A careful scientific analysis has revealed that singing the dialogues with the celebrant, as compared with merely speaking them, adds only one minute and 18 seconds to the Mass time. No excuses for not singing!
One Minute and 18 Seconds
6 Replies to “One Minute and 18 Seconds”
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Totally agree.
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One of the colossal mistakes in Music in Catholic Worship was its devaluation of singing the dialogues. IIRC, Todd reported a few years ago on his blog that one of the key people involved in drafting MCW reported that this decision was a result of a belief (probably well-founded) that getting priests to change their habits in this regard would require a great deal of effort and work. (To put it in economic terms, there was doubt about the marginal utility…).
The context for this, btw, is the cultural of deference to the collar that has long obtained in Catholic circles: what Father wants, Father gets; what Father does not want to do, Father does not have to do unless its importance is made clear (and even then….). So this is an area where there was a synergy between not-so-great preconciliar and postconciliar cultural developments.
Thank you Jeffrey. This is something I can use to talk to others in our parish. But at the same time I feel sad that we even need to time it to assure people that liturgy is not taking over time. We are truly soaked in the world of efficiency and instant, although when the football game gets longer on Sundays, not many people seemed to complain.
If it's over an hour, people will be unhappy.
Sing the dialogues and make the homily more concise.
This is a great stat! Hmmm, could we liven up the singing tempo so it only adds about 1:50 ?? I think I'd favor that.
awr
Seconded.
AWR;
Not sure I quite understand your comment… livening up the tempo should SHORTEN the time, shouldn't it?
BTW… I recorded this in my living room under less than ideal conditions, so I apologize for the quality of the recordings…
It would maybe be interesting to have other people (or clergy perhaps) take a few minutes to do this and see what results they get, given the differences in speaking tempo and singing tempo. I can't imagine it coming out to more than perhaps a difference of 1:45 or (if one were to sing these at the tempi demonstrated on some of the instructional videos..) maybe a 2:00 minute difference. Either way, it is far less than seems to be the popular notion of how much longer it takes to sing the Mass than to speak it.