Hi Jacob and welcome!

What a great opportunity you have. Your pastor sounds like a wise man, but what he didn't say was "there will be a small group of people who will make a lot of trouble." It is inevitable and you should be prepared for it. You won't be able to convince them but you can be positive and sincere and, most importantly, kindly firm about your plans. Being aware of these people is important, but you can't let them make your life miserable. You are doing a GOOD thing, after all. Best wishes and keep us posted. Oh yes, one more thing. People will go along with you if you explain things positively and bring them along slowly so that they see where you are going.

Oh, Lawdy.....(Welcome from the Left Coast of CMAA, Jacob)....what a ladder you gots to climb!
But this is proof of either two things, people, one apocryphal, the other apocalyptic:

*There is going to be one parish in Minnesota where "Gather Us In" will NOT be the pro forma "Welcoming/Gathering/Pimping our Faith Community" music.

*Jacob's going to get real familiar with sheep with teeth!

I say, when all else fails, do a different Bach Cantata each week, and if they question that, tell 'em Garrison Keillor said it's okay to be Lutheran in a RCC in MN.

Peace/Out,
C-Dawg, long of tooth, short of brains.....(and Noel hasn't chimed in yet, oooohhh, shivers)

You still da Man, Noel.
Perhaps the only thing I could add, Jacob, to Noel's sage advice (as we sages are old for a reason):
You need to do what you think is best, projecting a true confidence that you don't give a sh*t what others think, tho' you'll veddy politely listen to their concerns.
Get up to speed on ever' darn liturgical and musical aspect of your gig ASAP.
You have to, again, project to anyone, particularly your pastor, that your liturgical game-face is for real, even to the point of convincing him that it's more resolved than is his.*
But don't push. Defer, "collaborate," go so far as to make a decision without authorization and then sell that decision as having been "the Pastor's idea."
And, as Noel intimates....be prepared to be fired, and even more powerfully, to resign at a moment's notice.
I remember, in my long ago past life, my middle school kids showing up to school with shirts bearing the logo "No Fear."
They didn't have a clue how true that cliche rings; stand and stride through the temple grounds as did our Lord among the money-changers.

*See Mahrt, Wm., "We'll sing an English ordinary or proper as soon as a worthy one emerges. Thank you, Father." (or words to that effect.) That was forty plus years ago.

Thanks everyone. Your comments are helpful. Jeffrey, you are right, in a sense. The one benefit here is that I have played at a few parishes that have done the Haugen-Haas-Joncas stuff; that may have been what lead me out of there. Right now I'm looking at the St. Michael Hymnal but have recently found information on Jeffrey Ostrowski's Vatican II Hymnal. What do you all think of these?

Sitting at Eucharist in a Episcopal church, tremendously moved by the newly composed anthem on Sunday as I was able to follow the George Herbert text from the bulletin, I became very sad that Catholics are consistently denied the opportunity to knowing the words that are being sung by the choir.

The psalm was chanted in anglican chant and the choir interpreted each verse with further interpretation by the organist in choice of stops.

Being denied the text of the music of the propers, the motets, translations of the Latin, relegates the music to background and elevator music status in peoples minds, since they hear the sound but cannot connect the words and experience the emotions.

Evil Protestants have loved to pontificate on the sins of the Catholic church in denying people access to the Bible. Today Catholics are denied access to the propers texts and motet texts of the choir for reasons of laziness, cheap pastors and a total lack of regard for people in the pews. These are sins of the church.

The worship bulletin costs cents and shows that this parish wants active participation in the true sense of Vatican II.

Amen, Jeffrey. Amen, Noel. Amen, Adam.

And when you do have to select a hymnal, for the love of God and music, please eschew melody-only hymnals!

Which largely available CATHOLIC hymnals are NOT melody-only? We use Worship III and only the choir editions have harmonies. JMO's excellent Vatican II hymnal appears to be melody-only. I've seen plenty of Protestant hymnals that feature SATB harmonies, but never a Catholic one.

Consider this part of my education ;)

I treasure my Pius X and St. Gregory hymnals ... both SATB hymnals. Why and when melody-only Catholic hymnals became the norm is somewhat beyond me ... cost? post-Vatican II? For a bass or alto (or even a tenor) in the pews who likes to sing, it's a pain (and perhaps a snub) not to have available a singable part in his/her range. No wonder the question has been asked (and written about): Why don't Catholics sing? ... They should!

From my own memory of such things, hymn singing was not common in Catholic churches in this area until the 1960s, after the Council, of course. SATB was the norm in Protestant churches in the area. Who knows what trends were popular elsewhere. Although I am not a real singer, I do understand the difficulties of different voice parts trying to sing unison. My congregations sing reasonably well, but some folks have no desire to sing anything - and don't. The best hymnody was always in the Anglican tradition in my area, and still is.

I love SATB hymnals, for the wrong reasons. I sing harmony because I can, and people notice. The last time I showed up at a Lutheran church, I was almost kidnapped. But it's a liability in some ways...not just because of pride, but because organist have this strange habit of playing verses with totally unrelated chord changes, and you have to gracefully transition from the no-longer-harmonious harmony part back to the melody. If you actually USE them, you stand out. Music notation and sight-singing were the Church's gift to the world...and why not? W're no longer using them for anything.

Jacob,

You are in a position where you can make some wonderful music. There will be people who hate what you do and treating them kindly and being understanding and willing to talk with them will turn them over a period of time into your strongest supporters.

You will be amazed at the change in these people. The average Catholic will not respond much to what you are doing, but these other people who do respond will make you very happy...some of them will be old people, others will be young. Of course, there are also those who will fight and complain about what you are doing and, what is surprising is that they have no reason for their complaints.

You will find people who hate the pastor but hide it, instead making your life and the life of others in the parish interesting, to say the least.

Stick tight to the pastor, like glue. Share a meal with him at least once a week. If at anytime you feel you are losing touch with him or people are inserting themselves between you and him go to him immediately and tell him what you are feeling.

You will find there are going to be two cantors who give you trouble. Have all the choir members and cantors write about themselves and make sure that they include a list of all the parish activities they are involved in. These two cantors will have the longest list of groups that they participate in. One of the two cantors will be a woman who thinks she runs things, volunteers for all sorts of things that you need done, arrives late for rehearsals and everything you do and fails to do the work for you that she has promised to do. The male cantor will be a member of the KOC and an officer of the organization. He will wear a three piece suit and stand around at Mass with a look of disapproval about everything he sees. He will work hard to make your choir miserable, to the point of trying to lock the door if they are late for rehearsal.

Yes, I know that this sounds as if every parish has stereotypes. And they do.

In everything that you do always remember that eventually you are not going to be at that parish forever, so plan everything with an eye to the day that you leave. All fights are worth fighting and the harder you work to overcome the evil that you will find, the better you will feel about what you did while you were there for years after you have moved on.

If, however, you end being there forever, you will find people staring at you wondering how you did it. And people will call you Dr. Mahrt!

Matthew, all due respect, but I think you situation was unique. Changing music at Mass is anything but "under the radar". Someone's going to notice. You were fortunate that no one was brassy enough to call you on it. In my experiences, that is unusual. The dirtiest word at any parish is "change."

There is no danger of Catholic congregations singing in parts. It's dying out in all the mainline Protestant churches and likely will be a thing of the past as participatory music recedes from living memory. In a way, it's good news for scholas. Full circle, folks.

JIF, I would second the suggestion to print your own program each week and get LP's readings-only missal. It's really the best way to go: you can program whatever you want, and that includes being able to do a smooth transition from folk to better music.

A program also puts everything in one place in the right order, which I think is going to be huge with the translation change. People are going to get frustrated very quickly if they, for example, have to go from reading the Confiteor from a pew card to singing the Gloria from a Mass setting assembly card to following along with the readings in a missal. Even if you're using everything from the hymnal you choose, people are going to be flipping all over the place.

I really like the St. Michael Hymnal, but without a Psalter you're going to have to get Psalm settings somewhere anyway. The LP readings missal does have a decent Psalm setting in it, so that's not a bad option to couple with the SMH. A third option is to get LP's Sacred Song three-year paperback hymnal. It's solid and has pretty much everything you would need in it.

$.02:

If the congregation has been using trash for music for a long time, begin by recognizing that they don't really understand the Mass. For this reason you should teach them several things, in this order:
1) Solidly Catholic hymns to sing at Communion. By solidly Catholic I mean something like the Anima Christi, or Adoro te, or Jesu Dulcis Memoria. Until they learn to focus on Christ, the Mass is "What WE do". Even if they have to start in English with these, they must start, and this is the place to begin.
2) There is a Communion Antiphon which is sung between the Ecce Agnus Dei and anyone's reception of Holy Communion. Start with a simple version if there isn't the musical talent to do otherwise.
3) ORDINARIES. Please have them learn Orbis Factor, and explain that this is very much in keeping with Vatican II. Even if you have to go slowly, there is more worth in spending time learning these ordinaries than in wasting time trying to fight over other hymn choices.
4) Dismantle, remove or cause intentionally to malfunction any and all microphones in the place.
5) Forbid any cantors who exist from trying to land a C-130 on "a storm-tossed carrier at sea" in the performance of their duties.
6) Print a weekly list of used music for the congregation to use. In the case of the ordinaries, print the entire Mass, even if you don't use it all at once.

Chris

MatthewJ, thanks for chiming in. I have to confess that my experiences were largely positive as well. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a thread about the POSITIVE things that help us succeed, rather than spending most of the time talking about obstacles? That's why I haven't piped up till now.

What helped me to see success in our schola?

1) A music director who loves chant. She doesn't force other choirs to sing it except for a couple of experiments during Lent, but she gave me pretty much free rein. When I started out, she reviewed all my selections in advance, but that only lasted about half a year. After that, she trusted my judgment.

2) Priests who were reasonably supportive. It wasn't their primary choice, but probably more based on the number of complaints they feared or actually received.

3) Making sure that the people in the schola were having fun, being appreciated, and learning all the time. This gave me great latitude to try new things, some of which were quite wonderful. (The big complainer in the group, by the way, got discouraged because he couldn't push me around and he ended up quitting.)

4) Not pushing things faster than I thought possible. As a consequence, in 6 years we rarely sang Communios and never sang Introits. Call me a wimp, but the result is that parishioners didn't feel like the Mass experience was totally foreign to them.

5) Re-energizing myself at the Colloquium and other workshops and group experiences. It gave me lots of ideas, courage, and I loved learning along the way. It helped me to recognize that it's not about my success, or about "smooth sailing", but about bringing people to God.

I'd love to hear more from people about what's given them energy and success!

With the support of the pastor, you can do wondrous things. But I encourage an "all are welcome" approach, not an opposition. Invite people to sing in the schola who are interested, no matter where they come from. If people don't like it, fine, there's plenty of other alternatives.

The harder you push, the harder others will push back. So don't push - invite.

The easy way is to start a new schola - the old choirs might not like them, but they'll be happy.

The hard way, but to be honest more interesting and challenging way, is to convert the current groups. It takes the most skill, slyness and political savvy. You have to be ready for anything, and try to fly under the radar (sorry to repeat myself again and again). It can be done though, and it has the most satisfying outcome.

Jeffrey Quick: know your church documents!

They are listed here ...
Liturgical Music Document Literacy Challenge
http://musicasacra.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=2182