About a month ago I posted something on a pair of articles by Jeffrey Tucker discussing the baby steps for the (re)introduction of Gregorian chant. At the Chant Café he reviews the Lumen Christi Missal. This is an ambitious missal, including chant settings in English for every Mass of the year (including the Proper of Saints) with the Simple Gradual, various ritual and devitional chants and scarcely a hymn in sight. So far as I can tell there isn't anything not in English. The publishers have posted a preview. It is superb.

Jeffrey Tucker is very enthusiastic..

Perhaps the most thrilling single fact I’ve found about the Lumen Christi Missal: it is a book that could right now be put in the pews of any parish and make everyone extremely happy. It doesn’t matter what the outlook or traditions of the parish or the parish priest are or have been. This book is a viable replacement for, and an upgrade to, all the seasonal missalettes and resources that parishes pay for now. It is the one book that a parish would need. If the pastor bought it and left for another parish, his successor would thank his predecessor for years to come. And I really mean that it could go into any parish, without shock or alarm but rather great relief.

Make everyone extremely happy? In a parish, nothing makes everyone happy and of all the parishes I have attended, I think only one had a music director who might agree with such a project as replacing hymns with English adaptations of the Propers. Tucker also asks, à propos some YouTube videos of organa (plainchant with harmony lines), whether it is viable in today's parishes. I am going to say…no, sadly, no.

Rokuzayemon