Recorded for the first time on any label, the First Vespers and Mass for the feast of St. Patrick are now available on In Honor of St. Patrick. Transcribed from fifteenth-century Irish manuscripts, these Latin chants are sung, perhaps for the first time by anyone since the Reformation, by the Schola Cantorum of Saint Peter's-in-the-Loop. In Honor of St. Patrick presents Vespers in its entirety, word-for-word as it would have been heard in the late 1400s at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. The choral chant for the Mass is also included.
This is a rare opportunity to hear a local dialect of Gregorian chant. The CD booklet provides the texts in Latin, English, and Irish.
Selections for the First Vespers are:
Introduction
First Vesper Psalm: 112
Second Vesper Psalm: 116
Third Vesper Psalm: 145
Fourth Vesper Psalm: 146
Fifth Vesper Psalm: 147
Capitulum
Responsory and Prose
Office Hymn
Versicle and Response
Magnificat
Collect
Conclusion
Selections for Mass are:
Office (Introit)
Troped Kyrie
Gloria in excelsis Deo
Respond (Gradual)
Tract
Sequence
Nicene Creed
Offertory and Prose
Preface and Sanctus
Agnus Dei
Communion and Verse
Dismissal
J. Michael Thompson is the director of music ministry at St. Peter's Church, where he is the founder and director of the Schola Cantorum. He has been a pastoral musician and liturgist for twenty years, as well as a composer, author, and a noted promoter of the Liturgy of the Hours and Gregorian chant in contemporary parish situations.