Get your congregation singing SATB harmonies on the hymns and you'll make the organ obsolete soon enough!

also... what does "obbligato" mean?

Where did we pick up these cranky Calvinists in Catholic music who want to forbid use of the organ? ;-) The organ has a legitimate place in the mass along with the human voice - at least that's the way I read church documents. Now I know some extremists turn it off and probably sit in their choir lofts in sackcloth and ashes during Lent, but I don't see that extremes are required. I do, however, cut back on it and don't play preludes or postludes. I accompany hymns and mass parts, and also play softly during offertory and communion times. But I don't use loud reeds and keep the volume down until Holy Thursday. After that, it's back to playing softly until the Easter Vigil.

Charles, but you're our resident Byzantine! You should abhor our pagan noisemaker!

Actually I'm amazed by how this works. I thought I'd be deadset against it, but I tried going without the organ except at hymns (and then only 8'4') and it's incredible. It changes everything. I can't quote regulation on it, because I agree it's a silly regulation in principle. All I can say is give it a try for 3 weeks - Ash wednesday to Lent 3. You won't go back!

maybe it would have the exact opposite at the beginning, but once people get used to hearing every little cough, sneeze and the clanking of chalices, I think you'll be surprised to see how sensitive they become. I make the same changes most of you listed above until Palm Sunday. After the psalm it's strictly a capella. There's no discomfort at all. As a matter of fact I think it sets the tone admirably for Holy Week. That's the ideal I use at my prinicple masses. I have to capitulate at two masses and use a little organ because the people just can't (won't) follow a lonely cantor crying in the wilderness at communion and offertory . They get all the acclamations just fine.

No organ solo during Mass, then no instrumental prelude and postlude make sense to me. It's the musicians' sound judgement. The prelude and postlude tell you what comes in between. This is very different time in the church year. Silence will tell people more directly what Lent is about than any notes can. (Silence is a music too) I think this is one thing that the Church is very clear about the music.

I'm not at all responsible for the music at the OF Masses at the parish, and the organ is not silent during Advent and Lent during those liturgies.

I figure if we're going to allow the EF to exert a "gravitational pull" on the OF, for Advent and Lent we might as well push in all the stops ;-)

I think our faith matters in little things, such as music. (especially music in the liturgy.)

If the discipline is not reinstated by the clergies and catechists, at least musicians can help. Should we just wait until it's all straitghtened up?
i don't believe OF and EF are so different and we have to seperate them so much. The essence is the same. Whether you do OF or EF, I believe church musicians have great power of influencing and preacing people with their attitudes towards music and the Church. If you are musicians for OF, I guess you have more freedom, but you also have more responsibility to make wise choices in your music ministry.
It all starts with paying attentions to little things. Neglecting little things led into this huge current mess in the liturgy. We need to clean up by picking up whatever mess you see.

Hello, my name is Dave Heywood, and I'm new. Please tell me if any Church document on liturgical music discusses, and, I hope, forbids, electronic amplification of the cantors, choir, instruments, and various other noisemakers. Of all my concerns about the many things that are driving the young people from the pews, this is one of the most serious, and one I have never seen discussed. The nice lady who yells into that mike and thinks she's a "leader of song"? Talk about penance!

Dave
Carthage, NY

I cannot remember the source, but I remain impressed by the observation that a liturgical rite that depends on electronic amplification in order to achieve its integral ends might indeed itself lack legitimacy. We need to be very careful that the sequential recognition of words not automatically be considered understanding/participation.

" In Lent the playing of the organ and musical instruments is allowed only to support the singing. Exceptions are Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent), Solemnities, and feasts"---GIRM. 313

I'm very naive on Church instructions. Is the above instruction (a direct quote from GIRM) only for EF?
I guess I don't need this book.

In Lent the playing of the organ and musical instruments is allowed only to support the singing. Exceptions are Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent), Solemnities, and Feasts.

From -- http://www.usccb.org/liturgy/girm/index.shtml

My book is the same as above. So it is for OF.
Thanks

Who cares about legislation when you have my word on it. And I'm telling you all: TRY IT. Just 3 weeks this Lent, then bring back the organ on Laetare and decide what to do on the 5th. Take the Gavin Challenge!

3 weeks: no prelude, no postlude, no interludes or improvisation, no "filling time", and accompany hymns as softly as you can without people complaining (actually, people loved me for that, and I even got a kiss from an old lady). If you don't love it, don't ever do it again and give the finger to whomever tells you it's a regulation. But I really believe most of you will fall in love with this Lenten practice.

Yes. The regulation refers to all instruments, not only organ.

My challenge is void to those who are not in a parish where only the organ is used. I would propose that Lent would be a good excuse to say "We can't use any instruments in Lent, but that's too much for our church, so let's try using only the organ for Lent?" Still, if you can take the challenge, do it.

"Dave... have you been reading about "Mr. Caruso" in the book by Thomas Day -- Why Catholics Can't Sing ? I'm re-reading it and just happened upon that portion of the book where the local prima donna on the microphone does just what you describe... I don't know that there is any such legislation that would help you... but I can commiserate with you!"

Janet,funny you should mention St. Thomas Day's book, (I think he's a saint, or at least a Doctor of the Church), I have read it and he helped to give form to the formless urges of my tabula rasa. Thank you for the commiseration.

And Daniel, excellent point: "I remain impressed by the observation that a liturgical rite that depends on electronic amplification in order to achieve its integral ends might indeed itself lack legitimacy. We need to be very careful that the sequential recognition of words not automatically be considered understanding/participation."

And to bring your insight to the sorrow of young people leaving the Church in disgust over the liturgy, the annoying amplification of various parts, not just the music, of Mass, can impress them not only as ugly, but as phony. Miserere nobis.....

One excellent observation you are all authorized to use, from an old Army Colonel, at the gathering after our parish Rosary Crusade, at which I accompanied the congregation on my fiddle (sine mikay) on the Marian Hymns in between rosaries. The Colonel directed his remark to me and one of our dear cantors, a really sweet man with a good voice (but with that one bad habit...) regarding the music he made the remark: "It was the first time in 20 years I could hear myself sing." The poor cantor looked properly flummoxed (don't know what it means but believe me he was). (N.B.: as a point of humility, the Colonel did NOT compliment my playing, but I have to respect his honesty, and I still recognize his existence... sometimes.) So one of the (minor but still important) good effects of well-accompanied, unamplified congregational singing is the pleasure of being able to hear everything: les orgues, le choeur, le peuple, et soi-meme. Sorry, it must've been my Guardian Angel Guy. And thus, to sing and to pray the hymn, or psalm, united with God and everybody! I like going to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Gates, NY when I'm visiting Mom, it is the Greek Melkite Catholic Church (they got all the bases covered there). The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is beautiful, and there isn't an amplification system to be found in the church, ahhhh. AMEN.

Dave

Miacoyne, that's what I use the organ for, to support singing. However, some here seem to imply we shouldn't use the organ at all. The regulations don't say that. What you can't convince me of is that the rules say "don't use the organ."

I believe the use of the organ whatsoever is entirely forbidden for the Triduum Gloria - Gloria. Although I could be wrong on that. Someone here knows, clarify!

The rubrics for the Missal (2002) on Holy Thursday have this, which allows the organ to play to support the singing:

7. Dicitur Glória in excélsis. Dum cantatur hymnus, pulsantur
campanæ, eoque expleto, silent usque ad Glória in excélsis Vigiliæ
paschalis, nisi Episcopus dioecesanus, pro opportunitate, aliud statuerit.
Item, eodem tempore organum aliaque musica instrumenta
adhiberi possunt tantummodo ad cantum sustentandum.

OF & EF???

"If you work in an absolutely 'dead' space"

sounds like an architecture problem. *sigh*

and a church-size problem, too. The ideal would be, what, 500 people per priest at the absolute max? but Catholics end up with, say, 10,000 people per priest sometimes. I guess that's a priest shortage thing.

thwayitis,

OF = Ordinary Form, aka Novus Ordo or the Mass of post Vatican II
EF = Extraordinary Form, aka Tridentine/Traditional Latin Mass, now licitly celebrated according to the Missal of 1962.

Charles

Where did that thinking come from all of a sudden? Nevertheless, it's a great topic for its own thread.

Remember, lungs are just as important as the synapses, and it is wind and vocal chord vibrations that comprise the mechanism that provides for human song! So the electronic comparison would actually be someone with one of those synthetic speech enablers for those who have had "their voice box removed"... don't you think?

To bring this even further, the maddening thinking is this. "the pipe organ requires a specialist to maintain and costs dollars more than an electronic. Let's just tear it out and be done with the hassel of maintaining it." it's kinda like the false teeth mentality. Once they are gone it is only then you appreciate what you once had.

Here's my take... Do Everything You Can to keep the real thing. It's something worth sinking your teeth into.

"But the Church discourages electronics, period."

I wish they'd discourage microphones more, then.

Hey, when are we going to get a musica sacra forum app for Iphone and Blackberry? I hate using the browser on phones. Too small.

Thanks, Dad, for the spanking and the "that's that" admonition.
Francis, everyone knows I think to the beat of a different bongoist. That said I did allow and admit that flaws were present in my analogy, as there were in yours. Namely, neural synapses would trigger only devices such as the robotic larynxes such as Stephen Hawking's or cancer victims.
Consider the reality that was fiction in 1968 with Kubrick's 2001- HAL 9000's voice quality is now digital reality. Unless "his" nerve system was compromised, as in the film with "A Bicycle Built for Two," I bet HAL could chant beautifully.
If such aural technology was available to a human Catholic chorister, would you discourage his/her participation because the legislation discourages "electronics?"
At a time when many are hungering for the sound of the "organ" again, why not accept the digital representation of actual pipe organs when they could never afford the purchase of a used 10 rank casavant?