Rethinking the mediating steps
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    For a long time a question that has intrigued me has been this: what are the steps by which we can trace our way to excellent liturgical music?

    In my own parish setting the steps have included one weekly Mass with a Gregorian ordinary and Englished (Kelly) propers, more use of polyphony at the high Mass, and a much quieter English ordinary (Mass of St. Agnes) at all the other Masses.

    However, as Ken Canedo's podcasts demonstrate, most of these steps simply reverse the steps of the 60s, when the ordinary and propers were Englished, but in chant style.

    Call me suspicious, but I tend to think that after a revolution, reversing one steps is actually not the most direct path home. Something more drastic is probably called for.

    Just thinking out loud...
  • RobertRobert
    Posts: 343
    Was the Fitzpatrick plainsong Mass featured on the Canedo podcast ever widely used in the liturgy? I get the impression that it was not; it sounds as though it was intended as a demonstration of what vernacular liturgy might sound like, in the days before vernacular liturgy. It may have been popular as a sound recording or a type of concert/ workshop, but was it ever more than theoretical? By the time the permission for the vernacular had been extended, it sounds as though folk songs at Low Mass were well established, and this, rather than an Englished High Mass, became the chosen path.

    When the new translations are launched, I believe it will be important to get behind the ICEL adaptations of Gloria XV, Credo I, etc. that are to be presented as the first option in missalettes and hymnals. If these versions can manage to work their way into people's memory, this will be a big step forward and an opportunity to finally get it right.

    My fear, though, is that "Mass of Creation Rebooted" is already in preparation and ready for blanket dissemination...
  • Aristotle EsguerraAristotle Esguerra
    Posts: 1,185
    "My fear, though, is that "Mass of Creation Rebooted" is already in preparation and ready for blanket dissemination..."

    Fear not; robust recordings of the ICEL adaptations are loaded and locked; when the time comes, they will be deployed.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    They need to be deployed widely and swiftly. I advocate that every CMAA musician take a good few week's leave when the new translation comes, and visit every parish he/she can, dropping off with the chief musician sheet music for all the chants, accompaniment to the same, and a CD of it being sung. I'll get on it with every Saturday Mass I can find.
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