multilingual Resp. Ps. for Assumption
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,798
    Comments welcome.
    Assumptio bilingual.pdf
    24K
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,413
    This is really nice! Not as far as I would llike to see the psalm responsory go, but a giant step in the right direction. Your responsory is more elaborate than the verses, which is the opposite of what it should be, but not unduly challenging for a talented congregation. I would prefer to see a more developed melos for each verse, and for each verse to be different than the others. This would echo the historic gradual responsory's form. Still, I admire what you have done. The 'tone' that you have composed for the verses is quite nice. Kudos!

    One reservation -
    ritual texts should be in one language.
    Pick just one.
    Even if its Urdu.
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    On the one hand, I am pleased to see the use of the Latin, and there is much to appreciate musically in both verse and responsory.

    On the other hand, you provoke a question in my heart. Is it your intention that each verse be sung in both languages, or that you alternate languages, or merely that you have both languages available, so that either an English-language vernacular parish or a Spanish-language vernacular parish can use it with ease and comfort?

    I usually find that combinations of Spanish and English in the same piece of music (usually done for "multicultural" reasons) fails abysmally (think: Pan de Vida). I'm not persuaded that a Latin responsory with either modern language necessarily works well, either, taking full awareness that there is a long tradition of using multiple languages in polyphony and certain kinds of hymnody and carols.
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,798
    I don't know, Chris. Are you trying to tell me I ought to enjoy Pan de vida more if it were monolingual? For this exercise I regarded it as a given that both vernaculars be on equal terms, and the fruit is that two congregations therefore join together in Latin.

    I think someone did put up a link to something a while ago that had soloistic verses, but it too didn't go far enough to make me stop regretting the Gradual and my ideal for the Resp- ahem, 4th reading is still the Lutheran in directum with alternating cantor or choir & full congregation. When will we finally have a Catholic hymnal with pointed text?

    Btw. I can't take credit for the reciting formula, which is associated with an Alabado to St Joseph collected c1914 from an informant who arrived in California in 1850, and the 'refrain' is of course the Comm. for Dec. 8, boiled down to what I guess a congregation can pick up in one go.
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