Category: Jeffrey Tucker

Adam linked a performance of the SEP offertory with some harmonized verses. His harmonizations are very pretty and contemporary sounding. Everyone has encouraged him to write them up, which is great. There were once dozens of books in print with such harmonizations that can be easily adapted to a Psalm text. In my own parish, we use these about every second week, just to mix things up a bit. The Hymnal of 1940, as I recall, has many pages of these in the back.

I’ve just uploaded another book – again, maybe not the best one but it is one – from 1934 called Psalms and Canticles for Worship by J. Todd Ferrier. It contains many dozens of such harmonizations that you can use depending on the Psalm in question. It does take time to set these for choir but the performance does provide rich textures that can be a nice addition to chant.

Nearly any text can be so set, even the weather report, as shown in this famous example.

Paul Simon did an amazing thing at a recent concert. He invited a fan up to play his guitar and sing. The video is really inspiring as is the liberality of Simon who sees that the music isn’t really about the performer. It is about the spirit that everyone shares. I think there are lessons in this for those of us who love Gregorian chant and want to see it spread through the whole Church in every single parish. The music isn’t really about the schola but about the spirit that we all share, and we share it not only in that physical space but throughout time and into eternity. The people can sing if they come to see that the ordinary and dialogues of the Mass truly are their sung prayer. They are reluctant at first but once the spirit catches on, they feel a sense of having done something important and meaningful.

Benedictus Dominus offers a wonderful post with words from Martin Mosebach, author of The Heresy of Formlessness. I hadn’t read this before. It is really outstanding.

“I am firmly convinced… that vernacular hymns have played perhaps a significant part in the collapse of the liturgy. Just consider what resulted in the flowering of hymns: Luther’s Reformation was a singing movement,and the hymn expressed the beliefs of the Reformers. Vernacular hymns replaced the liturgy, as they were designed to do; they were filled with the combative spirit of those dismal times and were meant to fortify the partisans. People singing a catchy melody together at the top of their voices created a sense of community, as all soldiers, clubs, and politicians know. The Catholic Counter-Reformation felt the demagogic power of these hymns. People so enjoyed singing; it was so easy to influence their emotions using pleasing tunes with verse repetition. In the liturgy of the Mass, however, there was no place for hymns. The liturgy has no gaps; it is one single great canticle; where it prescribes silence or the whisper, that is, where the mystery is covered with an acoustic veil,as it were, any hymn would be out of the question. The hymn has a beginning and an end; it is embedded in speech. But the leiturgos of Holy Mass does not actually speak at all; his speaking is a singing, because he has put on the “new man”, because, in the sacred space of the liturgy, he is a companion of angels. In the liturgy, singing is an elevation and transfiguration of speech, and, as such, it is a sign of the transfiguration of the body that awaits those who are risen. The hymn’s numerical aesthetics– hymn 1, hymn 2, hymn 3– is totally alien and irreconcilable in the world if the liturgy. In services that are governed by vernacular hymns, the believer is constantly being transported into new aesthetic worlds. He changes from one style to another and has to deal with highly subjective poetry of the most varied levels. He is moved and stirred– but not by the thing itself, liturgy: he is moved and stirred by the expressed sentiments of the commentary upon it. By contrast, the bond that Gregorian chant weaves between the liturgical action and song is so close that it is impossible to separate form and content. The processional chants that accompany liturgical processions (the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, and Communion), the responsories of the Ordinary of the Mass that interweave the prayers of the priest and The laity, and the reciting tone of the readings and orations– all these create a ladder of liturgical expression on which the movements, actions, and the content of the prayers are brought into a perfect harmony. This language is unique to the Catholic liturgy and expresses it’s inner nature, for this liturgy is not primarily worship, meditation, contemplation, instruction, but positive action. It’s formulae effect a deed. The liturgy’s complete, closed form has the purpose of making present the personal and bodily action of Jesus Christ. The prayers it contains are a preparation for sacrifice, not explanations for the benefit of the congregation; nor are they a kind of “warming up” of the latter. In Protestantism, vernacular hymns came in as a result of the abolition of the Sacrifice of the Mass; they were ideally suited to be a continuation of the sermon. Through singing, the assembled community found its way back from the doubting loneliness of the workday to the collective security of Sunday– a security, be it noted, that arose from the mutual exhortation to remain firm in faith, not from witnessing the objective, divine act of sacrifice.”

These chants from the Simple English Propers are now available for this Sunday. I’m enraptured by their structural similarity to the same propers in the Gregorian. The introit is exuberant, the offertory is contemplative, and the communion is…so Mode IV, which always suggests to my ear deep mystery (are all chants about burning things set in Mode IV?).

INTROIT • 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time from Church Music Association of Amer on Vimeo.

OFFERTORY • 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time from Church Music Association of Amer on Vimeo.

COMMUNION A & B • 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time from Church Music Association of Amer on Vimeo.

Jerry Galipeau of Gotta Sing offers these words of wisdom to his friends who can’t stop attacking the new translation of the Missal:

I want to share something that has been eating away at me for quite some time. Most of those who have been offering scathing critiques of the new translation are counted among my friends. One critique recently went so far as to urge that we should refuse to use the new texts and stay with the current Sacramentary texts. I guess I find myself confused about these critiques. I, too, have spent lots of time with these texts and have discovered some real problems with some of the translations. But I wonder about passing a judgment of condemnation upon them, as some of the critics have done. It’s like a theater critic reading a script six weeks before opening night and declaring the play a flop.

When I was working with priests in Davenport, I chose some of the more problematic texts for them to work with. They divided up into small groups and I asked them to share their thoughts about the particular text assigned to the group. The complaints abounded. “This is all one long sentence.” “I can’t find the antecedent.” “The grammar just doesn’t look right to me.” “What kind of English is this anyway?” “I don’t think anyone will understand this prayer.”

Then I asked a member of the small group, “Father, would you pray that text for us?” After these priests had spent time visually analyzing the texts and expressings their thoughts about the texts, the actual praying of the texts surprised everyone in attendance. We heard things like, “Wow, despite the fact that it appeared stilted on the page, I think you did a beautiful job praying that prayer.” “Good job, Harry, that’s a tough text but you conveyed it beautifully.”

I was suprised by what occurred, which is why I think we really need to resist the temptation to condemn the text before “the curtain” actually rises.

Amen to that, as they say in some Southern houses of worship. You know, his comments could also apply to those who are panning Mass propers even before they have been tried, among whom…Jerry Galipeau in the post previous to this one! He says in his his post Let’s Get Real:

But, to be honest, I just don’t think this whole argument about the singing of the propers will ever amount to a hill of beans to these parish people. The people have grown accustomed to singing hymns and songs at the entrance and at communion from a wide variety of traditions at Saint James. When we sing Soon and Very Soon as the opening song in Advent, you would swear that we were “goin’ to see the king” right then and there. When we sing “Sweet, Sweet Spirit,” you take the deepest breaths you have ever taken, ’cause without a doubt you know that you are being revived. Whether we like it or not, these hymns and songs have become a living part of the Mass for the majority of Catholics. To suggest that these be phased out over the next few years, to be replaced by the chanted propers (or even the propers set to other musical styles) is just not realistic.

I must say that my experiences have been completely opposite. No, the people in the pews don’t rush up after Mass and say: what a fantastic performance today; that was just what I needed! Instead, they find themselves thinking and praying through the performers and through the music toward eternity. In fact, if people can’t wait to tell you how great your rendition of “Soon and Very Soon” was, there is a good reason to suspect a problem. Musicians should not seek that, should not want that. If we succeed in giving a lift to the prayers of the prayers, we have done what we are supposed to do.

(By the way, does it matter that “Soon…” refers not to Advent but to the Second Coming as understood in the premillennial Scofieldite tradition of 19th-century evangelicalism and that this view is rejected by the Catechism of the Catholic Church?)

This does not mean banning “Sweet, Sweet Spirit,” even though that song is not my favorite. Even if it were my favorite, I hope I would have the wisdom to see that this is not the right replacement for the propers of the Mass. Whether it can be sung as an additional song after the propers is a matter for discussion. There is a time and a place for everything, and we can argue forever about the kind of music we should schedule at youth retreats, prayer sessions, Church socials, or whatever. About the primary text and music of the Mass there really should be no argument: it should be the music or at least the texts of the Mass!

In any case, as with all these issues, the proof comes in the doing, as Jerry would say. All we are saying is give propers a chance.

By the way, I purchased the WLP Missal for home use and I can’t wait for it to arrive! Jerry tells me that they completely reset the music for the Missal chants to make them more beautiful (but without changing any of the structure of course).

Here are two absolutely marvelous renderings of this past Sunday’s offertory proper, Ad te Domine levavi animam meam.