Sarabande,
How many Mass settings does your parish (not choir) know? Our choir, which really only sings at Christmas and Easter – small rural parish where there are few people and not a strong talent pool – really cannot do much more than simple SAB music that I write for these occasions. But our parish knows three different Mass settings. I’m just asking to see what most people are doing. I’m going to assume that if a parish has a musically educated person in charge there would be more going on.
Also, as far as introducing new hymns … does your parish have a plan? 6 new hymns a year. etc. Do you sing the new hymn several times withing a few weeks until the parish seems to have it mastered.
Same question in regards to a new Mass setting. How long do you give for learning it?
Third – do you mix and match Mass settings. I generally don’t like this approach. It’s like having a stir fry next to manicotti.
MonFrere
Hi MonFrere - I see benedictgal and Guitar answered your question regarding Gelineau. Thank you, gals!!
There are different tactics used which might or might not work in other parishes since my home parish is a cathedral and the majority of our congregation is visitor base. We actually only have about 600 households within the parish, but I’d say around 2000 people give or take will attend mass on any given weekend.
First - Our music director/organist is literally a musical genius, hard working and extremely devoted to near-perfection in his work and in teaching. We are very fortunate to have him The choir is all volunteer with a few musicians, but most can’t read a lick of music. His devotion and brilliance proves itself in how he can successfully teach this choir some very difficult music - but he is also part of a fairly long tradition of this kind of music at the cathedral, so that helps. It was one of the only parishes that did not stop doing this kind of music at any time during the latter half of the 20th century, and continued the tradition when he took over as musical director.
1 - Mass settings the congregation knows: Community Mass, Danish Mass, Plainsong Mass, Heritage Mass, Mass for Christian Unity and Schubert Mass (when we were still doing the complete mass). There are a few other masses which I can’t think of the names. We also do a Latin NO twice a month and the congregation (those who attend weekly and visitors who are familiar or can read music) along with the choir will chant the Sanctus, Mortem Tuam, and Pater Noster. The Agnus Dei, Kyrie and Gloria are usually a Palestrina, Victoria or another polyphonic work sung by the choir alone.
What works with learning these mass parts is that they stick to one mass for each liturgical season. It takes about one to three Sundays for the congregations to learn a new setting or at least become re-familiarized with it. I agree about not mixing mass parts. It doesn’t really work in most instances unless you get something that is within the same key and similar in style.
In terms of hymns, because it is mostly a “visitor” parish, the director tries to keep the hymn melodies traditional and recognizable. We use Worship III for the mass with choir which sings a hymn for the processional and recessional. Choir sings motets for offertory and communion. For the other masses, they use music sheets. If the director can’t find a suitable, traditional hymn that matches the Sunday, he will take a hymn melody known in the parish and set an appropriate text from another hymn to that melody. The Worship III books actually have a section in the back where you can see metrical matchings of the hymns if you need to do something like this.
For new hymns they will sing it for a few Sundays so that it will learned by the congregation.
I also spent half of my childhood to the present in a little, country parish within a farming community because our family own property there and many weekends were spent there. So, I can also give you my experience on how they learned new music. They also mostly sang the simple, traditional hymn melodies and only knew one mass - The Danish mass. Mainly because they didn’t have much in terms of lots of musicians and people who could learn or teach. When we got a new young, priest, though, he began teaching them the Latin chants, which people thought they’d never learn. He taught them one chant at a time and they did it for every mass. They first learn the easiest one - Agnus Dei, then they went on to Salve Regina because some of the older people remembered it. The tiny congregation loves to sing and once they learned a chant, they sang in full voice. It took time, like 6 months, but worth it for them.
