Good Article From Fr. Friel If You Haven't Read It Yet
  • ClergetKubiszClergetKubisz
    Posts: 1,912
    http://www.ccwatershed.org/blog/2016/jul/24/priestly-musical-formation-low-mass-culture/
    Thanked by 3StimsonInRehab M. Jackson Osborn Aristotle Esguerra
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,916
    While silence has an important role in the Roman liturgy, turning to the Mass for our total daily allotment of silence is bound to have unintended negative consequences. The solution, of course, is to increase our diet of silence and stillness not only at Mass, but also throughout our day.


    This. This this this this this.

    Especially on Sunday. God set Sunday aside as a day of rest, of silence from the world, so we can pour all of our efforts - mind, soul, spirit, and body (and that includes the voice!). The beautiful stillness of the Low Mass is a good antidote to the rat-race your average Catholic layman is surrounded with during the week. But on Sundays? It's just lazy. The Sabbath doesn't operate by the rule of "minimum effort, maximum return."
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  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 1,960
    Dr. Donelson and I have discussed whether our problems today are metaphysical with an aesthetic symptom. That was based on her comment that if the priest wears beautiful vestments to be in closer visual conformity to Christ the high priest, he should sing to be in closer aural conformity. Now, with the ad orientem discussion and after more conversations with her & David Hughes on the effects on the person of regularly chanting the liturgy, I think that this, singing the liturgy, and the celebration ad orientem make the priest not only closer to Christ but they make him more himself.
    Thanked by 7M. Jackson Osborn ClergetKubisz JulieColl Aristotle Esguerra Yosef hilluminar tomjaw
  • PaxMelodious
    Posts: 426
    Fr Friel is suggesting that for priests, music should be a "personal activity in which we engage".

    Why would this not apply for all the baptised? How does it reconcile with the idea that the music used at liturgy should be of the highest possible quality - and thus outside the reach of the average worshipper?
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,916
    One thing I love about the Rule of St. Augustine - the emphasis on common life, which includes singing the Divine Office as a community. The Augustinian Canons I've visited so far have had quite different opinions on liturgical issues (such as the New Liturgical Movement, alas) but across the board, they make it a point to chant the Divine Office together multiple times during the day.

    Priests and religious are supposed to be providing an example to the laity in all that they do. What better way than to show them the example of St. Augustine's rule, a rule which was set up specifically to imitate the life of the early Apostles? Music as worship, done in community, in the midst of the activity of life - does it get better than that? Maybe this is a necessary point to get across to priest and layman alike: chant isn't just for High Mass.
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  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 1,960
    Because it is only via the priest that the Holy Mass can be offered and the Divine Office sung with the full solemnity; deacons in the old rite can officiate at Compline, but can they officiate at the major hours? It applies to the laity too, but especially & differently to priests.
  • rollingrj
    Posts: 345
    Fr. Friel is suggesting that for priests, music should be a "personal activity in which we engage".

    Why would this not apply for all the baptized? How does it reconcile with the idea that the music used at liturgy should be of the highest possible quality - and thus outside the reach of the average worshiper?


    Not all people have the same musical gifts (along the lines of the Parable of the Talents). Perhaps the reconciliation can be found in the concept of progressive solemnity. As the degree of musical involvement increases, so can the complexity of the music can increase; thus, while all focus on the internal side of FCAP, those with one or two talents can contribute to the external side within their capabilities as well.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    Music of the highest quality is not inherently 'out of reach', performance wise, for the 'average' worshiper. This is a pernicious and utterly false dichotomy . There is no end to the high-quality 'accessible' music for the congregation. One thinks rather handily of the Willan mass and much else like it, of Gregorian ordinaries that can well be sung by 'the people' (even though we have even highly regarded chant scholars insisting that they can't [tell that to the Ordinariate and Anglican folk]). There is a gross lack of reportorial knowledge and a dearth of actual musical ignorance parading as authority that we have been plagued with since the council, the partisans of which have insisted that anything for the people must be sickeningly banal, artistically worthless, and presenting no musical challenge or enlightenment. We do not need to reinforce this evil cancer. For every single edition of, say, a Victoria motet, that our publishers offer (if they offer such at all) they will offer, as well, thirty aggressively marketed pieces of rubbish by their coterie of favoured Haugens and pop-rock-folk pied pipers.

    It's not, I must again assert, what people can do that is our problem. Our problem is those who make a living out of the vile and scandalous idiocy that people are incapable of doing good music and doing it well.

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  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    Perhaps the reconciliation can be found in the concept of progressive solemnity.

    Alas, people usually apply this concept with a misguided starting point: they think of the Mass as a spoken ritual with optional music added, whereas the Mass is really a sung ritual with optional omissions of music.

    Moreover, the Church provides music for every single celebration on the ecclesiastical calendar, so it is a mistake to think that Mass should ideally be sung only on high-ranking days.

    Not all people have the same musical gifts


    That's a smokescreen. Nobody expects (or wants) priests to sing like Pavarotti. Any priest able to speak and whose voice gives evidence to the normal use of pitch in speaking, can sing at least one note; and that is better than not singing. What is lacking is practice, courage, and coaching: because no one is a good judge of his own vocal sound.
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  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 1,960
    Chonak, what is more appropriate is the expectation to sing all liturgies (or at least a Mass & office) of feasts of the highest two ranks & as many as possible which are not of that rank.
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  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    ...courage...


    Hear! Hear!
    Amen and amen.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    what is more appropriate is the expectation to sing all liturgies (or at least a Mass & office) of feasts of the highest two ranks & as many as possible which are not of that rank.

    Counting Sundays as equivalent to Solemnities, this is a good goal.

    For less experienced singers, it would probably be good to start with some weekdays and work up.
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn CHGiffen
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