I don't know, of course, whether you are in an EF or NO parish. In the NO, the organ is not a "magic feather," but a legitimate instrument and voice for accompaniment during Lent. If you are not in the EF, I don't understand why you would even care what those regulations were, since they don't apply in the NO. Granted, all things can be over-done in either rite including unaccompanied singing. I think many choir directors don't realize how tedious uninterrupted acapella singing can become. Too much of anything, good or bad, is still too much, but I don't know your congregation and YMMV.

Some people have such a need for rules that their nature is to invent them (this is *not* a commentary on the EF, because it also exists in the NO) - it's a personality issue, and becomes more evident when such personalities have effective power to make decisions. You can't fix that personality habit; you can only ignore it or decide to not enable it.

This is not about rules, per se. This is about cultivating the vocal nature of sacred music, which is more often suppressed, rather than encouraged, by insistent and tyrannical organ playing. (Which may have just cleared a bunch of organists from my FB Friends list.)

Yes. What Stimson is referring to is not a rubrical issue, it's a psychological one. They are using the organ as a crutch or security blanket. (Just going to guess, but this sounds like the kind of situation where people will refer to a capella as "no music".)

I think the only way to learn to sing unaccompanied is to do it. Are the chants from the Graduale/Kyriale sung unaccompanied or with the organ? If I were in this position I would decide to get them to at least do the Ordinary a capella, and go from there. And if accompaniments need to be used for a capella pieces, they should be relatively soft, they are not a substitute for the choir. (And it would probably be better to simply play the Bass-line, or whichever part at any given time is the lowest, and chords as a basso continuo rather than a true reduction - the reduction can allow them to crutch on their part, and the point is to get them away from that.)

I think highly of the human voice, but don't find it any more pleasing to hear than many other instruments. It's the blend of resources that creates good sound. However, bring back the serpent! You haven't heard my basses. LOL. I need a good serpent player who plays loudly!

My organ filler tends to be shorter pieces by classical and romantic composers, often based on chant. It isn't really for filling short spaces, but is "instead of" sung offertory or post-communion pieces at masses with cantors. This next Sunday, I will be playing such a piece for offertory and the choir will sing at communion time. It all works out.

There really is no such thing as a "high" or "low" mass in the NO. It is the same mass celebrated with differing degrees of solemnity. Not the same thing.

My comments about the Low Mass were in reference to the EF Mass.

I thought as much. However, it is amazing the folks I encounter who don't know the difference.

Sounds like a plan! Each place is different with different expectations and those are big factors, too.

Would small groups sans the Michael Jordans of the choir be a good idea, where we work on very simple pieces they can do on their own?

Yes, that is what I do. Several of my "divas" go on extended summer vacations every year. I keep a collection of simple pieces that all know, and can even be sung by 4 or 5 people successfully.

"Low Mass" = "Mass Said Inside a Vacuum". No devotional hymns. No singing. No organ. Nothing.

I'm actually completely okay with being at a Low Mass and there being no music, whatsoever. It isn't necessarily a good thing to get used to this as something done on Sundays, but it isn't at all a bad or worthless (I know you didn't say that) experience. I do love the Low Mass, too, as hopefully it helps congregants to learn/better learn the Ordinary, which they might not really know all too well if it is always being sung, in general or in settings that they are unfamiliar with.

I know that when some of us are missing from Mass, others who don't consider themselves great/confident singers start to stress out and think or say, themselves, "oh, I don't know if I can do this if ___ and ___ aren't here!" It's really unfortunate, because it isn't as though they just don't know their parts (with the exception of a certain person who doesn't read music and can only hope to sing his part correctly when at least one person from his section is there) - they simply aren't confident. Our director tries to encourage everyone, though.
If the director shows little faith in the choir without those "special few," how is the choir to ever believe that they have the capabilities needed to sing without them?

I agree that a collection of simple, or at least very well-known, pieces are key. SSA or TTB that really can be sung if there is only 1 on each part are great resources (see this thread). Sometimes these pieces are learned by a "select few," and then the rest of each part learn their parts so that they can be covered, no matter what (and it always helps to have people who know the first part to also learn the second, just in case).

'...only adorns...'

NO, NO, NO, and a thousand NOs!!!
I must (must!) take issue, no, not take issue, but correct (respectfully but emphatically) Noel's assertion above that music 'only adorns the Mass'. Singing the mass is, objectively, normative. Singing the mass is not adding something to it, or 'adorning' it. Not singing the mass is taking something away from it that is integral to it. The sung mass may not be 'normal' or 'the norm', but it is most definitely normative.

how to deal with the personal side? And by that, I mean those "superstars" in the choir whose absence leads the choir to say, "oh no, X,Y, and Z aren't here - we can't sing at ALL!" Would small groups sans the Michael Jordans of the choir be a good idea, where we work on very simple pieces they can do on their own?

I used to change what we did depending on who was present/absent and then I stopped. And sometimes it works out very well, and sometimes... not. I try not to choose music that we cannot do without the "superstars". Also during rehearsals, I ask a smaller group (sans superstar) to sing, so they can see what they need to do to "step it up" so to speak. This may mean taking the music home and rehearsing on their own, or simply sitting up straight and taking note of embouchure. I did find that chanting more (the SEP, Marian Antiphons for example) has made a difference in confidence.

Noel, to be honest, I'm not quite clear what exactly my role is with this choir. (Isn't there a young organist on this site dealing with that same issue - unclear divisions of labor at mass?) I was offered the job of directing the choir a year or two ago, but the director ended up backing down on that offer; I wasn't terribly turned off, as I soon found out I had gotten a job offer that would take me out of state. (I've since moved back into the area.) Right now, the closest person they have to a director is the organist, who A) is fifteen years old and B) isn't exactly clear on liturgical niceties.

In the past, I've tried directing certain pieces (to which I was told not to direct, as someone conducting would be considered as a "soloist" and "Catholic church music doesn't have soloists." No, I am not kidding.) Recently, however, they've let me start directing the propers, as well as tentatively directing a few of the motets. I guess you could say my role is that of "advise and consent" at this point?

I've been singing again with this parish close to a year, so I've been moving slow in the suggestions I have for the group. You're absolutely right in that I need to be respectful to those who have been placed in positions above me. (Obedience does count for something in Catholicism, after all, at least I'd like to think.) Hence, when a decision is made I find suspect - organ-playing in Lent, for example - I bite my tongue and go along.

But this choir wants to grow, both in repertoire and refinement, and they know it. Our director is constantly e-mailing asking us to find new pieces to learn, since we're "running out of material". I want to do what I can to help them grow.

Cooze, the Low Mass on Sundays and Holy Days is my mortal enemy. I'm not arguing that a completely silent mass is objectively less holy than a sung mass. Daily masses, when silent, are perfect for recollecting the mind either before or after a day's work. Only perpetual adoration comes close. But like MJO said - it's not normative. Feasts are times to celebrate. Yes, our faith calls us to be contemplative, but if contemplative=complete silence, Aquinas really dropped the ball when he wrote all the hymns for Corpus Christi.

No, Sal, it's mixed. But women can only sing on the Ordinary and the motets. So it's semi-mixed. Like salad dressing.

Have you ever been to a Dialogue Mass, Cooze? Those are thebomb.org
BUT - the parish I'm at doesn't even like to make responses during mass. It's shocking to them if they can even hear the priest above a whisper during mass.

And the person who told me the soloist bit was the-old-director-who-is-still-sort-of-the-director-but-not-really. Tournemire Jr. really has no preference either way.

Tournemire Jr. really has no preference either way.

I got a nice chuckle out of that one.

...an enormous...

But one that needs to be carried to fruition. We must never concede the field. Charles is absolutely spot on: any liturgy that is not sung is a western aberration, and one that I hold to be intrinsically degenerate.

Granted, on the battlefield or in unusual situations or surroundings, a low mass may be all that is possible. In that case, rejoice that you have any mass at all. But most decent sized parishes have the resources to do better. They just misallocate or misuse those resources.

Adam, I'm curious - at your old church, did you repeat these communion pieces every Sunday, at every communion, for a month? As in, four weeks in a row? And your choir/congregation was OK with that?

Yes. It was fine. The other hymns, songs, and anthems changed each week. It was just the post-communion (and the Service Music) that stayed the same. The Service Music (the Ordinary) changed seasonally.

Before I got there, they sang the same Service Music (which for them was just a Gloria, "Doxology", Sanctus, and Our Father) all through the year, year after year, as long as anyone could remember. They also tended to do the same few hymns over and over. So choosing to do one post-communion piece for four weeks was never an issue.

Also, during Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, I did one post-communion for the whole season (the first couple years), so it was only during unstructured green time (the "Season after Pentecost") that I had to change each month. And after a couple years, I got a little more flexible with it.

Of course, it is objectively impossible for any mass to be 'shabby'. Nor, I'm sure, is there any need, here, to explain why. It may, though, be celebrated shabbily; and, done so whether spoken or sung. Too, even I must admit that I have attended some spoken masses (attended by a not-large number of people - perhaps in a chapel) that were marked by a sort of divine quietness and were deeply moving, intimate, and spiritually profitable. Still, however, one noted that something was missing - namely the singing of it, for which the heart ached. Such masses can be truly profound, but are not appropriate to large congregations at the high altar by priests and all speaking through microphones to be heard and with a delivery which is as uninspired and non-inspiring as the evening news-cast. It is, I think, the very prevalence, the ubiquity, of the said mass that gives some people, too many people, really, the unfortunate notion that speaking the mass is normative and that singing it is adding something abnormal to it. This is precisely backwards and is as false as falsehood can be - no less so because it is subscribed to by countless hosts of people. Perhaps it was 'unfortunate' of me to couch these sentiments rather carelessly, but they are neither 'unfortunate' nor 'ignorant'. One may state that what falls short of those praxes which are objectively normative, is, if not exactly shabby, an exact subtraction from the objective normalcy of the fully sung liturgy. What began in the mediaeval era as a means of ever more numbers of monk-priests saying their private daily masses and chantry masses at a multiplication of side altars was never intended to be nor conceived of as an appropriate manner of celebrating public, conventual or communal, liturgy. It would have been (and is!) a wrenching innovation and a disruption of all historical precedent. This is, in itself, abuse of the most grievous and thoughtlessly tolerated (even willfully imposed) order. (And this asserted 'Irish connexion' is no excuse hic et nunc!)