Not really. I do not find it any more awkward than any other setting, including the chant version. I think this is because the words themselves are stilted English. My solution is to postpone the Gloria at this time. When I do introduce it, I will do it as a Cantor/Response until it catches. I have found that is a natural way many people learn hymns anyway. They sing the parts they know until they are comfortable with the whole thing.
That seems to be the way a lot of parishes are going with the Gloria. At the other parish where I work, we don’t sing the Gloria except for Christmas and Easter, but the priest requested that we use a Cantor/Response Gloria as well. I don’t know yet, which one the director will use. In that diocese, they have worked at not using the MofC at all and so most parishes there don’t actually use it anymore, so right now we are using the Proulx “Community Mass” with the revised setting (we were allowed by the bishop, so most parishes are doing it now). The congregation picked it up within a couple of weeks, which I think is the case for most mass settings. The parish where we are using the MofC is in a different diocese and they have not permitted anyone to start using it until Advent, so the pastor has requested that we go through the music before mass. Fortunately, it’s a parish where we get a good number of people show up early and they mostly stay until after the recessional is over… something totally new since the new music director/organist came about a year ago, which I give her a lot of credit for. She’s been doing the changes with a lot of common sense and with the idea of “slow and steady wins the race”.
I am using Mass of Creation primarily because of its familiarity. I too will be looking at something different next summer. I like to have two settings anyway so that they can change with the season.
That’s the main reason why our director is sticking with the MofC as well for now, until she can introduce them to a new setting.
I find the rest of Mass of Creation to be an easy change. The Sanctus has only one minor change. I am going with When We Eat This Bread, where we already know the words. I am doing the Agnus Dei, which I haven’t done in a while because of the discrepancy in the words. I think we will be 90% by Advent and 100 % by the middle of Advent.
I would agree. Actually for most of the revised mass settings that I’ve looked at, I think the change has been a pretty easy transition.
Our options are somewhat limited. We have little money allocated for music and no professionally trained musicians. We are all self-taught, though I have been playing for 35 years and even lead music in a Baptist Church a few decades back. I bought the music from this change over out of my pocket.
Can totally understand your situation. I know that many don’t have much of or any budget. Where I used to work as a children’s choir/handbell choir director and music teacher, there was really no budget. I paid for all the kids’ sheet music and other supplies. It didn’t have a budget for me to have rehearsals after school (my salary was based on the school day), so it could only done once a week during the lunch period - one day for voice choir and one day for handbell choir. Any extra rehearsals I had for Christmas mass/concert and Easter mass was on me, and we never had an organist for the rehearsals. She was only paid for the Sunday and Saturday mass and no budget to pay for rehearsal time.
The budget at all the churches where I currently work are small as well. For the new music director, she was totally surprised at how little of a budget she was able to work with as she had come from a protestant church which had a huge music budget. It was an eye opener for her, but she’s very smart and has been able to make things happen even with such a small budget. That said, she has the support of the pastor, which makes a HUGE difference.
