Marty Haugen Holden Evening Prayer

Evening Prayer with Marty Haugen and Holden Compline

If you're looking for accessible music for Evening Prayer, Marty Haugen's contributions to the Holden Compline tradition are worth knowing about. The Holden Compline grew out of the Liturgical Study Center in Holden, Massachusetts, back in the early 1970s. It was designed to be a simple, singable form of Night Prayer rooted in the Benedictine rule, but actually usable by parishes that aren't running a monastery. Marty Haugen wrote a number of settings over the years that became staples in American Catholic parishes. The music works because it's built around responsive singing with a congregation that might have been sitting through a long Mass earlier. Haugen's settings tend to use short phrases, repeatable melodies, and clear tonal centers. They're not complex. That's intentional.

Marty Haugen Holden Evening Prayer

Here's how I approached putting this together for a parish setting. First, you need to decide whether you're following the full Holden Compline structure or just borrowing elements for Evening Prayer. The full service includes psalmody, a short reading, the Nunc Dimittis, intercessions, and the memorare. If you're doing a shorter version, focus on the Nunc Dimittis and the key responsories. For actual music, Haugen's compositions are available through several publishers. OCP (Oregon Catholic Press) carries most of his Compline-related materials. GIA Publications also has some collections. The specific titles you'll want to look for include his responsorial settings for the Nunc Dimittis and his psalm tones adapted for congregational use. I usually check page 42 through 48 in the OCP Compline book for the core pieces. One practical issue I ran into involves the psalm antiphons. Haugen's settings sometimes assume the cantor can handle a melodic range that a volunteer Cantor Maria from St. Agnes isn't going to manage on a Tuesday night. My workaround was to transpose those particular settings down a half step and simplify the melismatic passages. The congregation won't notice, and the cantor will thank you later. Just make sure you adjust all the chant references in the liturgy book to match, or you'll end up with everyone singing out of alignment.

Another thing people get wrong about using Haugen's Compline music is the assumption that the same recordings or sheet music work for every setting. They don't. Haugen originally wrote some of these with the assumption of a piano or organ accompaniment. If your parish uses a keyboard with synthesized sounds, the hymnody parts work fine, but the chanted sections can sound thin. I started layering a subtle string patch under the responsories and it made a noticeable difference in how the space felt. Not necessary, but helpful. The downside to relying on Haugen for this is that his music tends to lock you into a particular modal palette. It's mostly Dorian and Mixolydian, which works beautifully for evening prayer but can get repetitive if you're doing this weekly for six months without mixing in other composers. You'll find the congregation starts zoning out during the psalms because the harmonic movement never really goes anywhere new. That's when I pull in some Robert Craft or even some plainchant antiphons to break it up. A single well-placed Gregorian mode can reset the whole atmosphere. If your group is small or your resources are limited, you don't need the full published Compline book. I've run successful Evening Prayer with just the Nunc Dimittis, one psalm with a simple antiphon, and the memorare. The structure still holds. The timing runs about 35 minutes instead of 60, which is honestly more realistic for a Tuesday night gathering.

For downloading or purchasing, start at ocp.org and search for Marty Haugen Compline collections. The most complete single volume is "Compline: A Service of Reading and Song" from OCP, which includes most of his settings in one place. GIA's "Sing Joyfully" series also has selections. I wouldn't recommend scanning pages from PDFs you find on random forums. It's not worth the risk of getting misprinted or outdated editions, and the copyright holders have no sense of humor about it. The service works best when you treat it as something sung rather than something recited. That means practicing the responses ahead of time, having the music visible, and not rushing between sections. A halting Nunc Dimittis does more damage to the mood than anything else. Better to skip it entirely and just do the psalm and reading than to stumble through the closing canticle.