The Little Office of Blessed Virgin Mary is a devotion which imitates the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours. It was made to be simpler and more accessible for the average Catholic. It is used by religious and layfolk alike and was one of the requirements for the Sabbatine Privilege. It was a popular book even before the printing press and people would memorize much of it to pray throughout the day.
There are a few different versions floating around. Keeping with the idea of simplicity, most only have the words. About a decade ago, Baronius Press brought out this beautiful edition with music. Being such a small volume, only the essential music was included. The psalms have no music explicitly given beyond the Euouae and they are not pointed. They don’t have accent marks or marks for the flex (dagger) and metrum (asterisk) either. In Latin the psalms have very exact tunes. If you were very familiar with singing the psalms, then you would be able to sing them from the Baronius Press books, but they don’t have enough information for the uninitiated to work it out for themselves.
I ordered copies for everyone in my family and we began to sing from them. We began with the English and then added in Latin as we worked it out piece by piece. I made my own booklets to make singing the psalms easier. Pretty soon we had Compline memorised and soon learned Prime as well.
I have made a few recordings over the years and these are far and away my most popular videos on my youtube channel. Even today, someone I had never met before recognised me from Youtube and said I should make more videos of the Little Office.
I am endeavouring to gather together all the materials I have on the Little Office and bring some order to my so far disjointed efforts. You can check my progress at littleoffice.brandt.id.au. I have been meaning to wait until it was more complete before promoting the project here, but maybe sharing it will help spur me on to get more recordings and booklets finished.
