If your parish sings the Gloria, the responses, the Lord have mercy, the Holy, Holy, Holy, etc, you might have noticed that the tune changes sometimes. It could be that you sing a different tune at Christmas or Easter, or in the summer, etc. Those different tunes are Mass settings. There are many, many settings which is why when you go to a different parish you may not recognize the tune they are using for the sung parts. Most of those settings have a name: Mass of Creation, Community Mass, (New) Good Shepherd Mass, Celtic Mass, etc.
Often the people in the pew have no idea what setting they are singing because a choir may use a Gloria from one setting, the Eucharistic Prayer acclamations from another, etc. They are just familiar with the tune. For example, in my parish until 2001 we used the (New) Good Shepherd Mass Gloria and Acclamations and the Celtic Alleluia. I could sing that in any parish that used those settings and that setting of the Gloria was the most common across Canada.
Then a new choir director came in and, while we still sang the same Gloria, she had us singing the Acclamations, the Lamb of God and the Alleluia from the Mass of Creation. I discovered that many, many parishes outside my area were also using this setting (nowhere near as singable or as nice as the NGSM, IMNSHO). Lately we’ve been using the Community Mass setting and come Advent I have no idea which setting we’ll be using, although I hope they go for the chant since the three new Canadian settings are, to put it mildly, less than edifying.
