You might say "Yes, it's in a minor key, which is to demonstrate the longing of the world for the coming of the Savior. You got it exactly right!"

Then as you move away, under your breath, you might continue......

I've heard that for years about the pacing during Compline. Anything in a minor key or mode other that 8 has to be a dirge. It's just a reflection of the whiz-bang, fast paced, superficial, style over substance, remember only the movie soundtracks, cheap and tawdry society in which we now live. It takes time, maybe an entire lifetime to understand the deeper meanings of tempo, even for professionals. Harmonic rhythm, agogic rhythm connection of text to tune, reverb in the space, and key are but a few considerations. Age of the listener probably has the most to do with their pronouncement that it's "a dirge". Stick to your guns; eventually they will understand. Now, THIS is a dirge: half note = 30: but with a text like, "We Praise Thee" how does that tempo work, especially in minor? It's the original and my trombone choir version a half step lower.

thanks everyone.


@jefe i think you hit you hit the nail on the head for the "why". on a completely unrelated note - I really enjoy Tschesnokoff's Duh Tvoy Blagiy (or May Thy Holy Spirit, if you will).

I'm with Dad 29, it expresses the longing of the world for the coming of the Savior. Just smile brightly and compliment them on their sensus catholicus; it IS a dirge, which is defined as "a mournful song, piece of music, or poem".

On the subject of teaching us how to die, I must say that I thought I had learned all my parents could teach me until my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Then I learned how much my parents could still teach me about marriage and dignity and submitting oneself to the will of God. "Teach us how to die." I have been schooled! And I am grateful!

'Dirge', 'Museum piece', fill in the blank. Haven't we heard such clinically stupid remarks before from people who simply don't like something so tack a pejorative onto it as if they were an oracle. I would explain the mood of such a piece and the whys and wherefores of its approptiateness to the season or the day, and, having done my charitable duty, not being bothered the least by their thoughtless judgmentalism. Such categorisations are highly subjective on the part of persons who are ill-equiped to make objective and worthy observations.

I once knew a Lutheran pastor who hated Lutheran chorales because they were all 'museum pieces', not the happy-clappy hog-wash that had gotten 'hold of him (poor man!). Of course, what one finds in musea is the cream of human creativity - that this creativity might find no other place than a museum is a piteous statement of human values and priorities.

(I, for one, find Nun komm quite joyful!)

The last thing one wants to do when accosted by such persons is to be defensive or caught off guard. Launch immediately into a smiling and bright-eyed explanation of the virtues involved and remain collected and unabashed.

The fault is in the person - not the thing.
Yet another case of projecting one's own shortcomings onto others.

>> (I, for one, find Nun komm quite joyful!)
yes; the Catholic idea of joy is different. In Holy Week I noticed an indicator for use of tone 7, which is used for occasions of rejoicing.

Beautifully put.

I'd farrrrr prefer people to be complaining to me than complaining to someone else about me.

It's always good to get feedback (of the non amplified kind!), and actionable feedback is particularly appreciated.

If someone wants to rant, I'll sympathise for a while and then invite them to become part of the solution. That usually starts them running away pretty quickly.

I just always thank them for expressing their opinion one way or the other.

As the late, great senator Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

If I may gloss Clerget's sage axiom -

Incidental ignorance is excusable.
A preference for wallowing in it isn't.

The chorales were sung rather slowly in early times, just as was chant. As some will know, it was common for them to be sung a line at a time with elaborations from the organ between each line. Too, it has been written that the organ would do preluding on the chorale which would then be sung a capella by the congregation. So, I think, Salieri, that the likes of Vulpius would have been sung rather slowly, and the likes of Bach would have merely filled in the space between notes of the already drawn out tempo.

Many Lutherans today, though, like their hymnody at a rather (to an Anglican) comically fast pace.

Incardination: I had a very similar experience to you with the hymn you mention, "Dear Saint Joseph, Pure and Gentle." Last year, while I was having this fine hymn recorded in its entirety, two of the singers mentioned (in a joking-like way) that they thought the chorus, "When the death shades, 'round us gather, teach oh teach us how to die" was somewhat depressing. I explained, as you did, that the words were quite appropriate since St. Joseph is the Patron of a Happy Death. I further explained that Catholic legend has it that St. Joseph died in the arms of Jesus and Mary. Neither singer knew this, and one of them (who is not Catholic) exclaimed, "What a beautiful thought!" It turned out to be a nice experience as a "teach-in" for all of us.

As for your singer who did not think the hymn was appropriate for children, tell him/her that it comes from a hymnal entitled, CONVENT HYMNS AS USED BY THE PUPILS OF THE SISTERS OF NOTRE DAME (Liverpool, 1891). Enough said!

>> I've always rather resented the lack of mention of Joseph, who must have been an influence on the child Jesus, who was Mary's husband, and so forth.

And who had so many sufferings, in the conception and birth and care of this Child.
The flight into Egypt was because of Herod's intentions to kill the Child
and to ensure success, he ordered the slaughter of all the children of Bethlehem within an age group of what, two years
Consider that Bethlehem was where St Joseph had to report for the Roman census. I don't think we know the date of the killings, but if it was near the census time he lost a large number of his relatives.

Tempos of hymns and all organ music are determined not by a metronome, but by the acoustics in the room.

Any composer's markings are what they thought it should be played at on the instrument and the room that they played or conducted.

ruddered by the natural phrasing

which leads to the now famous 1940 Hymnal text: My God, I love thee NOT, because I hope for heaven thereby.

Given that it is in the Episcopal hymnal, is it possible that a certain kind of Episcopalian hopes to get to heaven precisely by not loving the God they've been taught exists somewhere under a Roman sun?

Thank you Fr. Krisman, Liam. C G-Z: no, I think that's crazy. Episcopalians I know are not anti-Catholic in the way that some Catholics I know are reflexively anti-Protestant. In fact, most Protestants I know rarely even think about Catholicism (for better or worse). If Episcopalians consider the Catholic Church at all, it is with deep respect. Perhaps just my experience?

If Episcopalians consider the Catholic Church at all, it is with deep respect. Perhaps just my experience?

I have encountered a number of Episcopalians who profess profound hatred for the Catholic Church. Delving deeper, I found most were former Catholics. Some interesting stories there as to why they left, usually centering on how the Catholic Church didn't bend to them and let them have their own way.

Chris,

We are wandering way off topic! But: it is certainly true that there are theological and doctrinal differences between Catholics and the various Protestant denominations. If that was your only point, of course I agree. I rather read "the God they've been taught exists somewhere under a Roman sun" to mean that some Episcopalians are taught something along the lines of "Catholics think 'X' but we think 'Y'," or even "Catholics think 'X' and therefore we must think 'Y," i.e. they must define themselves as anti-Catholic—to which my response is that, in my experience, few folks in the Protestant world are particularly concerned (again, for better or worse) with what Catholics believe—they have been brought up in their own centuries-old traditions, which for most is sufficient, and they feel little need to look outside of those traditions. To the extent that they are taught about Catholicism, or Protestant denominations other than their own, my experience is that they are taught to respect them as parts of the larger Christian Church.

Charles,

Yes, it is true that ex-Catholics, Episcopalian or otherwise, tend to be at least in some sense(s) anti-Catholic. Pretty much stands to reason, doesn't it? But the ones I know for the most part do not feel hatred of the Church, but rather, for one reason or another, a deep sense of disappointment (whether we may feel this is legitimate or not), and many hope one day to to reunite with the Catholic church.

At any rate, the stock figure, found frequently in some Catholic narratives, of the virulent anti-Catholic Protestant is someone who I have rarely encountered in my many years working among the Protestants. (I don't doubt that, as a historical fact, this figure once existed, but my sense is that the Protestant world has moved well beyond that. And, indeed, these days Catholics and many Protestant denominations are finding much common ground.) Or perhaps I have led a sheltered life? But given my experience, if such people were out there I would certainly have run across a couple of them at some point!

Full disclosure: my father comes from a devout Irish-Catholic family, and my mother from an (if possible) even more devout Methodist family; my over 35-year career has been pretty evenly split between Catholic and Protestant institutions. So, per Joni Mitchell, "I've looked at life from both sides now..."

okay, really sorry about that last reference! Back to music!

But, alas! I was not to be. The dread path which Anglicanism chose in the last half of the last century rather ruled such a rapprochement out - purposefully, consciously, deliberately, and in spite of the faithful witness of the Roman Church and Orthodoxy. I weep and wail because Anglicanism betrayed its own best genius for the social gospel and civic religion.

I agree. The COE and its Episcopal counterpart, decided to follow the gods of political correctness rather than the One known from earliest times. These days, they have drifted so far from Catholicism that I can't see any kind of reunion taking place. I worked in a Church of Christ (Disciples of Christ) church at one time. Lovely people, but they followed the same errors and often commented that we should all be one. I can't see us being one with them unless we abandon Apostolic Christianity.

To answer Chris' charge that his experience was different from mine, I don't doubt it. There are many corners in the Big Tent of Anglicanism. Some are (or were) more Catholic than the pope, some indifferent, some curious, some well disposed, and some outright contemptuous. My people were not the least bit antipathetic, nor were any whom I encountered, though I knew that they were there.

The really sad thing is that high church, low church, evangelicals, pretenders to an Oxford Movement Anglo-Catholicism which no longer exists, and on and on, all have made their peace with priestesses, bishopettes, civil religion. and the rest. I remember well how that the bishop of Fond du Lac (a famed bastion of Oxford Movement Orthodoxy) and other such places declared back in the sixties and seventies that if 'they' ever ordained women 'I will walk off to Rome with my entire diocese'. Well, 'they' did it and not a soul went anywhere at all with himself or his entire diocese - so repulsive an embarrassment to spiritually thirsty souls was Catholic music, liturgy, and translation in the post-conciliar years.


Whether it's from Episcopalians, though, or others, there is plenty in the Catholic Church to be derisive of - and it isn't Mariology, Petrine doctrine, Latin, Indulgences, saints, or any other of the familiar litany of 'abuses'. No, it is a general culture of deliberate mediocrity and the very prevalent likes of.....

Viz... Amazing Grace...

Ha! Chris - As I mentioned on another thread, I was engaged to play a French mass at St Basil's Chapel, UST, on Christmas Eve. Thrilled to do so, I practiced the music to perfection and prepared d'Aquin's Noel Grand jeu et duo for a voluntary, i.e., a 'prelude', expecting that they would really appreciate it. Far from it! The cultured and mature Europeans (French ones yet!) with whom I expected jointly to worship the new Emmanuel in worthy state sat there and talked loudly through the d'Aquin, mumble sung through the happy-clappy entrance song (which included an incompetent teen-aged coterie of instruments), and could scarcely be heard on the refrain-styled Gloria. For all that was sung there was an arm flailer or a pirouettist at the lectern. The anamnese ('Memorial Acclamation' to us) was sung half-heartedly to the tune of 'Amazing Grace', and the congregation in general just seemed to be enjoying what was, essentially, a kiddie-show pastiche of this and that, with children reading all the readings, the psalm responsory (responsory sung, verses spoken) and on and on. There are not words to convey my utter disappointment and my disillusionment with our European cousins. What, I suppose, would you expect of people who committed regicide and danced at having done it!

Dad,

If such a ban existed, surely Spadaro and company are well on their way to abolishing it as part of an outdated something-or-the-other, and certainly a failure to accompany sheep.