Catholic musicians gathered to blog about liturgy and life
There is a world of treasures in the Catholic music world, and they are all there for us if we are willing to take the step. You can discover this whole world and bring your discoveries back to your parish, so that it can become a place where heavenly beauty has a home. Come to the Sacred Music Colloquium in Salt Lake in June. It’s one week that will change your life forever, and provide benefits to your parish for decades to come.
Registration is now open.
First Things has tried its hand at the music controversy, with an article by Nathaniel Peters, but it comes up short. I agree that hymns should be good (who doesn’t agree?) but he brushes over the Mass propers almost as if they don’t exist postconcilar or can only exist in Latin. He says: “the Tridentine Mass had chants for particular days—the propers of the Mass—not hymns.” And then he stops.
Can we agree that the ordinary form also has propers and that they are the primary text of the liturgy that ought to be sung? It’s not obvious to me that Peters really gets this point.
There are some wonderful gems in Richard Rice’s Simple Choral Gradual. His Holy Week material is so creative, so liturgical, and sticks exactly to the proper texts. I’ve long believed that this work is unjustly neglected. There is still time to get a set for your choir for Holy Week. Then your choir can be dazzling and also contribute to the actual liturgy, as versus just providing background mood music.
From here and Joseph Antoniello
The internet has made resources available that take all of the guesswork (and a lot of page flipping and ribbons) out of the process. The Liturgy of the Hours is available online here. I find it helpful to mark the text when working with a new group, so that everyone knows when to speak: Leader, Reader, All, etc. Other groups mark up a breviary with ribbons. If a breviary is used, the parish hymn board can be changed to a Morning Prayer board during the week, with breviary page numbers posted in the sequence in which they will be used, so people can mark up their own books.
Expect a small but stable group, whether meeting before or after the morning Mass, or at Vespers time. Some parishes have Sunday Vespers just before the last Sunday Mass, which might draw a larger crowd and can be done with greater solemnity, perhaps with a deacon or priest presiding. However it is done, the Liturgy of the Hours is a prayer experience that can be provided for very little trouble, is almost certain to be successful in a small way, and is properly liturgical.
