Singing the gradual
  • jchthys
    Posts: 23
    I was at the Eucharist today for the feast of St. Luke. It was a beautiful service as always, but as the responsory psalm was sung, I thought: wow, that's just a lot of text.

    Yes, having the psalm allows people who only go to church once a week to be exposed to the psalms, and having them sing the refrain allows them to vocally participate. But personally, I find the sheer amount of text in the Liturgy of the Word overwhelming and I'm afraid a lot of it goes over my head a lot of the time. (The RCL may contribute to this as well.) I'd much rather be able to take a moment to pause and meditate on one verse. This is also a result of my personal preferences and abilities: I don't really "get" a text, especially poetry, unless I repeat it over and over (either all at once or in the course of my life), or have it drawn out and set to music. Could it be that I'm not alone, and that throwing more Bible at the congregation doesn't always stick?

    The refrain for the psalm was very beautiful: "The Lord heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds." I would love for that text, or another, to be sung in the style of a traditional gradual (or of course the actual gradual itself): I could participate by listening and meditating, without too much text to distract me. Ideally the setting would be chant or something else where I could understand the words.

    Anyway, this is my thought for the day. Are there many "regular" parish churches, either Catholic or Anglican, that use a single-verse gradual that's not rushed through? I've been to Anglo-Catholic churches that include the propers, but just to a psalm tone, so that it's rushed by and not gilded with the chant as it is in the older sources. Where are these churches and what is their churchmanship otherwise? Is there a middle ground? How can music ministers and rectors teach the benefits of meditative psalmody and move a parish towards it? Are there good arguments on the other side that could help me appreciate larger quantities of psalmody at the Eucharist? (I'm used to long psalms at the Office; but the Mass is a very different situation and context.) One possible such solution might simply to have enough silence after the psalm for meditation.
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Jchthys,

    I'm going to Mass later this morning, for the feast of St. Luke, in the Extraordinary Form.

    You may have a great quantity of text in the psalm, and you're right that merely increasing the quantity and variety of Holy Writ doesn't make the congregation Scripturally literate. On the other hand, the texts of the Mass are there as part of a single act of worship, not as catechetical material, so whether the congregation understands each and every word at that one hearing is less the real question than whether the text and the music combine to make an act of worship of God or, quod Deus advertat as an act of self-affirmation of the presenting person or the congregation as a whole.

    All that said, one may use the Gradual instead of the "Responsorial Psalm". A question worth asking is this: given that it is a legitimate option, why do so few parishes ever use it?
    Thanked by 1jchthys
  • Schönbergian
    Posts: 1,063
    Another day, another problem with the three-year lectionary.

    I must confess that, after six years of being a devoted, practicing Catholic--I still barely remember the cycle of readings each year, and the weekly Psalms only slightly more.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,703
    I must confess that, after six years of being a devoted, practicing Catholic--I still barely remember the cycle of readings each year, and the weekly Psalms only slightly more.


    Yes, I spent my childhood listening to the 3 year lectionary, and a couple of years as a lector... Can't remember anything. Having only attended the EF for the last 20+ years I look forward to my friends the Propers returning each year...
    Thanked by 1Incardination
  • Schönbergian
    Posts: 1,063
    I remember the Propers (having used them in an OF context for five of those years) far clearer than any of the readings. Maybe this is a sign?
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,365
    Probably because the propers remain (for the most part) a memorable one year cycle.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,703
    I also find the Proper Readings memorable, I just need to hear the first few lines in Latin and I can remember which it is.
    Thanked by 1jchthys
  • Felipe Gasper
    Posts: 804
    The Propers are also memorable because they have given melodies, which many of us learn to sing.

    The RP is a weird animal: a huge body of texts given without even suggested musical settings. Almost as though the people who came up with it weren’t much interested in music …
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,148
    Almost as though the people who came up with it weren’t much interested in music …
    Precisely.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw M. Jackson Osborn
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Felipe,

    "RP" = Responsorial Psalm? It would be highly ironic that the one part of the Old Testament unambiguously intended to be sung is the one part which is least provided music in the new format?
    Thanked by 1Paul F. Ford
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,940
    "Almost as though the people who came up with it weren’t much interested in music"

    Well, it's not *just* the people "who came up with it". The deeper roots are perhaps in an age-old conception of the Missal as the priest's book, as it were, and it's doubtful that most priests in parish trenches of any recent age were inclined to think of music as a normatively active dimension of offering what's in the Missal in the ordinary course. And that carried over into the creation of the Lectionary as derivative from the Missal. So, on the demand-side, you didn't have priests clamoring to have editions that expected these things to be sung. (One of the great problems of the transition is that, while the idea of priestly chanting was notionally prioritized by 1967, when the rubber hit the road few were willing to undertake the clerical culture change it would have required, let alone the expectations of the people in the pews. It's easier to change books than people. What was reaped in the transition was at least partly sown long before the transition.)
    Thanked by 2jchthys Paul F. Ford
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