The latest entry in a long-running series of chant recordings comes from Schola Hungarica (no. 1 in the list below). ‘Delectamentum’ (delight) is a word that occurs in a versicle and response for Offices of the Blessed Sacrament, taken from Wisdom 16:20, where it refers to the manna in the desert. This is not the usual Office of Corpus Christi, however, for the chants are taken from sources in Esztergom, Prague, Vienna and the Dominican rite. Mass chants, too, are taken from the last source, since the Dominican friar St Thomas Aquinas wrote the texts of the Office. Three selections are sung in Guillaume Dufay's polyphonic settings.

The next entry (no. 2) repeats the same title from last year (2009, no. 1), but in fact is a two-disc set packaged in a slim jewel case. Even the cover art is identical, with only the back cover indicating that the contents occupy two CDs. The first disc is the original issue, while the second was recorded five months later. It offers a few selections from Advent Vespers, the Mass Ordinary and Proper for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, a few selections from Christmas Lauds, and the Mass Ordinary and Proper for the Third Mass of Christmas. All are Cistercian chants, sung as well as those on the first disc. It should be noted that some sources report that a track 30 has been added to the first disc, an Invitatory and Psalm 94 timed at 6:32. Similarly, the second disc (issued just in time for Christmas 2008) turned up at Easter in 2009 with additional tracks 26–28: the hymn Ad cenam Agni providi, an Easter canticle Salus et gloria and the antiphon Regina caeli. For these tracks, we seem to have entered the era of the internet download.

Marcel Pérès has added to his three previous recordings of Old Roman chant a new one (no. 3) containing some of the Mass Propers of Christmas, all taken from the Gradual of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. There are two chants of the vigil, five of Midnight, two of Dawn, and five of the Mass of the Day. The last group, unusually, includes introit, Kyrie eleison incarnatum quoque, the alleluia, St John's gospel, and the communion. The gospel, not found in the source cited, is sung by Lycourgos Angelopoulos ‘in the manner still in force in the Eastern churches’. The offertory of Midnight Mass includes both verses. The disc is very full, for the singing is extremely slow. Three pages are reproduced from the source manuscript but the numbering is different to the published facsimile.

Alexander Schweitzer's latest disc is a programme of Marian chants (no. 4), many of them followed by organ improvisations on the chant. Ave maris stella alternates with organ versets, Kyrie IX is troped and the offertory Ave Maria includes a verse. The style is semiological and the Norwegian schola is highly accomplished. The same label has issued Johannes Berchmans Göschl's latest disc (no. 5), drawing on chants of Lent, Eastertide and the Dedication of a Church. Verses for three offertories are included. The Munich schola is exemplary in its semiological interpretation.

An unfamiliar late medieval Office is found in Weingarten (no. 6), where it was composed after a relic of the Precious Blood had been donated to the monastery. Two manuscripts now in Fulda and Stuttgart have been transcribed for the first time using the Zwiefalten Antiphoner as the basis for the pitches. The first nocturn of Matins is represented most fully, the other two progressively less so, while only a few chants from First Vespers, Lauds and Second Vespers are included. The psalms are uniformly limited to one verse and doxology, but both canticles are sung in full. Still, this is as much as one disc would contain, and the chant is rendered in lively fashion. The Office is Xs.Sal in Andrew Hughes's terminology.

The eminent chant scholar Richard Crocker set out to record the chants of Hesbert's Antiphonale Missarum Sextuplex in semiological interpretations. Half of his project has already appeared (2003, no. 16; 2005, no. 67; 2007, no. 46), and the remaining discs have been issued all at once this year. The communions fill four discs (no. 7), grouped by mode. The alleluias fill three discs (no. 8), also grouped by mode, while the tracts of the eighth and second modes each have a disc (no. 9). The communions are sung with a single psalm verse taken from St Gall 381. Only sixty-three alleluias that have nuance notation in the Graduale Triplex are included. Perhaps as many as fourteen are recorded here for the first time. Three of the eighth-mode tracts have not been recorded before to my knowledge, Qui regis Israel, Qui seminat and Desiderium animae, while the eighth-mode De necessitatibus, printed only in the 1908 Graduale Romanum, is also recorded for the first time. Of the twenty-two discs, each available separately, the longest is 69:31 and the shortest is 33:43, the result of grouping the chants by mode for convenient reference. The archive of twenty-two discs will enable students to hear readily any chant edited in Sextuplex, some not available anywhere else. The e-mail address for information is: rgcrocker@comcast.net (mistyped two years ago but originally typed correctly in 2005).

An American publisher of music for contemporary vernacular liturgy has issued two discs made by a chant choir based in its home city. The first constituted a basic repertoire for the revival of chant in parishes (no. 10). It includes the so-called ‘Missa simplex’ (Mass XVI/XV with Credo III) and Mass VIII, Eucharistic and Marian hymns and antiphons, and similar familiar chants. The traditional but rather broadly paced Solesmes interpretation is heard unaccompanied (oddly, the organ does accompany Ubi caritas, which is sung after the Gloria on Holy Thursday ends the use of the organ). The choir alternates among men, women and children. Kyrie XVI sung by the children is a telling example of the high quality of these discs, a chant so simple that it is easy to do it badly. The second disc is a complete sung Mass with Mass XI, Eucharistic Prayer II and Propers for the Twenty-First Sunday of the Year (no. 11), concluding with the simple Te Deum. The gradual Bonum est confiteri is touching in the children's rendition.

The survey of the liturgical year directed by Bernard Lorber (2005, nos. 45 and 46; 2008, no. 6) continues with ten feasts from the latter half of the sanctoral cycle (no. 12). The feasts are chosen, like those in the previous issue, from late chants composed or adapted for nineteenth- and twentieth-century feasts. These have not generally been heard on records, so there are many first recordings here. The pre-1970 calendar and traditional Solesmes interpretation are followed, but for the first time in this series the chants are unaccompanied. The notes supplied in previous issues are reduced to a table of contents without texts, marred by the title ‘Assumption’ where Exaltation of the Holy Cross was intended. The 1952 Mass of the Assumption is included, but first recordings of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, St Pius X, three chants for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, two chants for the Transfiguration and the offertory In me gratia for Our Lady of the Rosary are new to records. Each Mass is followed by a Bach organ movement. This series has now reached twenty-one discs.

The Premonstratensian canons who gave us a Christmas recording last year (2008, no. 2) made another at the same time, grouping the seven tracts of the current Easter vigil Mass, all previously recorded but not together as a series. (Jubilate Domino is Jubilate Deo in the Norbertine version.) The Exsultet is sung complete in the same version, and the disc also includes the Mass Propers of Pentecost (no. 13).

The next set of chants is mostly reissued, but the collection of recordings from Solesmes selected from those not included in the recent series (reported in 2004, 2005 and 2008) has been augmented by nine chants made during Dom Jean Claire's final sessions in 1978 but not issued at the time (no. 14). Two hours of chants on the first two discs are complemented by a third disc of the inaugural concert by Gaston Litaize on the new Schwenkedel organ in 1967, first issued on Decca SXL 20221 and later 7508. The entire set is described as ‘pièces inédites’, but this only means that most have not appeared on CD. The first disc is drawn from the five LPs made in 1952 and issued as a set (more than half are dated 1953, but I was informed that the entire set was made in May 1952). The second disc makes widely available for the first time the contents of such 45 rpm discs as five hymns issued on the recording numbered 461008 in my book, the hymn Benedictus es Domine Deus (one side of 462524) and the Office of Sext (one side of 462526). In addition, the reappearance of the Ambrosian Gloria in excelsis from 462523, already heard on the ‘Christ-Roi’ CD, may be explained by the fact that it was also coupled with Benedictus es Domine Deus on 461014 and both were perhaps inadvertently included together here. It seems unfortunate that Dom Gajard's Christmas Matins responsories remain incomplete; he recorded only seven responsories (in 20184), but two of them, Quem vidistis and In principio, along with other interesting chants, were omitted from the Christmas CDs, though the sequence Laetabundus from that LP is now included here. To be sure, the twenty CDs already described do not provide every piece issued on the original LPs.

Marcel Pérès recorded another disc for Ambroisie before the two already cited (2008, nos. 7 and 8). First Vespers of St James of Compostela (no. 15) has been recorded only in a complete set of chant and polyphony from the Codex Calixtinus (2001, no. 1). The contrast between the two interpretations could hardly be greater, Pérès's approach, slow and heavy, being familiar from his recent recordings.

A German ensemble has looked into the convents on the Lüneberg Plain south of Hamburg. Six medieval convents, Benedictine or Cistercian, eventually adopted Lutheranism after resisting the Reformation for some decades, and all exist today as Lutheran convents. Each was found to possess manuscripts of chant or religious song, a discovery that led to the ensemble recording one disc devoted to each convent (nos. 16 to 21), though all were made in one month at the Isenhagen convent. Much of the content is not properly called chant, some of it is in the vernacular, and a few pieces are even credited to Renaissance composers, but there are some unusual items of chant here.

The quest for completeness has turned up several elusive recordings. The last of Hubert Dopf's series (no. 22), apparently never issued in America, contains more than the Mass of the Ascension (with Mass II and Credo IV). It also has the Mass for Sts Peter and Paul with a troped introit, the Mass for the Dead with burial rites, and the Te Deum. This series began with 411140 and 416808 in my book and continued as far as 2001, nos. 5 and 6.

The last of thirteen discs recorded under the supervision of Giacomo Baroffio has finally turned up, three single discs having been omitted from a ten-disc boxed set, as noted earlier (2007, nos. 10 and 11). This Christmas programme (no. 23) includes some unusual chants such as Judicii signum, the Mass of the Day with troped introit and Ordinary chants, the offertory with verses, and two sequences, Gratulemur omnis caro and Christi hodierna, both apparently first recordings. The gospel is chanted very well. As before, the notes have been translated by computer.

The missing disc in Hubert Velten's series (1999, nos. 8 to 11) has also arrived (no. 24) with Mass Propers of the Annunciation (no introit), the Visitation (no communion), the Assumption in the 1952 version, and a group of chants from the Common of the Blessed Virgin. From this series of five discs, a compilation has been remastered in surround sound (no. 25). The twenty-two chants have been arranged into two sequences of ‘Missa Gregoriana’ and ‘Hymnus Eclesiae [sic]’, but not all the selections fit the categories.

Another disc slow to arrive celebrates St Louis IX, appropriately recorded in the Sainte Chapelle that he caused to be erected (no. 26). The most unusual of the chants for the saint's Mass and Office are the three lessons of the second nocturn, recounting the life of the saint, with their responsories. (These lessons are not those found in modern breviaries.) The hymn Vexilla Regis is included in Dufay's setting because of the location. The chants, mostly unfamiliar, are drawn from a variety of sources.

Dominique Vellard's collection of chant and early polyphony includes a splendid performance of the offertory Vir erat with all four verses, the fourth such recording (no. 27), using Paris, Bibliothèque nationale 776 for melody and Laon 239 for rhythm. Several other chants are part of a programme that touches all the early polyphony bases, including St Martial, the Florence codex and Montpellier motets.

A group of plenary Mass discs begins with Mass in the papal chapel of Avignon before the Great Schism (no. 28). The Ordinary consists of separate polyphonic movements of the fourteenth century, while the chants for Christmas Day are sung imaginatively. The introit and communion are sung super librum, while the gradual is sung in fauxbourdon and the alleluia is sung with a drone. Only the offertory with a verse is sung simply in chant (period pronunciation is used), though we may wonder if offertory verses were still in use at this date. This disc is typical of the work of a number of early music professional ensembles.

From the same period of Avignon is Marcel Pérès's latest offering, a Mass for Pentecost (no. 29). The three-voice Mass of Toulouse is filled out with a Gloria and Credo from the Apt manuscript, while the chant Propers are limited to an alleluia, an offertory (no verse this time), and an introit (placed just before the dismissal). Pérès follows Jerome of Moray in his chant interpretation for this era.

Margaret Bent edited four anonymous three-voice English Masses in 1979. Of these, Missa Fuit homo, Missa Salve and Missa Veterem hominem were recorded long ago, but now we have the first recording of Missa Quem malignus spiritus, a parody Mass on a responsory for St John of Bridlington (no. 30). The responsory and four other chants fill out the disc, which marks Calvin Bower's retirement as director of the ensemble which he founded in 2000 and as professor at the University of Notre Dame.

The Machaut Mass has now been recorded as a plenary Mass with chant Propers eight times, some of them adding all the cantillations; the newest version (no. 31) adds only the preface and a sequence Ave Maria gratia plena. The chants belong to the votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin on Saturday, a choice matched by Paul Walker (2008, no. 33) and endorsed by the latest scholarship on Machaut's Mass. Guerber makes no mention of Jerome of Moray in explaining his chant style this time, though he does use period pronunciation.

Cappella Pratensis has remained active after the departure of its founder, Rebecca Stewart. Its latest recording combines Obrecht's Missa de Sancto Donatiano with the chant Proper of St Donatian, a feast in the local calendar although all the chants are drawn from various Commons of bishops, confessors and abbots (no. 32). The chant is sung from two manuscripts in the Bruges seminary using period pronunciation. The package includes a DVD on which the Mass is re-enacted in a Bruges church, an exquisite presentation of a medieval liturgical celebration. It also includes almost an hour of discussion, mostly on Obrecht.

A Mass by the obscure Flemish composer Nicolas Champion includes Propers for St Mary Magdalen (no. 33). The chants are sung in a singular approach to chant performance of the period, unlike their previous disc (2007, no. 43), which was based on a later period of chant interpretation. This ensemble has a unique interpretive approach that makes all their recordings interesting.

The first recording made by the lay clerks of Westminster Cathedral choir adds chants for the feast of the Assumption to Victoria's Missa Gaudeamus (no. 34). All the cantillations are included along with organ works of Frescobaldi. Granted that the singers are highly professional, this marvellous disc may prove that semiological chant performance is possible from a parish choir. (Perhaps Westminster Cathedral is not an average parish.)

Juan Carlos Asensio has turned from an admirable series of chant programmes to supplying chants for polyphonic discs directed by Albert Recasens. The first recording of a Mass by Antonio Rodríguez de Hita (1722–87) includes Marian Propers and a hymn (no. 35). At the end is the Litany of the Blessed Virgin with responses to the petitions in fauxbourdon.

Two reissues are worth noting. The Cambridge University Press cassette, ‘Cantors’, issued to complement Mary Berry's book similarly titled, was probably not widely available, although it was included in my book with the default number 0. Now it has finally appeared on CD (no. 36). Perhaps the most interesting item on the programme is the final one, Christus vincit, sung in complete form from the Worcester Antiphoner. The programme, shorter than most CDs, is filled out with eight tracks from one of three recordings made at Argentan by the Abbey firm on its Alpha label at the behest of Mary Berry, 525 in my book. The Exsultet is complete as recorded but the Easter vigil litany is abridged.

The other reissue is drawn from nine medieval programmes recorded by Anonymous 4 (no. 37). The original discs combined chant and medieval polyphony, so a generous selection of the chants has been grouped here. They are all sung from medieval sources, including three pieces by Hildegard of Bingen and the Te Deum sung in Magyar. The St Nicholas responsory Ex ejus tumba with its prosa Sospitati is outstanding.

Even if the disc has little chant on it, the latest offering from Dialogos (no. 38) focuses on early polyphony at the time of St Abbo, who became the abbot of Fleury after three years as the first abbot of Ramsey, founded by Oswald, bishop of Canterbury, who knew him earlier at Fleury. This brings into the programme the Winchester troper as well as organum from Fleury and chants from the Worcester antiphoner. This is an outstanding programme.

Two more discs are linked by a harmony of the gospels written in Frankish verse (Old High German) by Otfrid of Weissenburg, a monk of that abbey in Alsace (no. 39). Over 7,000 lines long, it was written from 863 to 871. The reading of brief passages from the work, the earliest literary production in Old High German, alternates with eight responsories from the Hartker antiphoner and two hymns (not found there), as well as an invitatory and an antiphon. Four of the responsories are first recordings. The order of the tracks suggests Matins of Christmas. One track of the next disc (no. 40) is also taken from this source, along with two contemporary texts from Fulda sources and Judicii signum from a later Aquitanian source. The four passages alternate with instrumental pieces, and the programme is framed by two early chant sequences, Fortis atque amara and Summi regis archangele, both first recordings. These are both remarkably unusual discs for the medievalist.

Finally, a two-volume edition of medieval and Renaissance music from Portugal comes with two discs directed by the author, Manuel Pedro Ferreira. The music ranges from Old Spanish chants to obscure Renaissance works on the first disc, while the second disc includes chant Propers for Christmas Midnight Mass and part of the Office of Matins of St Gerald of Braga, the latter new to records. The singing is of exquisite purity.