financial gifts to any parish program need to be part of the pastor’s vision for parish fundraising. If you are approaching donors for musical items, you need to make sure it is ok with the pastor, because often he is approaching the same givers for other (he may seem more essential) giving goals.

The only reason to establish a choir as a separate charitable entity, is if the choir is completely separate from a parish and is not part of the pastoral mission of the parish’s pastor. (All aspects of parish life flow from the pastoral ministry of the parish pastor)

I’m not saying I like the system, I just encounter a lot of musicians who don’t seem to understand that basically the priest is their patron, and their ministry is an extension of his ministry. If he doesn’t think your music is furthering his goals, then there is going to be friction.
However with priests being moved so often, it seems to me that it might be better to have a parish run by a lay society of sorts (much like a Renaissance chapel) in order to have stability. (Our CYO basketball programs have better stability than parish music programs.)
The problem is with the Spirit of Vatican II still in the air, you’re liable to end up with all sorts of wacko ideas from lay people.

The Schola Cantorum of St. Peter’s in the Loop (Chicago) did this and changed the name slightly. The history of this is sketchy, but it had to do with change of leadership of the parish and the choir wishing to preserve their work and identity.

...but it's still a liturgical abuse to yank the assembly around by changing the musical setting of the Mass ordinary every Sunday.

The congregation isn't singing any of this, so I'm not sure how it would create whiplash. Frankly, I'm not sure how it would be anything short of heavenly getting to experience sacred music at such a high level on a weekly basis. I'd imagine the folks who attend Mass here do not expect singalongs, and therefore aren't bothered by a more internal participation in the Mass.

An entirely Gregorian Mass with the people helping to sing the ordinaries is a beautiful and wonderful thing, and probably my personal favorite way to do things. But let's not let that be the enemy of beautiful symphonic liturgy, especially in a world so lacking in liturgical beauty. Also, let's not pretend that it was ever the case historically until perhaps the last century/century-and-a-half.

It's debatable whether such symphony Masses were intended to be used in actual worship.

Mark might be wishing to debate the meaning of 'actual' and 'worship', but let's not dispute facts, please.

May we have a raspberry button as well as a thank button?

Yeah. I don’t personally love it every Sunday but the Twin Cities has pretty much every option available. Trad, conservative/reverent NO, guitar and worse…

Also, I resent in a particular way the insinuation of concert showmanship given who the pastor of St Agnes was for so many years (Msgr. Schuler of course). I certainly know non-Catholics who want to work in a parish and do this who don’t get it, and who would be guilty of the charge, but St Agnes isn’t just because they sing these great settings and rotate weekly.

If we are going to go there, however, some of the music for Masses in these large churches line the cathedral of Saint Paul or its twin basilica Saint Mary’s is not only not my cup of tea, it is not friendly to the congregation, even if it is well-executed in a way and is not intended to be concert-like… but it’s in English and sung by a soloist or a choir where the people can theoretically join at some point.

It is not especially serious and is otherwise worth ignoring the charge that this is as bad as clown Masses. It’s obviously not the case that something in the tradition is as bad as a clown Mass, but we need to point it out, because people apparently hold this seriously without a hint of irony. I would say the same about Steubenville music, at least the acoustic kind without drums (they used the Mass of Renewal when I was an undergrad at the main Mass and for most all-university Masses). But I prefer that and don’t think that it’s even of the same kind of problem, not just of the same degree of gravity.

Lest we doubt that the Austrian masses were meant to be liturgical, Erick Arenas did a great episode of the Square Notes podcast. (I very much enjoyed meeting him last year, and I was thrilled to hear him talk about one of his areas of expertise.)

Also, I agree with Trenton about my preference; it’s clear by now how committed I am to the Laus in ecclesia democratization of chant for it to be otherwise. But St Agnes has made this their thing. I don’t begrudge them.

To hell with settings of the ordinary by Palestrina, Byrd, Victoria, etc. I guess. Not real liturgy, you know? What an absolutely ridiculous assertion.

But essentially that is the liturgical music proposition of VII, correct? That regardless of the musical language (traditional, contemporary, chant, sacro-pop) the music must be functional, not art.

And lest anyone posit that Gregorian chant is art, notice that the gradual and Kyriale are basically DOA, and “chant” consists of the Roman Missal and vernacular simplifications a la Bartlett. Pretty maybe, sacred maybe, but certainly not art in the manner of the neumatic chants of the gradual and missal.

Burchard’s real job was MC for curial Masses, and especially those of the pope, so I’m not entirely sure how that computes.

And that’s not really accurate — the post-Tridentine liturgy is based on the pontifical rite. The Caeremoniale is a source of rubrics that does come later, but it explains a lot of things that you’d just have to know otherwise, which aren’t in the missal.

It may be true that they decided to also normalize quiet recitation of the propers, readings, and ordinary. Fine. It doesn’t detract from the primary liturgical action being that of the choir or minister.

MatthewRoth here is how

The work that was to become decisive for the further development of the ritual shape of the Roman Mass was the Ordo Missae of Johann Burchard. The first edition of 1496 is presented as an “Order to be observed by a priest in the celebration of Mass without chant and without ministers according to the rite of the holy Roman church,” which is compiled for the purpose of “the instruction of newly ordained priests.”[5] The scope of the second edition, printed in 1502 with a letter of approval from Pope Alexander VI, is much broader than its predecessor: Burchard insists that its ceremonial instructions also apply to cardinals and prelates, including the Supreme Pontiff, when they celebrate Mass not pontifically but in private.
Father Uwe Michael Lang https://adoremus.org/2022/04/the-rite-of-mass-at-the-eve-of-the-protestant-reformation-a-short-history-of-the-roman-rite-of-mass-part-xv/

But also, I just… disagree with Lang, who hedges his assessment in the next part anyway (that irritates me: he should commit to this idea). It’s the low Mass where you need the most instruction (like how to do things when someone else isn’t there to do them).

And I’d just point out that before the eighteenth century, there was no official way to do Holy Week, Ash Wednesday, and Candlemas in small churches, yet in that same period we also got the official Caeremoniale Episcoporum, which is a source of rubrics. I don’t think it especially relevant that it took about 150 years to get this; people focus on how the Congregation of Rites was a bad thing, because of the centralization, or how the Jesuits never praying in common was bad, glossing over that the solemn liturgy was still normal and that the Jesuits prayed in the choirs of other churches closer to the place of their apostolic work.

Lang doesn’t even mention the CE in his Adoremus series. That is a giant lacuna.

@MarkB

The Twin Cities Catholic Chorale is the “gold standard” of a weekly church choir localized in a single parish operating as a financially independent nonprofit entity, both in terms of the scale of program it funds and its longevity.

Whether the music program it executes is a “gold standard” is an independent question, and was very obviously not what I was talking about as it is not the topic of this thread.

I will say only this to what I considered to be unsolicited, unwarranted, and ultimately unfounded allegations about the program’s aims and means — Msgr Schuler was, to all accounts, a musician of refined taste and a priest of exceptional devotion to God and the welfare of his parish. These two things not only can coexist but very naturally ought to coexist.

His rationale in founding the Chorale was his conviction that such music should happen neither nowhere, nor everywhere, that is to say, somewhere. Because he had the personal gifts and conviction to make that “somewhere” where he was, he did so.

Based on the fruits in that place, which are immense, I trust his pastoral zeal and judgment were not misplaced.

In offering these performances, they draw singers away from smaller parishes where what may be respectable music programs suffer because of it. I don't know their motives and offer no condemnation of them apart from the damage to a number of parishes in a fairly wide geographic area.

If indeed those singers would volunteer in these other parishes. Or that those parishes would have them. Our (commuter) parish has a family that, helped by an associate priest, also built a robust chant schola at their geographically proximate parish to sing a hitherto music-free daily Mass on a monthly or bimonthly basis, because they felt it was remiss to neglect the local church in their town completely. They built a great program and a stable congregation that were fed by it.

The new pastor kicked them out within weeks of his arriving.

Many people go to these places to sing because they take joy and want to sing the kind of repertoire can be sung in a stable, robust program, rather than fighting at their local parish to sing a Simple English Proper rather than Here I Am, Lord one Sunday out of 24. It’s deeply unfair to expect laymen and women working in the world to willingly take up arms in the worship wars after hours, rather than simply joining an excellent choir, enriching their lives with the ability to sing excellent liturgical music.

Also, in being involved with such programs, I have discovered a “fellow-travelers” phenomenon… People will join an established program for a while, take a break from the combat in the trenches, gain a vision of what is possible in musical liturgy and the kind of musical and vocal growth that is only really possible in establishments where standards are high, and repertoire is rich, and then take this vision and those skills back to more local churches.

Choirmasters and pastors get so possessive of “their people.” I actually tend to have the opposite instinct. Almost everywhere I’ve been, I’ve really wished that all of the outstanding musicians in our region could really just be in one gigantic basilica, rather than working in different parishes. With the music we could do, it would be worth the commute, and settling for the title of Fourth Assistant Organist to the Third Assistant Director of Music!

So when this happens in microcosm, when people begin to realize, in a sea of vastly indifferent pastors and music directors, that this parish, that this priest, that this choirmaster value and are willing to give the resources necessary to do outstanding music on a weekly basis, and this begins to have a gravitational attraction on like-minded people, I hardly resent it. It means that the quality of music in these places continues to grow, and these programs serve, more and more, as resources for the region, as sources of education and inspiration.

As another example, a local children’s choir was founded at a particular parish on the instigation of an exceptional pastor, teaching children plainsong and other authentically Catholic music. The pastor changed, however, and this choir found itself unwelcome in its home parish. Thankfully, however, they were able to re-home the choir In the archdiocesan Cathedral, where there is a robust music program that is able to support them and value them, giving the kids material support, the venue, the collaborative an educational opportunities that will take them to the next level, and help bring up a new generation of excellent church musicians.

It’s not really a question of snobs going to the most highbrow place they can find, robbing their own parishes of their talents. It is often reflective of a way more complex, and unfortunately, way darker reality about the state of parish music.

I do believe that many of the orchestra masses were performed at Mass for special occasions, but certainly not on a regular basis.

Erick Arenas is the expert, but they absolutely were, it's just that the music was not as elaborate if the dean of the chapter was celebrating versus the bishop — who may even be absent — and it was even less so when a member of the chapter taking his turn as hebdomadarius. The masses were scaled up or down accordingly, although it's perhaps more accurate to say that they were actually different compositions. So you'd have a larger or smaller orchestra depending on the occasion, the bishop would lead to the presence of percussion, and so on.

They weren't composing for the score of these masses to sit in a drawer.