Chant Café

The introduction of the new Missal is one year away and many pastors are planning ahead. I’ve heard from many pastors who have no chant programs in their parishes, no scholas working their way through the Gradual, who see this new Missal has an opportunity to unify their music programs toward a solemn direction and do something about the problem that afflicts nearly every parish in this country: the fracturing of the parish community into niche sectors organized by demographics and musical style preference.

ICEL and the American Bishops are intensely aware of this problem, and regard the music in the new Missal as part of the solution. The widely held aspiration is that these chants will become the standard music for the new translation of Mass. This message is certainly getting out.

I have my own issues with the chants that will appear in the new Missal. In particular I think more could have been done to provide weightier English versions of the Sanctus and Angus. And yet, there might be wisdom in the easy settings that are provided in here. Those of us with developing, progressing programs can easily forget just how impoverished the musical life of most parishes truly is. There are no choirs, no organists, no real directors of music in them; there are only volunteers trying to do what the Church wants but who feel mostly confused and lost.

These easy chants can get them on the right track. I do that is the most important accomplishment here. There is an additional factor here: the chanted text will help people to get to know the new text, just as little songs we sing in grade school help us to remember poetry, grammar, and even math. A sung text becomes more familiar more quickly than a spoken one.

My own hope is that parishes will push beyond the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus and look to the credo. Every document says that a sung Creed is a priority in the Roman Rite and yet, it is hardly ever sung. This is a chance for a real change.

I prefer the credo based on Credo I but here are two in the new missal.

Communion Antiphon, First Sunday of Advent

LATIN
Dominus dabit benignitatem:
et terra nostra dabit fructum suum.

CURRENT MISSAL
The Lord will shower his gifts,
and our land will yield its fruit

GREY BOOK
The Lord will show us his kindness,
and our earth shall yield its fruit

RECEIVED TEXT
The Lord will bestow his bounty
and our earth shall yield its increase.

Always the first proper in the Gradual, the Introit for the First Sunday of Advent:

Many pages of new English translation of the full Roman Missal, in the near-final form as adapted by Rome, has appeared on Wikileaks, as noted by PrayTell.

You are welcome to look through it all, and it would be great if people would post samples and compare them to the current Missal, but here is just one sample of the coming changes that you can look forward to.

In the current Missal at the Easter Vigil, following the Gloria, the priest says in a cadence and language now all-too-familiar to Catholics:

Lord God,
you have brightened this night
with the radiance of the risen Christ.
Quicken the spirit of sonship in your Church;
renew us in mind and body
to give you whole-hearted service.

The received text is very different: liturgical, grand, intelligent, respectful, solemn:

O God, who make this most sacred night radiant
with the glory of the Lord’s Resurrection,
stir up in your Church a spirit of adoption,
so that, renewed in body and mind,
we may render you undivided service.

Or consider the differences in the prayer after communion for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, starting with the current (lame-duck) version:

Lord, you have nourished us with bread from heaven.
Fill us with your Spirit,
and make us one in peace and love.

Groovy. Now consider the forthcoming version:

Pour on us, O Lord, the Spirit of your love,
and in your kindness make those you have nourished
by this one heavenly bread,
one in mind and heart.

The authenticity of this chant is surely to be doubted. (Thanks John Burchfield).

Two pieces of news, the first of which affects my post yesterday on permission to distribute Mass settings with the new text. That approval has been granted, which explains why some are available and some are not. My quick review of them all focuses on the positive: Lisa Stafford’s Mass of Grace is the best of all the offerings by mainstream publishers. It has tested very well with choirs and people around the country. Cantica Nova also offers three new settings, which I’m quite sure are excellent, particularly the setting by B. Andrew Mills.

The second piece of news comes from the site that seems to break all the news these days, PrayTell. The Revised Grail Psalter has been released and will soon be available.

There is a serious problem with this book and it has nothing to do with the translation itself. The Grail in the UK is seriously proprietary about this text and it variously authorizes agents to distribute it and extract money from people for printing, singing, and recording it. When the Conception Abbey revised the Grail, it had to enter into a legal agreement first with the Grail and second with the authorized distribution agent in the United States, the GIA.

These agreements are all secret, but the GIA has not been secret about its intention to charge whatever sum it wants for the right to print the text, meaning that GIA will charge OCP, WLP, Cantica Nova, and every one else, and ultimately you and me and every Catholic in the pews, for singing the Psalms, and, if you do not pay, you will be hearing from GIA’s lawyers. Somehow, our naive friends at the USCCB forgot to do their homework on these matters before leaping into this legal pit lorded over by a for-profit publisher that has no official connection to the Catholic Church.

Regardless, then, of the merits of the Revised Grail, this approval and release is absolutely no cause for celebration. What friends of the Roman Rite need to do is to make sure that several public domain translations of the Psalms are at least permitted to be used at Mass for the Responsorial Psalm. If this happens, hardly anyone will be willing to pay GIA a dime for the legal right to praise God, and then perhaps the Grail in the UK, together with Conception and all the other players, will rethink their business strategy that depends so heavily on using the state to impose a tax on the faithful for worshiping God.

Sung by our Chant Cafe co-blogger Fr. Christopher Smith!!