Posts

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

What is the Best Second Mass Ordinary to Try?

Here is a letter that echos a question I often receive:

Let me begin by indicating how much I enjoy the Chant Café site. Thank you. The small collegiate Chapel where I attend Sunday Mass has a tradition, if that word is applicable to a practice that has only existed for a year, of singing the Mass Ordinary, with the exception of the Credo, congregationally to Gregorian chant. Currently we use: Kyrie xvi, Gloria in excelsis viii, Sanctus xviii, Agnus Dei xviii.

The director of the Chapel music is interested in learning a different set of chants, perhaps from a single one of the numbered settings. The plan is to sing the new chants until the beginning of Lent. Based on your experience, would you mind recommending a setting of the Ordinary for us to learn, one that would be a good second step on the road to a general familiarity with the Gregorian Ordinary repertoire? One that you feel is especially rewarding. The congregation has the Parish Book of Chants at their seats.

My own suggestion would be to replace them one by one, starting with Sanctus XIII. Kyrie XI, Gloria XV, and then Agnus XVII. I know this is a bit of mix and match but these are the ones that strike me as the best for transitional purposes.

What do others think?

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

America Magazine Draws the Line

It was all too much for Jim McDermott, SJ

I swear, if you had told me that the choir’s water bottles had been dosed with amphetamines, it would have made perfect sense. Imagine the energy (and even more the naivete) of the Partridge Family or the Brady Bunch – actually yes, imagine the Brady Bunch singing “It’s a Sunshine Day”, but then instrumentalized for Vegas (i.e BIG). Everything extremely up tempo all throughout the Mass, choir members not only swaying but sort of dancing along at times, repeated calls to “clap along” and a soloist during the presentation of the gifts doing American Idol style trills. (Being in LA, I said a prayer that Simon Cowell might be in the congregation, and might an end to Miss “I want to be Mariah Carey but all I can really manage are the ‘trilling now’ hand gestures.” My prayer was not answered.)

It was not, as they say, a buena vista. Actually, it was a poster child for everything the organ and chant Catholics fear from the likes of me – jumbo jets of ALLELUIA, and very little “And let us pray”.

Posted on by Adam Bartlett

Simple Propers for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

As a continuation of our experiment in sacred music resource production here are a set of “simple propers” for this week:

Download simple propers for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This work is the fruit of a collaboration between a host of Catholic musicians who have discerned a need in the Church for very simple settings of the propers, which are aimed at the current ordinary state of parish life. A team of volunteers is going to work on the compiling and formatting of source texts for this project and potentially many others, the collaborative effort can be followed by clicking on the links on the sidebar under “Open Source Projects”.

Help is still needed! If you would like to contribute some of your time to the project, even if it is small please, email me.

As noted last week, we are experimenting with various approaches to the “simple propers” idea. What seems to be working well, as confirmed by feedback from parish musicians of many stripes, is an approach where two antiphon settings are offered: One in the ultra-simple form of a St. Meinrad Psalm Tone, and a second in the form of melodic formulas that seek to meld the nature of a psalm tone with certain features of through composed Gregorian antiphons. These formulas are being developed by the writer of this post under the guidance of Fr. Columba Kelly, a known master of English chant. The challenge in this approach is to find a melodic formula that will work consistenly with all of the textual variations that are found in the English language (compared to the greater consistencies found in Latin), all while remaining intuitive to the amateur singer.

Here are two formulas that were developed for this week (note: these may change still and are still in a process of refinement)

The first is a Mode 8 setting of this weeks offertory:


This formula draws some inspiration from the Mode 8 “solemn” Gregorian psalm tone”, uses a 4-part structure, and is slightly more ornate in its intonations and terminations than the introit formulas that have been used thus far, which are of a similar nature. The goal here is to have a set of 8 formulas (one in each mode) for each genre (for the Introit, Offertory, and Communion–a total of 24 formulas). And the result, it is hoped, is that the formula is learned once by singers and thereafter the melody will be intuitively anticipated when it is used again and again.

The second example is a Mode 5 setting of this week’s Communion:

The formula here is essentially taken from the Mode 5 Gregorian psalm tone, with enough variation to set it apart from it, with needed adaptations to work well with English texts.
Be sure to look a the rest of the chants and please share feedback! Our hope is to be able to share the fruits of this work two weeks in advance to make it easier for use in liturgy–for now we’re doing the best we can!
There is still much help needed. If you would like to contribute some of your time to the project, even if it is small (no specialization needed) please email me.
Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

So much for suppressing the 1962 Missal

The greatest error of the liturgical reform of 1969/70 might not have been the flattened and linear structure or even the bad translation but the illiberal method that was used to impose it as against a stable Missal that had been in place for 500 years.

If the new Missal had been an option, something to be used to not based on parish preference, history would have turned out very differently. As it was, the use of force to overturn in a matter of months a ritual known by countless generations all over the world caused unprecedented devastation to the Catholic world, with people fleeing their parishes, priests and religious sisters leaving their vocations, and average people losing heart for the entire enterprise. It was a shocking and brutal act of ecclesiastical power, and surely one of the most un-pastoral events in Catholic history. We are still in recovery mode.

If the goal was to suppress the conciliar (and preconciliar) Mass, it didn’t work. To me the failure of this generation’s methods are best illustrated by this most wonderful iPad and iPhone application: iMass. It shows daily Mass (with a homily!) on your digital device. But even if you are not interested in watching the daily Mass on an Apple product, the application offers something that I personally find of great value: it provides the text of the daily Mass with all prayers including daily propers (according to the old calendar of course).

I think we can probably say that the exposure of the world to the Tridentine form has never been more universal than it is today. Let this be a lesson to anyone who would be tempted by the belief that force is a more effective tool than persuasion to bring about reform!