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otjm
Guest
No, I did not suggest that you did. You disparaged music being used today, and I disagree with your assessment.
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Kay_Cee
Guest
We have a Gloria at our church that the choir insists on using at every weekend Mass. The pace is so slow it reminds me of slogging through muck.
Shouldn’t a Glora be, well, glorius? The one we have sounds more like a funeral dirge.
If you want to hear some incredibly good music for Mass, try this link: youtube.com/watch?v=oeLIgzAe5sI
Shouldn’t a Glora be, well, glorius? The one we have sounds more like a funeral dirge.
If you want to hear some incredibly good music for Mass, try this link: youtube.com/watch?v=oeLIgzAe5sI
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pnewton
Guest
Maybe all they need is to pick up the tempo. That link you gave wasn’t exactly “glorious”, but I think you might have linked the the wrong thing.
From a practical standpoint, if the setting for the Mass is changed very often, much fewer people participate. Many are shy about singing and only sing well stuff they know well.
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OraLabora
Guest
Here’s another perspective that I posted on another thread. I’m at a Gregorian chant colloquium. Some choristers sing at EF Masses and some at OF. I asked one chorister and medieval musicologist who is not presently in a choir whether he attended the EF or OF. He said OF, because the Gregorian chant at the only EF in his his city is horrible! On the other hand there’s a nearby abbey of Benedictine nuns that have sublime chant at their Latin OF Mass.
He said he doesn’t care which form he attends, he can’t stand to hear mangled chant. If it was the OF mangling the chant he’d go to the EF.
It occurred to me after reading a book on liturgy a few months ago (I forget the title, it was in French) that it is quite possible to cross all the rubrical t’s and dot all the rubrical I’d and still have bad liturgy and or music. The EF is not magically inoculated against bad music, nor does the OF prevent it: the monks at the abbey I’m associated with, and where the colloquium is being held, chant sublimely in the OF.
Beautiful chant is hard work though and I’m beat tonight after rehearsing Sunday’s repertoire that we will chant at a nearby parish. We are using Mass XIV which has a beautiful but very tricky Gloria in Mode III, and the Alleluia and Gradual for Sunday’s propers are really challenging us.
He said he doesn’t care which form he attends, he can’t stand to hear mangled chant. If it was the OF mangling the chant he’d go to the EF.
It occurred to me after reading a book on liturgy a few months ago (I forget the title, it was in French) that it is quite possible to cross all the rubrical t’s and dot all the rubrical I’d and still have bad liturgy and or music. The EF is not magically inoculated against bad music, nor does the OF prevent it: the monks at the abbey I’m associated with, and where the colloquium is being held, chant sublimely in the OF.
Beautiful chant is hard work though and I’m beat tonight after rehearsing Sunday’s repertoire that we will chant at a nearby parish. We are using Mass XIV which has a beautiful but very tricky Gloria in Mode III, and the Alleluia and Gradual for Sunday’s propers are really challenging us.
This whole discussion makes me wonder what posters here would think of my parish.
We have been known to include pieces from Palestrina, Hurd, and Redman all in the same Mass.
We don’t include much in the way of chant, however. Our choir does sacred polyphony well but we’ve struggled with chant.
We have been known to include pieces from Palestrina, Hurd, and Redman all in the same Mass.
We don’t include much in the way of chant, however. Our choir does sacred polyphony well but we’ve struggled with chant.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Sometimes you can only swim so much against the current. Thankfully, we don’t have a “music ministry” at my parish. We just have a choir with an excellent organist who picks out the music. Some of the hymns she chooses are beyond awful, but some of them are great. Whenever she schedules some of the good ones, I always compliment her. When she chooses all bad ones, I don’t say anything.
I think sometimes she gets the message, because now and then she’ll do a whole Mass with nothing but the better music. But I can’t make a whole repertoire for her without seeming arrogant.
It does help some that I’m the only basso profundo-through-baritone in the whole choir. She REALLY appreciates having somebody who can sing basso profundo. The only trouble is, she won’t let me sing any other parts. But I guess that’s something meant to be offered up, right?
Just to make it clear, I mostly like the old, old “ethnic” hymns; pre-20th Century German, Irish, Welsh, Russian, with English words. She’ll even do some of the old Latin hymns sometimes. Does some Mozart now and then. And yes, some of the old 19th Century protestant hymns. I really like those because I was raised out in the country with people who sang them when we worked. And, of course, those were on the “Ozark Jubilee” back then.
I actually like maybe four or five of the newer, post-VII-composed hymns, but that’s it. I profoundly dislike the rest of them. But I sing them anyway because the organist wants me to.
Oh, yes. I’m rather proud of this. One Christmas I persuaded two of the soloists to sing “Lula-jze Jesuniu”; a Polish peasant hymn of really ancient roots…and in Polish! They even went to a lady who immigrated from Poland to get the pronunciation right. Marvelous!A fair number of the parishioners have some Polish ancestry, and they loved it! I could hear whispers “It’s Polish! It’s Polish!” from the congregation.
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Phemie
Guest
That often solves the problem. Our choir can make any hymn set to the “Ode to Joy” tune sound like a dirge. I’m not sure if it’s because nobody understands the time signature (most don’t read music) or they think it’s more reverent when sung excruciatingly slowly.
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Kay_Cee
Guest
Oh, I agree, but I have no control over how the choir sings.
No, I deliberately linked to one of Palestrina’s Kyries because it was shorter than the Gloria. I never said it was glorious. I just wanted folks here to get a sample of how wonderful sacred music can be.
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Phemie
Guest
OTOH, singing the same setting every Sunday since November 2011, as we have been in my parish, is enough to drive anyone nuts.
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pnewton
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We must be a mentally stable lot here as so far, not one has gone nuts, though we do change seasonally. We also use the same words to the Gloria and the Creed, over and over again. Yet we remain sane.
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otjm
Guest
Said one Scotsman to another: The whole world is daft save thee and me.
And I have me doobts about thee…
In my opinion, a change in settings should be frequently enough that the choirs, cantors, and instrumentalists do not go (completely) insane,
but infrequently enough that even the tone deaf parishioners can tell if they’ve heard that setting before.
(My parish usually changes with the liturgical seasons --where summer counts as a season since the choir takes it off.)
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OraLabora
Guest
My idea of a liturgical holiday is the Octave of Saint Feria
. (one of those rare weeks with no memorial, feast or solemnity). Easy on those of us who sing the LOTH and weekday Mass. for Mass in Gregorian chant, the propers carry over all week for the most part.
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Phemie
Guest
Of course a setting should be used repeatedly so that the congregation is able to sing it from memory. Some settings lend themselves well to that. I would venture to say that even after six years our congregation could not sing the G. Angeles’s setting we’ve been using without the choir’s support.
When the new Missal came into effect the CCCB provided us with three settings they’d commissioned + the chants from the Missal. They published the mini hymnal set up this way: Setting A, Setting B, Setting C, Chants, Hymns. Each parish was encouraged to learn one of the 3 settings plus the chants (which I’ve yet to encounter in any of my travels) and our choir picked the one they found the easiest and has stuck with it. Although it’s a setting with a repeated refrain, they’ve dropped all but the initial sining of it. The choir director admitted to me that she didn’t even know what the “Chants” were so they were never even looked at.
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pnewton
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Would you happen to know what the three settings were? I am only curious. We just changed and will not be changing again for a few years.
(caveat- I speak of ordinary time. We do change for Lent and Advent)
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pianistclare
Guest
I can’t believe this horrible thread is still running.
First world problems I guess.
First world problems I guess.
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Tantum_ergo
Guest
Well, you know the old saying, “Everyone’s entitled to my opinion”. . .
Maybe I’m getting old (yes I am, birthday’s next week, not that I’m hinting but PM me if you have yarn you wish to get rid, especially if it’s cashmere or mohair), but I have lately had a sea change about music. I have decided I’m tired of focusing on the negative, “ugh, that ghastly hymn again” and instead, I am going to find something positive to say or think about every single hymn I hear. Even if it’s, “yay, it’s in the key of C” or, “Well, that’s an interesting take on that Scripture verse” or "hmm, this one certainly seems to be a favorite around here’. No more groans, no more grumps, no more hating. And I will sing them even if I have disliked them before, and I will thank (after Mass) every person who works in the music ministry, and I will try to be less of a sour saint and more of a thankful person who is lucky enough to be able to worship freely when so many can’t.
And that’s my opinion!
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Phemie
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You can find them here
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pnewton
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Thank you. I like the middle one.
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27lw
Guest
From The Guardian UK
Why the phrase ‘first world problem’ is condescending to everyone
“Like many things, “first world problems” has a different force depending on whether you are applying it to yourself or throwing it in someone else’s face. If, at the end of an irate tirade about how my Kenyan coffee beans were over-roasted by the artisanal torréfacteur, I append the phrase “first world problem” with some wry rearrangement of my face muscles, I signal that I know this is just one of the minor frustrations of a very fortunate life. To pre-emptively concede that my problem is just a first world one is to ostentatiously check my privilege before anyone else tells me to do so. At the same time, I remind myself and everyone in earshot that we are indeed living in the “first world”. So it is also a humblebrag…Whoever uses it, though, it’s arguable that the phrase “first world problems” is condescending and dehumanising to literally everyone on the planet. For a start, it patronises those outside the “first world” by implying that hunger, disease and war are not only prevalent among the global poor but in some way the sole conditions of their lives. It implicitly characterises the less fortunate majority of the world’s population as saintly idiots who would never dream of complaining about anything more trivial. In the guise of right-on sympathy, we condescendingly picture others as living lives of homogeneous horror while rhetorically rendering them invisible as people, denying the individuality of everyone’s various joys and sorrows.”
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