Depends what style/ease you’re looking for.
How has being on the liturgy committee been?
I met with my pastor two weeks ago and remarked how good it was to discuss options without a committee. We are now a year into the new translation and will be deciding soon what to do with a second Mass setting to start changing with the seasons. We wanted on year behind us though before we moved on to the second.
I won’t comment more on this, but to put all my thoughts in one emoticon:
I hope we’ll soon be trying another setting but there is an understanding that the only thing approved for use in Canada now are the three settings commissioned by the CCCB and the chants from the Roman Missal. All four can be found in the supplement to the CBW III – * Celebrate in Song*.
I’m going on my fourth after Christmas. I’m taking my older congregation kicking and screaming through them. I like variety.
I’ve used Storrington Mass, Mass of Creation, Mass of Redemption (current) and the next one will be Heritage Mass. I REFUSE to use the Gloria from MoC II. It’s a GIANT mess in my opinion, and my congregation will never get the hang of it.
The one church I work in uses Mass of Creation, parts of the Schubert/Proulx German Mass and Mass of St. Agnes. The music director and I don’t like the Gloria from MoC either, but before she came on board about 3 years ago, the only mass they did was MoC, so the pastor and she thought it best to keep it for the revisions and then slowly add other masses because the congregation doesn’t really take to change quickly. We were doing the German Mass Gloria for a while, which I thought the congregation sang very well and there is a certain dignity to the music. They actually sing the entire MoC Gloria pretty well, too, once they re-learned it, but it is clumsier with the new translations. I thought that the response Glorias were no longer permitted?
My current doesn’t take too quickly to change either, but thankfully my Pastor pretty much lets me do what I want and what I think is best. Spending three months on one setting seems to work well for this church, so I’m pleased. My previous church, that’s a completely different story…
I was told that you can repeat anything you want as many times as you want. But you can’t ADD or TAKE AWAY from the song. So refrain repetition is okay, in the eyes of Rome. My new preference (having done this for three months now) is to use through-composed Gloria. Doesn’t take as long to get through (I don’t like to play forever. I want to be done in a timely fashion), and flows a lot better in my opinion. Best part? My congregation likes it too.
