I've got a question for those of you involved in Ordinariate music. The "pascha nostrum" at the fractions, as written in the missal, does not resolve musically when the word "alleluia" is removed from it during Lent/requiems/etc. This has the doubly negative result of being both musically awkward and also putting the people in a position where they're likely to tack on "alleluia" out of habit when they ought not to.
How is this dealt with, in your experience? Our priest simply ad libs it on two pitches, which nicely solves the issues mentioned above. I'm curious what others do or hear in other Ordinariate parishes.
I think having two tones easily distinguishable is the way to go - the missal tone for most of the year and a "non-Alleluia" tone for pre-Lent/Lent/Requiems.
Interesting that you picked up on that. And it has me to thinking that this is not fundamentally a memory problem -
You are right - the Lenten version does end musically inconclusively, and your mentioning of it makes me think that some few people seem instinctively (with several lone voices) to adding 'alleluia' when they shouldn't. It seems natural to add 'alleluia' because the ending does sound musically incomplete without it. Too late do they realise their unfortunate error: before they have finished the second syllable when all is silent except for them.
Well - come Easter time all will be resolved and all our joys again can know no bounds.
(Too bad we didn't bury the Alleluia at Walsingham this year!)
I've always wondered about it's inclusion, since it's got a pretty short lineage as part of the "Anglican Patrimony." I believe the Episcopal Church's '79 was the first BCP it appeared in, and it was not picked up by other Anglican provinces. It does seem to echo the 1549 BCP's "Christ our Pascall lambe is offred up for us, once for al, when he bare our sinnes on hys body upon the crosse, for he is the very lambe of God, that taketh away the sines of the worlde: wherfore let us kepe a joyfull and holy feast with the Lorde" (which I figure was meant to remind people of the "Ecce Agnus Dei"), but that only lasted for a couple of years.
Members of the Ordinariate seems quite happy with their liturgy, and I'm happy that they are happy, but it has always struck me as something of a mishmash, almost the definition of "manufactured liturgy." Jackson's remark about the "fingers in the pie" seems very on point.
It is certainly a mishmash. I do still prefer it over the Novus Ordo, though, because it's at least a mishmash that attempted to maintain continuity with tradition, however manufactured it might be. The same cannot be said for the New Mass. But I digress. Yes, there are certainly things in the Ordinariate missal I'd tweak or eliminate if I were calling the shots.
My principal objection is that the 'confiteor' occurs between the pro-anaphora and the anaphora, after the Creed. This breaks the sense of continuity, the flow, of ritual rhythm. Without fail I feel that 'we should have done this already'. It would have been much better to have placed it at the beginning of the mass. The 79 BCP allows for it to be at either place. I wish, though that they had made the other choice. One is grateful most of all for our hieratic Old Church English!
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