Mass Setting for Nuptial Mass

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zagjames

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So my fiance and I are planning music right now for our wedding so far we have:

Opening Hymn
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
Offertory Hymn
Holy God We Praise thy Name
During Holy Communion (2 Songs)
Panis Angelicus
Ubi Caritas
Laying Flowers at Altar of Mary
Ave Maria
Recessional
Allergro Movement of Organ Fantasie in F" K 594

We are trying to decide on a good Mass Setting or a compilation of pieces to use. It is an OF wedding but done ad orientem and very traditional in style.

No Gloria or Credo is needed. We are going to do a plainchant of the Memorial Aclimation in English.

Ideas?
 
Since you’re going traditional, how about the Missa de Angelis (Mass of the Angels), or the Missa “Jubilate Deo,” which is a combination of Kyrie from Mass XVI, Sanctus from Mass XVIII, and Agnus Dei from Mass XVIII.
 
PhilotheaZ said:
Since you’re going traditional, how about the Missa de Angelis (Mass of the Angels), or the Missa “Jubilate Deo,” which is a combination of Kyrie from Mass XVI, Sanctus from Mass XVIII, and Agnus Dei from Mass XVIII.
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I agree with PhilotheaZ’s ideas. If you don’t want Latin chant, there is also the Hurd Plain Song Mass.

We had an OF nuptial mass as well with traditional music, but had the mass parts all chanted in Latin. We just printed the Latin in the programs so that anyone who knew it could chant along with us and the choir. You could maybe do something like that if you do decide on doing the chant.
 
We are planning on doing latin chant, so we will be printing it in the program, and we will have translations printed with it too. My fiances family is protestant/agnostic so… the Mass will be a bit of a culture shock, but its what we really want and we hope it will be a good witness to them.
 
Warmest congratulations for your anticipated new state of life!

I was married coming up two years ago, and we decided to have a full sung Mass, like you - it was a great blessing to us, and plenty of people (Catholic and non-Catholic) loved it.

Being a professional musician I took great care over the liturgy.

First, I would suggest having one or all of the Latin propers sung, with the correct chant. The ones we had were:

INTROIT Deus in loco
GRADUAL Uxor tua ALLELUIA Mittat vobis
OFFERTORY Immitet angelus
COMMUNION Primum quaerite

The setting we had was Guillaume de Machaut’s Messe de nostre Dame - not easy to do without professional singers…

Because of the witness element to non-Catholic, there are other things I really recommend to take it to that “next level”:
  1. Have the Confiteor
  2. Use the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer 1)
  3. Decrease the number of hymns so that the theology doesn’t get wishy washy or misunderstood
  4. MOST IMPORTANT (TO ME): receive communion on the tongue, kneeling, if possible - we had prie dieux put out for us to use
  5. BE SURE to put in the booklet that communion is for Catholics in a state of grace: we put; “If you are not Roman Catholic, or do not wish to receive communion, you are welcome to come forward for a blessing. Crossing your arms across your chest will indicate to the priest that you wish to receive a blessing.”
  6. Have the old form of the nuptial blessing.
  7. Have the solemn blessing for everybody at the end, not the short version.
If you need a hand transcribing any plainchant PM me!
 
zagjames said:
We are planning on doing latin chant, so we will be printing it in the program, and we will have translations printed with it too. My fiances family is protestant/agnostic so… the Mass will be a bit of a culture shock, but its what we really want and we hope it will be a good witness to them.
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I still have my program with the Latin and the translations, so if you’d like, I can give them to you. PM me.

P.S. - Don’t worry about it being a culture shock either. We had a number of guests who were either fallen-away Catholics or not Catholic at all and many of them commented at how meaningful and beautiful the liturgy for our mass was - and that having a detailed program was very helpful. My brother at the time, who had fallen away for a while until last year, told us that if the music and the liturgy was as reverent and spiritually beautiful as our liturgy at regular masses, he’d attend mass again. It took a couple of years, but I believe that our nuptial mass planted the seed and last year, he began to attend mass again at our parish. He only wants to attend mass at certain churches because he had been so turned off by the dumbing down of the liturgy when we were kids, but it is one step at a time. (i.e. I don’t want him to miss mass at a church just because the church has bad music for example - even I, as a professional musician, have been learning to offer that up to God even though I still sometimes get a physical reaction to it when visiting other parishes.) So, you never know who you’ll be witnessing to. Now… I have to work on my sister.
 
levavi said:
First, I would suggest having one or all of the Latin propers sung, with the correct chant.
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This is a GREAT suggestion. I don’t know what the OP’s diocese is like, but our diocese is just beginning to use the actual propers for mass. Our parish is the starting point parish for it. And since I’m one of the musicians on there, I will have to begin learning the propers for a nuptial mass and funeral mass once our director has everything transcribed.

You might luck out and be in a parish which has also begun learning and singing the propers again. And should they not be doing that yet , but you would like the propers chanted, you can get a Graduale Simplex, which have more simple chants for those who aren’t as well-versed in these chants. That has been the model right now for our parish and these last few Sundays have been going pretty well.

Also, you can have the Kyrie and Gloria, using the simple chants. I recently did a wedding where the couple wanted all the parts of the mass which could be sung chanted in Latin (although the visiting priest didn’t allow the Latin for the Mortem Tuuam for some reason). We did the Kyrie ed. Vat XVI and the Gloria ec. Vat VIII.

If you are having a choir, we did the Palestrina “Missa Aeterna” Christi Munera for the Kyrie, Gloria and Agnus Dei at our wedding. The Palestrina “Missa Brevis” or the Victoria “Missa Quarti Toni” are also nice. But you do need a choir that does this music often or a professional quartet/choir who can read music well to learn it quickly.
 
levavi said:
If you need a hand transcribing any plainchant PM me!
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Sarabande said:
I will have to begin learning the propers for a nuptial mass and funeral mass once our director has everything transcribed.
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I know this is off topic from the original post, but since two of you have already mentioned transcribing …

Did you know that the Liber Usualis is available online in modern music notation? quilisma-publications.info/Liber%20Usualis%20(Full).html

It has been a great help to me, since I am not very fluent at reading chant notation yet. I saved it to a CD so I don’t have to keep waiting for it to download on my computer each time I use it.

(The first page is blank; don’t let that fool you into thinking that the document hasn’t downloaded.)
 
PhilotheaZ said:
I know this is off topic from the original post, but since two of you have already mentioned transcribing …

Did you know that the Liber Usualis is available online in modern music notation? quilisma-publications.info/Liber%20Usualis%20(Full).html

It has been a great help to me, since I am not very fluent at reading chant notation yet. I saved it to a CD so I don’t have to keep waiting for it to download on my computer each time I use it.

(The first page is blank; don’t let that fool you into thinking that the document hasn’t downloaded.)
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This is great to know. I will have to tell my director. For years it was so hard to even be able to get the great big Liber Usualis and now they have the modern notation on-line??? Awesome. For the congregation, our director has been instructed to use the Graduale Simplex in order to get them used to chanting more simple versions of the propers. But this will be wonderful to have as well. Thanks!!! 👍

(I know what you mean with chant notation. I can read the numes somewhat, but the more complicated ones are a little strange to read.)
 
Sarabande said:
For the congregation, our director has been instructed to use the Graduale Simplex in order to get them used to chanting more simple versions of the propers. But this will be wonderful to have as well. Thanks!!! 👍
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Another source of simple versions of the propers is the book ‘Proper’ of the Mass for the Entire Ecclesiastical Year by Rev. Carlo Rossini (known familiarly as “Rossini Propers”).

The Rossini propers are available online for download — musicasacra.com/pdf/rossini.pdf
You can also purchase a spiral-bound hard copy of Rossini here — neumannpress.com/propofmasspi.html

It includes almost all the proper texts for the year set to the basic Psalm tones. I have found almost everything I need in it except the Requiem Mass.

I tend to use the chants from the Liber Usualis when they are within my capability, and the Rossini Propers when the Liber Usualis chants are too long or complex. I just “mix and match” as needed!
 
Some great ideas abounding here…

Just to make clear: the propers in the Novus Ordo Mass are different from those in the Traditional form.

That said, the rubrics of the NO are clear that suitable texts may be substituted, so you could substitute the TLM chants 😉

We did not do this as we actually preferred the ones we chose…
 
levavi said:
Some great ideas abounding here…

Just to make clear: the propers in the Novus Ordo Mass are different from those in the Traditional form.

That said, the rubrics of the NO are clear that suitable texts may be substituted, so you could substitute the TLM chants 😉

We did not do this as we actually preferred the ones we chose…
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Thanks for making that clear. Yes, you are right. Since the OP mentioned that they were having the nuptial mass in the Ordinary Form and not a TLM, I was focusing on that. 🙂
 
Thanks for all your (name removed by moderator)ut. I hope to put many of these ideas to use. Just so you have a better idea of what were doing I thought I would add some detail to how the nuptial Mass is being organized.

It will be an ad orientem OF Mass with a Priest, and two priests vesting as Deacons. From the Communion Rite “Praeceptis salutaribus…” until the end of the Mass. However, there is some english pepered in such as the nuptial blessing and the solemn blessing. The Roman Cannon (EP 1) will be used. Communion will be recieved at kneelers (of course kneeling is optional but encouraged). I am going to buy as a present for all three of the fathers a biretta (all of them are conservative minded priests who either celebrate the TLM occasionally or have a growing interest in it). We are trying to get some of the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Church to be in our choir along with some of our friends/family who sing at their parishes etc. All in all it will be very traditional. It may be a OF but it will look and sound more like a EF.

Hope that helps. And again thanks for all your (name removed by moderator)ut. My fiance and I plan on talking about this alot this weekend so your advice is very much appreciated.
 
I’m thinking we will use either Mass VIII or Mass XIII. But we are still trying to decide whether we should use the propers or hymns. We are leaning towards the hymns but we will see.
 
zagjames said:
But we are still trying to decide whether we should use the propers or hymns. We are leaning towards the hymns but we will see.
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Both can possibly be done, such as during Communion. Do the Propers first, then have a hymn or motet (since you may be having a choir.) Although for the time being, our masses are basically all propers to get the congregation used to doing them and sometimes just organ recessionals (no hymns), the director of worship for the diocese has told our musical director that some variation can be done. The propers still are to be sung, but a hymn or choral motet can be used such as during communion or offertory. Or if there is a large, special mass for the diocese and the propers isn’t long enough for the procession, he can also use an organ piece and/or hymn after the propers are sung.

BTW - I think your hymns that you are considering are beautiful especially “Holy God We Praise Thy Name” and “Panis Angelicus”.
 
Are you having an all-woman choir? I ask because you mentioned that you were trying to get some sisters to sing in the choir. There are some lovely pieces for just women.

For our wedding during communion, we used an “Ave Verum Corpus” by Gabriel Faure. It is two-part vocal for sopranos and altos. Another piece that can be used either for a solo voice or for all women is Faure’s “Ave Maria” (he has a couple settings, I believe, I’ll try to find listening samples of both.) We also had this for the Presentation to the Blessed Mother, but had my former voice teacher sing it as a solo as her voice had a more ethereal and heavenly leggiero sound than to use a group of women.

When I did wedding with two other women where we chanted the Latin mass parts, that was also nice.

Anyway, let me try to find these listening samples.

P.S. There is also a nice Catholic wedding forum called www.brides.ourladyforums.com You can check that out if you want to talk about more wedding related things. They discuss everything and many of the ladies are fairly traditional.
 
I found them both on a cd that I actually own. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show the entire piece. They are tracks 8 and 10. Amazon labeled it incorrectly because “Ave Verum Corpus” nor “Ave Maria” are part of the Requiem, nor is the “Cantique de Jean Racine” (one of my favorites). Basically, everything after In Paradism (track 7) is not part of the Requiem.

amazon.com/Faure-Requiem-other-choral-music/dp/B0000031HB/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1222490696&sr=1-3

Or you can just do the Ave Maria chant with all the ladies singing.
youtube.com/watch?v=Qv0n5zTwH5M&feature=related

Of the Biebl “Ave Maria”
youtube.com/watch?v=dVBsNUXg_YM

This is also nice by Harold Boatrite (It’s his parish and it only does the TLM)
materecclesiae.org/
 
Hi!

This sounds like it will be a wonderful event, full of many blessings. You also have a fun weekend ahead as you try to draw it all together!

If you have the benefit of the Sisters, it sounds like you have some expertise in place, which is great. For that reason, if you’re debating Propers vs Hymns I should consider at least some Propers, if not all of them?

In order of priority I should suggest the GRADUAL - no responsorial psalm! Also, in the Ordinary Form of Mass it is the same as the Extraordinary Form: Uxor tua. The ALLELUIA is also the same in the OF as the EF: Mittat vobis. So, a nice overlap!

I should also suggest that the OFFERTORY means that, because of the singing, the priests don’t have to read out the “Blessed are you” - even in Latin! And it’s a nice cover. The options here are Immittet angelus Domini and In te speravi, the latter of which is the traditional chant (i.e. in the EF) - another overlap!

These two would be my minimum, if I felt I had to choose.

If you are having hymns I should suggest not at the beginning - too protestant! In that case, you could have the Introit straight after the Bridal Procession. In fact, we had a hymn during the signing of the register (don’t know what the custom is in the USA, whether you sign during the Mass) and that was it - ours was “Seek ye first the kingdom of God”, mirroring the Communion chant, Primum quaerite regnum Dei.

Finally, I would urge you to use the Douay-Rheims translation for the propers in your booklet, because they are an exact rendering of the Latin and also it will add a bit of oldness in the English…!

Looking forward to hearing more!! Have fun!
 
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