I would be careful with this approach. I can't tell you how many times after playing "Amazing Grace" I hear "That sounds like a funeral," even though it is not a piece of funeral music. You don't want to start singing Gloria de angelis during Easter and have someone say it sounds like Lent. If we really have a sense of the rhythm of the liturgical year and its music, we will say "The Gloria is back! It must be Easter."

I always use a Latin chant mass during Lent, and have done so for several years. No one has ever objected. However, I don't run it in the ground. Come Easter, we do something else, then switch to the Schubert mass for the summer. For Advent, I use the People's Mass, which I remember as one of the earliest English masses after Vatican II.

All I know is that, during Lent at my home parish, all the ordinaries are changed into more minor-sounding keys, although we might still do the Sunday tone rotation of propers... I'm not sure.

What a happy coincidence for both Dr. Ford and his seminarians! And I support chant in all languages because I've seen it work in the Eastern Church. And I'm mad for the Ambrosian Gloria.

And it is true that a solution to the "oh no, it must be Lent because they're dragging their way through the chant again" is chant scattered around through the rest of the year. It doesn't have to be a chant ordinary. Sing an office hymn. Consider a fine example of chant for the equivalent of a motet at the offertory. Since a chant with an ison or a judicious addition of organum (note the word "judicious").

Now going off to consult By Flowing Waters (BFW for the non-cognoscenti).

Sarcasm alert!
You've been warned.

I say Lent's the time for polyphonic Propers and Ordinaries. Unencumber your faithful from the burdens of FCAP (they'll thank you for it, besides) and clothe those "bare, ruined choirs" in aural piety (and irony.)

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programs.....

"give our stumble....ings directions......

Michael: It wasn't until recently that I began to hear it myself. This Sunday's OF Communion (Comédite pínguia) is a great example.

Others off the top of my head are:

- Tract: Qui hábitant — though this may just be me attaching something to what is, objectively speaking, a glorified psalm tone
- The Good Friday Reproaches
- Alleluia: Pascha nostrum — I tell people that the highest note in the entire Gregorian repertory is found in the "immolátus" of the verse; I haven't verified it, but it may as well be. Moreover, I view this Gregorian setting of this verse as an indictment on the exclusively community-meal approach to the Mass.
- Offertory: Iubiláte Deo (mode I)
- Offertory: Precátus est Móyses
- Communion: Dicit Dóminus: Impléte hydrias

Here's a language-based take on the Advent/Lent music selection issue, one that will largely be eliminated wit the new translation.

GC should never be exclusive to the penitential seasons. My approach to introducing chant is based on the feasts and holy days and solemn celebrations. The PBC does this very well. If you sing all of it's content (beside the Ordinary), you will have a nice inclusion of chant throughout the entire liturgical year.

I find it ever challenging that some priests are comfortable delivering homilies that people do not like and yet some of these same priests bow to what the congregation wants in the way of music. There are too many people uninterested and unwilling to make music in the Catholic church Catholic and rather do music that you can find in any protestant church.

I also am disheartened by non-Roman Catholics who take a job in a Catholic church and do not make it a truly Catholic music program. These same people back in their home parishes, whatever they might be, would never expect to sing a Kyrie, the Offertory Verse, Gregorian Chant, Ave Maria just as they would not insist on a Holy Water font at the door, Eucharistic Ministers, altar boys and so on. [except for a few high church episcopals and lutherans, and those parishes are few and far between]

Yes, they can easily create an NPM music program with their background, but not a Catholic music program.

The argument here should not be whether chant should be sung in Lent...rather it should be should hymns be sung instead of chant.

This incursion of secular music styles and vernacular songs has happened over and over again in the church and then been eliminated. Why can't the church learn from its history?

It's like CharlesW's strong plan to only sing a few hymns so the people know them and will sing them. I was involved in a liturgy planning meeting recently when Behold the Wood was picked for Mass because it matched the reading and the choir liked it when they sang it. No consideration for whether the people would know it well enough to sing it....and we wonder WHY people don't sing.

To make this even worse, I failed to bring this up like I should have because I, too, am too used to the status quo of ignoring the necessity of encouraging rather than discouraging the congregation from singing.

They are standing there silent because they do not want to sing. At Guitar Masses and Organ Masses...they do not want to sing.

How stupid do we look for ignoring their silence and continuing to do what we want to do.

Especially when the Agnus Dei is chanted more strongly week after week.