What people normally call “hymns” – the songs you would sing as an entrance hymn, Communion hymn, recessional hymn – haven’t changed at all. So I assume you are talking about the commonly sung portions of the Mass text itself: the Gloria (“Glory to God in the Highest”), the Sanctus (“Holy, Holy, Holy Lord”), the Memorial acclamation and the Amen, and the Agnus Dei (“Lamb of God”).
As you may or may not know, the Church prescribes the words to be sung for these parts of the Mass, but it does not write the tunes itself. (I’ll set aside the case of using the traditional Gregorian Chant melodies.) It is up to individual composers to set the words to music in a suitable way, and there are dozens if not hundreds of musical settings of the various Mass parts which have been composed. It is the job of the pastor (and the music director, usually) to pick one that they like; most parishes rotate several settings throughout the year to keep it from getting monotonous.
So, what has changed? The Church has not said, “You must stop singing a nice setting, here is a lousy setting you must sing instead.” It has simply corrected the texts of the Mass parts, the lyrics. Naturally, this means that musical compositions based on the old lyrics can no longer be used, unless they are revised to take the corrected words into account – which many have been, actually. If a parish has been using a musical setting that has been updated for the new wording, then it can continue using it, and all that you would notice would be a slight change in the musical structure (e.g., to account for the different number of syllables in “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will” as opposed to the old “… and peace to His people on earth”).
If a parish has adopted a completely new musical setting – as it sounds like your parish has done – this is the responsibility of your parish staff. They could just as easily have adopted one that you liked better as one that you liked less. For instance, I prefer the new setting of the Gloria that we’ve been using at my parish to many of the old ones that had been in our rotation. Anyway, there are quite a lot of musical settings out there for the revised words of the Mass, and more will continue to be written. If you really dislike the one your parish has chosen, you ought to to talk to your pastor or music director and give him feedback (preferably in a friendly and constructive way, of couse
). They
want feedback; it will help them to understand what people like and to decide what to use in the future.
