  This article, previously found on this site, disappeared with a reorganization some time ago. I have re-posted it here in conjunction with new typesettings of the chant booklets found on the Resources page.

  In order to teach and encourage parishioners to pray Compline – a simple, essentially unchanging, service at the time of day when the most people might have the opportunity for such a thing – at home during the Covid-19 pandemic, I created a booklet containing the whole rite with its musical setting, available on the Resources page of this site.

The chant settings I have made differ from those found in the Hymnal 1982 (S 321–337, printed only in the Appendix but locally reproducible) in several ways, outlined below.

Opening Versicle

For what the Liber Usualis (LU) calls the Ancient Simple Versicle Tone, appropriately used in many places in the Hymnal 1982 including the Compline setting, two sets of solutions are given (LU 118) for final, accented syllables and monosyllables, which of course are very frequent in English. Paradigm A simply falls from do to la on the final, accented syllable. In Paradigm B, if a final, accented syllable is preceded by a proparoxytone, the last four syllables are sung do–ti–la–do, as in the metrum of the Ancient Simple Oration Tone (LU 102); if that final, accented syllable is preceded by anything else, the last three syllables are set do–la–do. This pattern is perhaps most familiar to Hymnal 1982 users from its use in the Suffrages of Morning and Evening Prayer, but I believe it is used in every relevant place in the Hymnal except in the Versicle of the fore-office of Compline, and the Versicles preceding the Episcopal Blessing (S  73), where Paradigm A is used. Significantly, these two exceptions share a text, ‘Our help is in the name of the Lord / The maker of heaven and earth’; given that, according to the Hymnal 1982 Companion, the Episcopal Blessing was set this way as early as 1971, I suspect the setting was simply copied for Compline. Later in the Compline rite, Paradigm B is used in the Versicle Tone settings of the ‘In manus tuas’ (S 332) and ‘Domine, exaudi’ (S 335). I have set the opening Versicle here to Paradigm B as well.

Psalms

In the Hymnal the Compline Psalms are set to Tone VIII. This is indeed the tone to which they are sung in the Roman Use – but this tone is so used because those Psalms are sung under a Mode VIII antiphon (‘Miserere mihi Domine, et exaudi orationem meam’, or a threefold Alleluia in Eastertide) in that Use. Without an antiphon, as in monastic Use, these psalms should logically be sung to the Tonus in directum – closely related to the other ancient simple tones, as its flex and final cadence are simply made by a drop of a minor third, and the mediant cadence is do–ti–la–do as described above – and I have set them in this way.

Lesson

For the Lesson (which would traditionally be called a Chapter), the Hymnal – as in An Order for Noonday – has used not the Chapter Tone, but the Short Lesson Tone of the LU (123). In this I have followed the Hymnal rather than the tradition because the Short Lesson Tone uses the drop of a fifth for the full stop (and for the ‘Deo gratias’) that has already been introduced in the Blessing at the beginning of the service, while the Chapter Tone has a different ending (and response) that would complicate the service. I have, however, re-set the ‘Venite ad me’ lesson to better reflect the stress, and sense, of the text – ‘...I will give you rést’, rather than ‘I will gíve you rest’; ‘léarn from me’ rather than ‘learn from mé’ – and have used the metrum, rather than the flex, at ‘lowly in heart’, since the flex may be omitted in a short sentence but the metrum may not. In the lesson from the Epistle to the Hebrews, I have also used the metrum at ‘pleasing in his sight’, rather than at ‘through Jesus Christ’.

Versicles

The Prayer Book inexplicably converted the Responsory ‘In manus tuas’ to a Versicle (one wonders whether in some draft, R. V. against these two lines of text was mistakenly, or deliberately but ignorantly, reversed to V. R.). The Hymnal offers this text set in both ways, but since there is unfortunately no Prayer Book warrant for the use of a Responsory here, I have included only the Versicle version. (By no means all earlier rites for Compline have included a Responsory, but none of the ‘mainstream’ ones famliar to me set this text as a Versicle, or include two Versicles back-to-back.) Furthermore, since I imagine this setting to be used at home, and not particularly on Sundays or feast days, I have included only the simple setting of the second Versicle (‘Custodi nos’) rather than the solemn one found in the Hymnal.

Kyrie

  I have set the third Kyrie ‘Lord [do], have [la] mer-[ti-do] cy [do]’, which I think better reflects the text, following the LU setting ‘Kyrie [do] e-[la] le-[ti] i-[do] son [do]’.

Our Father

  In the traditional Uses, the bulk of the Our Father was always said silently, and the last two phrases sung aloud as a Versicle and Response. The Hymnal sets the whole prayer to the what the LU calls the Second Ferial Oration Tone (p. 99, 2. B.), i.e. recto tono with a drop of a minor third at the end – which is appropriate but not very interesting. I have instead followed the new Antiphonale Monasticum in setting the Our Father to something like the Ancient Simple Oration Tone. (The exact provenance of the AM setting escapes me, but the paradigm seems to be alternating flexus and metra with the final two phrases set as the traditional V/R pair, i.e. with the drop of a minor third.)

Domine exaudi and Oremus

For the ‘Domine, exaudi’ I have included only the Versicle-tone setting rather than the setting to the melody of the Roman Compline Psalm-antiphon found at S 334 (is the latter a mistaken identification of this text, which begins ‘Domine, exaudi orationem meam [nostram]’, with that of the antiphon, which ends ‘et exaudi orationem meam’?). I have set the Response as ‘Let our cry cóme to you’ rather than ‘Let our cry come to yóu’, as I believe the point is not to ask that our prayer be directed to the Lord rather than someone else, but that it be directed to the Lord, full stop. And I have set the ‘Oremus’ in a way that fits the logic of the Versicle tone, i.e. ‘Let [do] us [la] pray [do]’ (cf. the ‘Oremus’ for the Collect at the Supplication, S 338), rather than using the ‘Oremus’ of the Festal Oration Tone (LU 99) as the Hymnal does.

Collects

  The Hymnal suggests that the Collects may be monotoned or sung to Collect Tone II, S 448 (this is the LU Festal Tone, p. 99, used for Sundays and Feasts at Mass and the Major Hours, but never at the Minor Hours). I have used instead the Ancient Simple Oration Tone (cf. the aforementioned Collect at the Supplication, S 338), which is closely related to the Blessing, Versicle, and Short Lesson Tones already used in the Compline setting. Singing these prayers recto tono is also an option (LU 124).

Nunc dimittis

The Hymnal adaptation of the Antiphon ‘Salva nos’ is, I think, unnecessarily literal; the use of three intonational pitches for each of the single initial syllables ‘Guide’ and ‘and’, and two pitches for ‘that’, in particular seem uncharacteristic of the chant. I have re-adapted the Antiphon with reference to G. H. Palmer’s version (in a very different translation) in his Order of Compline. Since this is a Mode III antiphon, I have used a Mode III threefold Alleluia antiphon for the Eastertide Alleluia rather than the Mode VII Alleluia found in the Hymnal. With some diffidence I have retained the more modern form of Tone III (and the related intonation formula of the Antiphon), as I think it is easier for the inexperienced singer.

Blessing

The concluding Blessing of Compline is directed in the traditional books to be given recto tono, slowly. I have accordingly set it thus rather than to the tone used for the opening blessing of the service (which is historically a blessing of the reader of the Short Lesson, which Lesson is not used in the Prayer Book rite).
writing
