Support the restoration of the Benedictine patrimony: the Brignoles Nocturnale Psalter

(Source: Monastere de Brignoles)

I've now received my copy of the Brignoles Nocturnale Psalter, the first of three books that will, for the first time, provide all of the chants for the Benedictine Night Office.  

This book is an essential buy if you want to sing Matins even just occasionally.

But even if you don't plan on saying or singing Matins, do consider supporting this small and relatively newly established monastery in its work to support the recovery of the Benedictine liturgical patrimony. 

Singing Monastic Matins

This project is, I think, a particularly important one in that it provides the basis for the recovery of the use of chant at an hour that most monasteries,  even traditional ones, simply sing on one note.

Up until now that mostly hasn't necessarily been a matter of deliberate choice, but rather an outcome dictated by the lack of printed editions for the chants - while the invitatory antiphons and tones for Psalm 94 have long been published, the other necessary texts are scattered through various Roman and Benedictine books and in some cases simply haven't been published at all.

Yet Matins is, surely, the most distinctly monastic of all of the hours of the Divine Office, the hour at which monks keep watch during the night to protect these rest of us.  

It is also the hour St Benedict himself gives priority to: he treats it first in his description of the Office, and devotes a lot of space to it.

There have of course, been several very positive steps forward, in recent times, on making the Matins texts more available: Le Barroux published its Latin-French and Latin only Nocturnale; the Gower nuns recently published their Latin-English Matins books; and Brignoles reprinted the long rare-as-hen's-teeth 1963 breviary, along with a large body of supplementary material.

Up until now though, no equivalent to the Antiphonale, containing the chants, has been available.

Matins is a particularly beautiful hour when sung, though, not least because it contains some of the most diverse, spiritually rich and beautiful chants of the entire Gregorian repertoire in the form of the Matins responsories.

Fortunately, the Brignoles Nocturnale project aims to publish all the necessary chants for the hour, and has now delivered the first of three planned volumes, in the form of a psalter for Matins containing all of the ordinary texts needed to sing Benedictines Matins on ferias throughout the year.

The physical book

The Brignoles psalter books is very high quality indeed.

The book has the same height and width as the 1934 Antiphonale Monasticum (slightly smaller than US paperbook size), albeit much thinner, so will sit together with with your other Office books neatly.

(Image: Monastere de Brignoles)

It has a strong hard cover, and appears to be bound very well, made to last.

The paper is similarly high quality.

The font is sufficiently large to be easy on the eyes, and the black and red print is crisp and clear.

And it comes with three ribbons.

The contents

 The book includes a lovely frontispiece engraving, based on the Brignoles chapel, as well as the prayers before and after the Office (Aperi Domine etc), and is arranged primarily around the psalms used at Matins on each day of the week.

The main psalter supplies the ordinary texts and chants for it for each day of the week, including:

• the invitatory antiphons;
• the hymns; 
• the antiphons;
• short responsories for summer weekdays; and 
• responsory for the Office of Our Lady on Saturday.

An appendix provides the psalm tones for all of the variants used with Psalm 94, as well as the other standard tones for the opening and closing of the hour, readings, Te Deum variants and so forth.

An additional appendix provides the Ordinary for the seasons, as well as the collects for throughout the  year.

So for Advent, it provides the Sunday and weekday versions of the Invitatory antiphon, the hymn, and collects.

The Psalter also makes some smart choices in relation to the chants, generally aligning with older printed versions of the texts where these are available (so that the hymn tunes, for example, match those in the Antiphonale).