Exspectans Exspectavi

Looking ahead at the propers for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, for some reason I was intrigued by the Offertory chant, “Exspectans exspectavi” (“With expectaiton I have waited for the Lord, and He had regard to me…” Ps. 39). Desiring to chant, but not particularly thrilled with Fr. Weber’s setting of this text, I once again went searching for manuscripts online.

There is an offertory setting of this chant on gregobase, however I decided to once again reference the ancient manuscript: Antiphonarium pro Ecclesia Einsidlensi which dates to approximately the year 1300 (the archive dates it as “before 1314”).

This melody differs from the more common offertory tone that is known today, however it is quite lovely:

You can view the entire folio here.

For the ease of my choir, I decided to transcribe this into modern notation (and thankfully this page was copied more carefully than that of Astitit Regina!) and also set the english translation to this original melody, which, to my delight, adapted very well. This weekend we will have a cantor intone the original latin, and the choir will respond in english (the text of which is longer than the latin):

If you would like a copy of this score, I would be more than happy to share it with you. In the interest of making this widely available to those interested in singing chant, you can download the score here. I would love it if you let me know via my contact page if you perform this edition!

I hope you enjoy this ancient chant as much as I do!