Seeking "Gloria" tune advice for new "Mass at the Manger"
  • anthonyc45
    Posts: 2
    Hello everyone,
    I am a recent Music Education graduate from The Catholic University of America (voice emphasis), and I am currently working on my first attempt at composing/arranging a full Mass Ordinary. I have named the setting "Mass at the Manger", because each part of the Mass is based off of traditional Christmas carol tunes.
    I am writing this in Noteflight as a vocal-only score (unison, choir, and cantor/assembly). Because these are universally known traditional carols, I am explicitly leaving out accompaniment parts and keyboard chords for my own sanity, assuming that any parish musicians programming this would easily know the standard harmonic frameworks for these tunes.
    I’ve finalized the rest of the Ordinary, ensuring it is strictly liturgically licit and flows naturally for the voice:
    Kyrie: Coventry Carol (Cantor/Assembly dialogue)
    Gospel Acclamation: Gaudete, Christus est natus (The only part of the Mass keeping the original 4-part polyphony)
    Sanctus: Adeste Fideles (Unison assembly)
    Memorial Acclamations / Doxology / Great Amen: Sussex Carol (Unison assembly without repeats for the Memorial Acclamations; the priest sings the whole tune without repeats for the Doxology, and the Great Amen takes the tune from where people sing "Glory to God and peace to men, now and evermore, Amen" in the original tune)
    Agnus Dei: Once in Royal David's City (Unison assembly)
    The Predicament:
    I am completely stuck on finding a traditional carol tune for the Gloria. Because I am committed to a strictly verbatim text setting, fitting the irregular prose to a strophic carol is proving incredibly challenging. I recently tried adapting The First Noel and The Holly and the Ivy, but the text-to-music mapping felt too forced and unnatural, so I've scrapped them.
    Constraints & Off-Limit Tunes:
    To keep this setting completely original and distinct, the following tunes are off-limits:
    Antioch ("Joy to the World"): To avoid duplicating or plagiarizing Kevin Keil’s Mass of Comfort and Joy.
    In Dulci Jubilo: Also heavily featured in the Mass of Comfort and Joy, and a tune with which I am not at all familiar.
    Angels We Have Heard on High: A local Boston shrine (St. Anthony Shrine) already utilizes this refrain in a prominent holiday mashup, so I want to step away from it.

    The Gloria needs to stay within a unison assembly or cantor/assembly framework. I am entirely open to a refrain-and-verse structure if a carol chorus can cleanly match the opening “Glory to God in the highest...” line. As a first-time composer, I would love to hear your perspectives, structural advice, or tune suggestions that might provide the right musical flexibility for the Roman Missal prose.

    Thank you in advance for your insights!
  • SponsaChristi
    Posts: 851
    Honestly? Just. Don’t. This whole thing has been done before. It comes off as very cringe in the pews.

    Why not try to compose something original?
    Thanked by 1LauraKaz
  • anthonyc45
    Posts: 2
    Thank you for the perspective, but the entire artistic and pastoral goal of "Mass at the Manger" is specifically to use familiar, well-loved traditional carols to encourage immediate assembly participation during Christmastime.

    As for writing something completely original: I have literally never tried composing before. While I was at Catholic University, I seriously considered taking composition lessons as a MUPI (Music-Private Instruction) elective to learn the craft. However, early scheduling conflicts in the composition department, along with my heavy course load in later semesters as a Music Education major, kept me from fitting it into my schedule.

    This project is my first step into arranging and composing, using my background as a vocalist to focus on text mapping and accessible vocal lines. Because the rest of the Ordinary has come together beautifully and without errors that would prevent it from being licitly programmed for a Mass, I am committed to finding a solution for the Gloria.
    I am still very eager to hear any constructive structural suggestions or tune ideas that could help bridge the prose text with a traditional carol melody.
  • SponsaChristi
    Posts: 851
    Thank you for the perspective, but the entire artistic and pastoral goal of "Mass at the Manger" is specifically to use familiar, well-loved traditional carols to encourage immediate assembly participation during Christmastime.

    As someone who’s parish’s MD tried this sort of thing last year, it’s not going to have the effect you think it will.

    A) You can’t change the text at all, and it’s not metered, so you have to try to make it fit into pre-written metered carols. The only way to do that is to change parts of the music, making it unfamiliar and awkwardly clunky

    B) It’s extremely difficult to sing different lyrics from memory to a piece of music that you’re used to singing different lyrics to

    C) It sounds cringy and it’s extremely difficult to sing when you’re trying to hide the cringe face you’re making while trying not laugh

    Thanked by 1probe
  • probe
    Posts: 249
    You want to find a traditional carol tune for the Gloria.
    I agree with Sponsa's (A) point. I have tried and failed to set speech rhythms to metrical tunes. I have mentally tried the Kyriale you have already done and if they work, hats off to you.

    Why not use the Gloria VIII chant we all know and many of the congregation must have heard from their youth? There are others, eg XV is a few seconds shorter, but I have not tried them and would not if the goal is congregational familiarity.
    BTW just because a carol has been reused by other composers doesn't mean you can't use it too as a carol. In Dulci Jubilo is a lovely rocking tune, very popular, all you have to do is find a place for it, maybe after Mass?


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