Ordination Mass of Fr Toby Duckworth and Fr Steven Fleming, 2023. St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham.

An Image of Christ the Servant:

The word deacon comes from a Greek word which translates as servant. It should be no surprise therefore that many of the deacon’s liturgical functions appear to be acts of service at the altar. The deacon prepares the altar and adds wine and water to the chalice with the quiet words “through the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” He then hands the paten and the prepared chalice to the priest in turn. Depending on the celebrant’s wishes the deacon may also cover and uncover the chalice as needed, and turn the pages of the Missal for the priest. The deacon also elevates the chalice for the conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer, though he does not sing or say the words – they are still a part of the Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the function of the priest(s) who is (are) celebrating the Mass; instead he joins with the rest of the people in acclaiming the Lord in the final Amen. After Holy Communion the deacon can, if the priest wishes, purify the sacred vessels and return everything to their proper places.

Preparing the Chalice.
My Ordination Mass, 2022. St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham.

On the Distribution of Holy Communion:

A mention should be made here of the distribution of Holy Communion. A deacon is an ordinary minister of Holy Communion. This means that the Church allows him to distribute Holy Communion by virtue of his Order, without a special commissioning, such as that required to allow lay people to serve as extra-ordinary ministers of Holy Communion. However, a deacon receives Holy Communion just like a lay person, from the hand of another minister – usually the celebrant of the Mass. The celebrant of the Mass will usually distribute Holy Communion, but there is a question, it seems, of who should be the ‘second’ minister of Holy Communion if both a deacon and a concelebrant priest is present. I have not been able to find a clear and satisfactory answer to this question, but my opinion would be that if there are concelebrating priests present, the intimate connection between their Order and the Blessed Sacrament would suggest that they should distribute Holy Communion before the deacon(s) of the Mass.

Since my ordination a couple of people have asked me why I receive Holy Communion on the tongue, when I am about to distribute it with my hands. I hope that this note has addressed that: priests communicate themselves; my own reception of the Lord is from the hands of the priest. That did not change with my ordination as a deacon, despite my being in the privileged position of having the faculty to then aid the priest if needed in the distribution of Holy Communion to the faithful.

As the Link between the Altar and the Faithful:

The deacon has a number of little phrases to say aloud during the Liturgy. The most noticeable is the dismissal at the end of Mass – “go forth the mass is ended,” or one of the other options available in the Missal. There are others, such as the instruction to “bow down for the blessing” before a solemn blessing, or the repeated “let us kneel” and “let us stand” during the solemn intercessions on Good Friday. These instructions can seem rather curt and even rude, but the English translations are actually rather toned down; the literal translations are very clearly instructions. For example, the single word instruction levate, translated as “let us stand” would more strictly be simply “stand up.”

Translations aside, it is a fair question to ask why it falls to the deacon to give these announcements. The answer is simply that deacons are a link from the altar to the people, and vice versa. The celebrant addresses the people at different points in the Mass, such as with the words “the Lord be with you;” “pray brethren that my sacrifice and yours…;” or “behold the Lamb of God…;” but when instructions are to be given, it falls to the deacon to give them. This is also the reason why, after the priest has incensed the altar, it is the deacon’s role to incense in turn the priest, other clergy (usually concelebrants), and then the congregation in the main body of the church.

Another aspect which emphasises the deacon as the link between the altar and the people is the reading of the Universal Prayer, or ‘Bidding Prayers.’ While this is a role proper to the deacon, in many parishes a lay person reads these intercessions and a pastoral reason is given for this, usually something along the lines of ‘that’s what we always did before we had a deacon.’ I am not, and have never met a deacon who is, particularly precious about reading the Bidding Prayers at Mass, but the principle of praying at the altar for the needs of the world definitely fits into this meaning of the diaconate.

Reading the Intentions of the Universal Prayer.
Rite of Election, First Sunday of Lent, 2023. St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham.

Conclusion:

This post has not taken a toothcomb through the Liturgy to examine every thing a deacons says or does, but it has covered most of them. What I hope it has achieved is to draw out some of the unique theology of the diaconate as one of the Holy Orders, and demonstrate how these aspects are expressed at Holy Mass.

With every blessing,

Martin

* Note: That quote is taken directly from my letter of appointment, and so refers to ‘the Archbishop’ as I live and minister in an Archdiocese. Everything said in relation to a bishop applies to any local Ordinary, whether a bishop or archbishop.