Category: Jeffrey Tucker

I was thinking about the Parish Book of Chant yesterday, realizing with some alarm that it was published just in time for the revival, and without it, we would be in real trouble.

It contains all the chant hymns that Catholics must know and that gets scholas and congregations going with singing chant. Richard Rice did the design and typesetting. Arlene Oost-Zinner had suggested the inclusion of the complete ordo for the ordinary and extraordinary forms. This turned out to be a brilliant addition because it demonstrates the parallels in a manner consistent with the current emphasis.

Nearly 12,000 copies have been distribution since its publication in 2008. That’s really an incredible number in this world. Again, this book was published just in time.

This is a 193-page hardback book. The CMAA has agreed to make it available for $7 each for a box of 40. This is a great book to have for the schola or congregation or just to have for your private evangelistic efforts. If you are interested in this large-quantity deal, write Janet Gorbitz and she can make the arrangements for you.

This is such an exciting and thrilling performance! The small changes from the Roman version are intriguing. Listening to this really makes me wonder if there are differences in conventions between parish and monastic practice. There is something about the pacing here that suggests a certain timelessness.

Take note of the sheer variety here, the differences in the way each chant is rendered. This is just so masterful. The structure is super tight, highly ordered, very practiced, and yet…the singing has a wild spontaneity to it that sometimes suggests total elation.

Steven van Roode drew my attention to a wonderful online database of Notitiae Responses that has appeared online. These had been previously very hard to find. It was nearly the case that you had to be a PhD student digging through the postconcilar archives to find them. Now they are available to anyone. They are interesting because, as the official journal of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, they provide insight into the mind of the Church following the Second Vatican Council.

There are some interesting points in here, such as the claim from 1966: “News is sometimes spread around about an imminent reform of the Order of Mass or a definitive reform of the whole Mass, which lacks a serious foundation. The liturgical restoration needs many efforts and years of study.”

Hmmm.

But already by that time, major changes were taking place, many of them much welcome. The most striking from a musical point view concerned the singing of the propers of the Mass. This was strictly forbidden in read or Low Masses before the Council. The result, however inadvertent and despite the constant promotion of the High Mass, was that the Low Mass substituted vernacular hymns. This was a serious problem from the point of view of the liturgical movement.

And truly, this made no practical sense. If a choir is there and can sing the propers of the Mass, why would it forbidden to do so, and yet singing a vernacular hymn become a practice that was not only not forbidden but proliferated widely? Indeed, this was the origin of what is called “the four-hymn sandwich.” This was not a “Vatican II” institution; it had preconciliar origins. In anything, Vatican II attempted to universalize the sung Mass so that the problem of popular vernacular hymns would fade and be replaced by sung Masses based on ordinary chants, dialogue chants, and proper chants.

It is for this reason that we can find this striking shift in Notitiae 1966: “Whether in a read Mass one or another part of the Ordinary (the Kyrie, the Gloria, etc.) or of the Proper (e. g. the Gradual, the Communion antiphon) can be sung? Resp.: In the affirmative.”

This was a dramatic change that reflected the Council’s wishes that Gregorian chant have first place at Mass. This is in keeping with one of the priorities of the liturgical movement and the continuation of the effort to refine the rubrics to fulfill Pius X’s wishes that the Mass itself by the source of sung texts at Mass.

This document has not been added yet to the database, but consider Notitiae 5 from 1969:

Query: Many have inquired whether the rule still applies that appears in the Instruction on sacred music and the liturgy, 3 Sept. 1958, no. 33: “In low Masses religious songs of the people may be sung by the congregation, without prejudice, however, to the principle that they be entirely consistent with the particular parts of the Mass.”

Reply: That rule has been superseded. What must be sung is the Mass, its Ordinary and Proper, not “something,” no matter how consistent, that is imposed on the Mass. Because the liturgical service is one, it has only one countenance, one motif, one voice, the voice of the Church. To continue to replace the texts of the Mass being celebrated with motets that are reverent and devout, yet out of keeping with the Mass of the day (for example, the Lauda Sion on a saint’s feast) amounts to continuing an unacceptable ambiguity: it is to cheat the people. Liturgical song involves not mere melody, but words, text, thought, and the sentiments that the poetry and music contain. Thus texts must be those of the Mass, not others, and singing means singing the Mass not just singing at Mass. [Notitiae 5 (1969) 406.]

 This was the same year that the Novus Ordo Missae was promulgated. Here then, we can see the mind of the Church at work in a progressive way, fixing problems of the past and refining the structure toward the fulfillment of a hope of the ideal as versus the common practice.

It goes without saying that the problems became worse rather than better. This was no one’s official intention.

We are now living through yet another period of rule tightening in an attempt to bring about the sung Mass. Far more significant, however, are the publishing steps currently being take to actually make the sung Mass more possible and accessible. Truly, until a few weeks ago, there were very few resources even available to provide anything like a bridge from the current practice to the Graduale Romanum of option one.

Amazon has purchased a huge number of Simple English Propers books and it looks like the in-stock notice is stable at last. I gather that the demand took them by surprise.

UPDATE: I spoke too soon! 

Pototentially important news about a new translation of the GIRM, which Fr. Z says will be published in the forthcoming Missal. Causafinetaest also discusses this. The focus of these two posts concerns posture for receiving communion.

This evening I receive a phonecall that read from the new translation and apparently the permission for “other appropriate songs” besides the propers has been seriously diminished. If what the caller said is correct, the introit, communion, and offertory clearly establishes the proper as the text.

I have no sense of how strong the language is or what all this means. I would appreciate receiving a scan ASAP.

Every week, Catholic choirs and cantors face that great struggle of figuring out what to sing. The usual way is to dig through the hymnbook, pick a few out, and run with it. Maybe the readings are consulted, maybe not. Depends on the time available for preparation. The results are almost always unsatisfying and even a bit boring.

Is this all there is to singing for the Roman Rite? Is this what 2000 years of tradition have come down to?

Well, a bit of study reveals something profoundly important. The Mass already has music that is intrinsic to it, picked out, printed, and ready to sing. It’s called Gregorian chant, but there ought to be another phrase because that one implies that it is all more-or-less the same. In fact, Gregorian chant is hugely varied in its style, mood, text, purpose (depends on the liturgical action in question).

But perhaps this music seems a bit remote and you don’t know how to read it or your pastor and/or parishioners are afraid of Latin.

The Simple English Propers, now in print, provides the first real answer to the problem. This book provides music for the full liturgical year, but not just any music with not just any words. The words are the words of the liturgy itself, the words appointed to be sung at entrance, offertory, and communion. The music is based on the Gregorian melodies but simplified for those starting out. And there are Psalms enough to sing to take up the entire liturgical action. One book and you can sing all the parts of the Mass for the full liturgical year.

Yes, this should have come out forty years ago, but, regardless, it is out now. Here it what this book offers for the 15th Sunday. Again, the Psalms are not printed here but there are enough for the full action. Again, the book is The Simple English Propers – a book that has been called the most important book of Catholic music since the Graduale Romanum of 1908.

Here are some practice vids.

A very odd feature of the current Sacramentary is its “Alternative opening prayer,” which appears to have been dreamed up out of whole cloth. Here is the way it works. On the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, the priest’s collect can read:

God our Father,
your light of truth
guides us to the way of Christ.
May all who follow him
reject what is contrary to the gospel. 

Or this is this other option in the right hand column. It is labelled “Alternative Opening Prayer” and it reads as follows:

Father, let the light of your truth
guide us to your king
through a world filled with lights contrary to your own.
Christian is the name and the gospel we glory in.
May your love makes us what you have called us to be.

So where did that come from? Not from the Roman Missal. They were inserted into the Missal with the help of an advisory board. Essentially they were selected by a bureaucracy and inserted in to stand alongside the already loosely translated real versions. Sometime they seem to pick up missing parts from the Latin; other times, they contain completely new ideas. But there is nothing in the Sacramentary to indicate that they are anything less then authentic. It is made to appear as if these were just another example of “choice” that is all to pervasive in the Missal already.

To be sure, most younger priests got hip to this game some years ago. They never say them because their dubious authenticity. Older priests, however, who have not partaken of the current ethos toward more faithful rendering of texts, use them frequently, and they are nearly all as puzzling as the one above (“Christian is the name…”?)

Among many extraordinary features of the forthcoming Missal is that these are eliminated entirely. The text you will see is the translated text from the Roman Missal, period.

This is a huge step.

Incidentally, this is the new collect for the same day:

O God, who show the light of your truth
to those who go astray,
so that they may return to the right path,
give all who for the faith they profess
are accounted Christians
the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ
and to strive after all that does it honor.