Hymn Melodies for the Entire Year for the Sarum Rite
  • No, I do not know why the link appears under the frog.
  • Thank you, Noel, for this link.
  • Thank you, Noel, for sharing this invaluable source. I have been trying for years to get a copy of this book.
  • In my quest I found this and did not understand it. However, seeing that it uses the same melodies with different texts makes sense.

    The constant bombardment of different songs for the congregation to sing is one reason people do not sing.

    And, the tying of melodies to text in people's minds....Adeste Fideles for example...so that the other texts that were once sung on other seasons are no longer acceptable is sad.

    I have just prepared Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All to the Jesu Dulcis melody.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    "The constant bombardment of different songs for the congregation to sing is one reason people do not sing."

    With respect, Noel, is this much different from Bp. Trautmann saying that the new translation is too hard because of words like "ineffable"? I don't see any difference between that and saying people shouldn't be asked to know more than 50 metrically symmetrical diatonic tunes.

    Then again, I admire any attempt to rid congregations of the sappy Lambilotte tune to "Jesus My Lord".
  • Gavin,

    People stand mute in the Catholic Church, not when asked to speak, but when asked to sing. After being bombarded with really bad music with lyrics that change the melodies one every verse...and then the fact that people who read music find that the rhythms being sung do not match what is on the page...

    And, I suggest that modal tunes should predominate. Avoid the melodic patterns that are common in popular music.

    Establish a basic repertoire that repeats for the people.

    Establish a more difficult repertoire for a choir.

    Establish an even more difficult repertoire for scholas.

    Challenge people based on their individual levels rather than making everything "congregational-friendly".

    People are not expected to use the word ineffable. Priests are. But I see it and hear it more and more...so it can grow on people.

    Establish Jubilate Deo as the goal for the congregation. Establish an equal English Plainsong along side of it.
  • Again, here is that outlandish, preposterous, assumption that Catholics, unlike Protestants, have not the intelligence to learn a respectably wide variety of liturgically appropriate hymnody, some of it not easy. This is another shiboleth that needs burying. People today are literate! They are not like the populace of the 3rd, 15th, or 19th centuries who could only come to mass and repeat a simple antiphon or respond that had been sung out to them. They are capable of much more than their counterparts of times past. This is aside from the issue of propers vs. hymns or propers AND hymns. The time to start remedying this situation is right now! - so that 25 years from now no one will be able to say 'Catholics can't do this because they don't have the experience and tradition for it that Protestants do'. Do you or do you not want your people to sing well? If the answer is yes, then put aside the naysayers and get on with the hard work of systematically teaching them. Some who are prone to grumble will grumble and throw stones in your path, but when it is over they will be glad of their accomplishment. Of course, there IS the quite valid question of the propriety of hymns in the Roman Rite mass. So, insistently teach your people to sing Orbis factor or Cum jubilo, etc. instead of the tired old missa primitiva for advent, lent, and requiems. Teach these in English and Latin. Fr Columba has very fine English adaptations of these, as do a number of Anglican sources. People singing well with heartfelt enthusiasm and love is not ultimately Protestant or Catholic: it is simply human. People who can't or won't sing have not been taught, or, have actually been repressed. As our Holy Father Benedict has said: 'When man comes into contact with God mere speech is not enough'.
  • G
    Posts: 1,397
    is this much different from Bp. Trautmann saying that the new translation is too hard because of words like "ineffable"?


    Yes.

    It is much different.
    Liturgical texts become, (more or less,) fixed.
    The next time the day for which a collect with the word "ineffable" in it comes up in the rotation, there the word will be again, in the same collect.

    But the next time the day comes up the MD or LitCom, as it stands now, is likely to say -- let's do something different! here's a catchy new tune! or I'm tired of that, how about....?

    Choirs are constantly complaining about begin tired of something before most of the congregation has even cuaght on.

    This is because we have reversed the musical responsibilites from their proper assignment.

    (Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
  • "Again, here is that outlandish, preposterous, assumption that Catholics, unlike Protestants, have not the intelligence to learn a respectably wide variety of liturgically appropriate hymnody, some of it not easy."

    I am tiring of the haughty attitudes.

    It is not the people. Take your average Catholic organist, plop them down at a well-appointed organ in a Presbyterian church.

    Listen to the people stumble through the hymns.

    The musical leadership in the Catholic church is why the people will not sing, not any failure of the people as you seem to think that I was talking about. Without decent organs, strong playing, a choir of 30-50 voices singing, all to support the singing of the people, even protestants will not sing.

    Aside from the fact that ir is not a tradition of the Church.

    MD, cantors and choir members who always want something different kill the music in the pews.
  • There was no haughty attitude. All that one can read into my comments is quite complimentary about what Catholics are capable of. We should begin now talking (and showing!) about what Catholics too can do, not what they can't do that Protestants can. When people hear often enough that they can't do something they will begin erroneously to believe it. And, you are right: there is a lamentable lack of qualified leadership on the one hand, and a haughty coterie of entrenched junk musicians on the other who don't want anything beyond their pitiful repertory taught to the people because they wouldn't then know what to do with themselves.
  • Since chant is composed to a strict list of rules and has a tradition of recycling melodic fragments rather than continually expanding the melodic and harmonic forms as modern hymns do, chant, if pursued beyond a simple sanctus and agnus dei, becomes more and more familiar as more and melodies are learned.

    This creates a modal melodic memory bank for singers and listeners of music that is more alike than different.
  • smvanroodesmvanroode
    Posts: 967
    Somehow, there is no preview of this book available for me in Google Books. If someone experiences the same problem, the book is also available at Internet Archive.
  • I think that this is because there are multiple copies available through GB...and some of them are limited or no preview, as they expect us to pay....
  • " Again, here is that outlandish, preposterous, assumption that Catholics, unlike Protestants, have not the intelligence to learn a respectably wide variety of liturgically appropriate hymnody, some of it not easy. This is another shiboleth that needs burying"

    Impossible to bury something that is so visible when Masses are broadcast over TV....and people, masses of people, are standing there mute.

    If every act that is performed during Mass feeds one's soul, I envision withered souls as musicians fail to create music programs that make people want to sing.
  • That they may be standing there mute on or off TV is testimony only of their boredom - not of their intelligence, capability, or potential. Yes, I repeat, this shiboleth needs to be buried along with the musical rubish to which they have become inured. The cure is good music and expert pedagogy. (I suspect that, underneath all this, we are relatively close to one mindedness.)
  • Abandoning the concept that all Masses on the weekend should be identical is the first step. One many parishes are unwilling to take. For them it's ineffable and makes them vituperative if challenged.
  • Donnaswan
    Posts: 585
    'Ineffable' is one of my favorite words and has been for years and years. Just the way it looks on the page in a beautiful font gives me a lift, never mind saying the word itself.
    (I also like the sound of the word 'vituperative'. there seems to be a little of that on this posting :)

    Donna