Congratulations on taking on the music for the EF. I wish you all the best.

sanctamissa.org, written by the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius, Chicago, is an excellent place to start. These Q&As are good introductions to music for various forms of the EF mass.

A more thorough treatment of these same topics can be found in the book Psallite Sapienter (link to free pdf download towards the bottom of the page).

The splitting of the Sanctus, technically not allowed if it is chant, is always done in more Francophone regions, fyi. So is singing the Communion after Communion, which is the pre–1958 rubric.

The communion chant begins while priest communes (rather than after), if I recall reading correctly here, when I was corrected for my erroneous impression that that rubric was solely for the OF and learned it was also for the solemn Mass in the EF.

A_F_Hawkins,

I do not think you see alius cantus aptus, because it does not say that the antiphon may be replaced by something else, but supplemented by something else. Those are very different. Imagine the following conversation.

May I have dessert?

After you have finished your Brussels sprouts.

May I have some cheese on my Brussels sprouts?

As long as you eat your Brussels sprouts.

After my Brussels sprouts are gone, may I have two helpings of dessert?

That depends on how your Brussels sprouts are "gone". If you give them to the dog, the floor or the trash can, NO, you can not have any dessert. If you finish them by eating them, and there are many other people still eating, you may have more savory. When everyone else is finished his first course, you may have dessert.




On another note, though, does the choir receive Holy Communion after singing, or before?

And more importantly, CGZ, does the alleluia need to not be sung if it is omitted?

In the Ordinary Form, the rubric (para 63) allows the Alleluia to be omitted entirely when the propers are not being sung (but only read).

(This is a running joke around here, caused by the actual wording of the GIRM.)

While vernacular hymns are forbidden during EF Mass . . .

I think you meant "during a sung EF mass." The 1958 instruction (nos. 14b, 33) explicitly permits this. Even in the case of a sung mass, it leaves it to the judgement of the ordinary where a immemorial custom of singing vernacular hymns is already in place.

The legal definition of "where a[n] immemorial custom of singing vernacular hymns is already in place" is?

For those involved ¨if you feel like it¨! From my research this custom is not very old, say around 200 years in some places. Sadly these customs mean many Catholics do no hear the Propers sung.

@rich_enough Yes I did mean sung Mass, but I can`t imagine why anyone would want to sing hymns at a low Mass

And Pope Pius XIII [correction: XII] seemed to imagine that singing hymns at Low Mass was one of four modes of participation by the faithful (see No. 30 in De Musica Sacra).

A degree of reflection on historical practice-precedent and the documentation referenced above and on similar forum threads would seem to suggest that the limitation of the laity to extra-liturgical hymnody and spiritual songs at mass, rather than 'singing the mass, not songs at the mass', has a very long pedigree in the Church - if one wishes to call such contemptibly demeaning estimations of lay participation something so august as 'pedigree'.

Is it not small wonder that the singing of hymnody and songs which followed the recent council was just more of business as usual? Indeed, the recent council made history in its apparent wish for the laity actually to 'sing the mass', but, somehow, this didn't get translated into reality throughout most of the Church - not to mention that most priests think that they are exempt from singing the mass at all. This is a lamentable denigration both of the mass and the people which, it seems, the Church will be yet correcting for years to come. History dies hard. And, the infelicitous papal and documentary attitudes behind it (not to mention the lingering, and even revived!, EF heritage) are no help at all: nihil.

And, this doesn't begin to address the calumny by which the Church, having decided that the laity could sing the mass after all, gave (and gives) them garbage to sing. (Certainly, no Willans, Oldroyds, or RVWs need apply.) Whether the people sing or not, it is clear that the Church, as evidenced by what it gives them to sing, really doesn't think much of them - or, for that matter, of the mass.

The Liber Usualis says the communion is sung during the ablutions.

I think it could be from German traditions in Germany, but it could also be from German traditions in the USA. I also think it had to do with the norm that there was always one High Mass every Sunday morning, but not the early first or second Mass, but closer to Noon. But since the German congregation liked so much to participate in the Mass, High or Low; and with the fasting rule being from Midnight the night before; and since musicians were hired to provide some music, including at the Low Masses; and since NONE of the actual Mass parts were allowed to be sung at a Low Mass; well, hymns are about the only things left.

I speak partly from experience, having grown up pre-Vatican II, in a parish with a parochial school AND a German-heritage pastor. We kids were expected to participate at all Masses, Low or High, with both spoken and sung parts. We learned a number of the Gregorian Oridnaries, which were always accompanied by one of the nuns, and classes took their turns chanting the Rossini psalm-tone Propers.

It started in Germany--Pius Parsch, or thereabouts. It was brought here through immigration.

But in my pre-VatII experience with an IRISH pastor, when there was no High Mass there was no singing, period. And that was in a heavily Germanic-influenced Archdiocese. That changed--in our parish--in 1963 or so; hymns became the currency, and the 4-hymn sandwich became a permanent fixture.

The singing of vernacular hymns during Mass predates Parsch by a long time, going back at least to the mid-18th century (c.f. M. Haydn's Deutsches Hochamt). When I attended the FSSP Mass in Vienna, all of the singing at High Mass was in German, with the exception of the priest's chants and the responses.

Parsch by a long time, going back at least to the mid-18th century

Stood Korrecshun!

It goes back even farther. The oldest hymn still in use in Germany is the Easter hymn Christ ist erstanden, created at the beginning of the 13th century and sung alternating with the Easter sequence.

@chonak, before 1958, when, yes, it changed, but that was ignored in places.

It goes back even farther. The oldest hymn still in use in Germany is the Easter hymn Christ ist erstanden, created at the beginning of the 13th century and sung alternating with the Easter sequence.

Germans were singing vernacular hymns prior to the Reformation.
Luther was German.

Lemma: Vernacular hymns caused the Protestant heresy.

Proved: We should not sing vernacular hymns today.

QED.

Have you been to a Catholic Mass lately? Only the choir (if available) sings, because nobody really knows the melodies, and the choirs tend to sound mumbly