English Ordinaries - revised Order of Mass
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    Actually, Our Lady of Suburbia's Family Mass has a contemporary choir up in front, and nobody really sings along with them. But they can't hear the silence in the pews, and the music director is too busy playing piano to be able to tell. :)

    See, here's the real truth. All English-language sung Masses in the US are really choir or cantor Masses, except maybe the old ones derived from chant.

    There's often very little in the way of congregational singing along at parishes supposedly trying to encourage it, and settings that are supposedly written "for the people" are often the least sung. People will sing the Gloria if they like it; if not, they'll just listen. Same thing with all the other Ordinaries. People will also decide not to sing if they decide they'd rather listen to the singer than sing along. If the music is complicated and they like singing it, they will. If the music is simple and they don't like singing it, they won't. It's pretty much the only real freedom of expression that Catholic congregations have - to sing or not sing; so the wise music director or cantor doesn't hold any expectations or assumptions that anybody at all is going to join in. If you bear in mind that any week, everybody may suddenly seem to have laryngitis for whatever reason or no reason, you will never have hurt feelings. (And often, when the people are being unusually quiet and subdued, it's because they're praying too deeply to remember to join in. So it's not like it's necessarily a bad sign; it can be a sign of contemplativeness.)

    (Although Tolkien chose the "sing along loudly and obnoxiously in Latin" option, which works really well when you've composed a spontaneous harmony part. Not that I'm suggesting you should ever do this, because Mass is sacred, but it might be fun at one of those pre-Mass forced songlearning sessions, if the song is truly terrible.)

    So basically, if you are writing good Masses for choir, that doesn't make you some kind of evil un-American social pariah. You're writing Masses for choir, and anybody who wants a Mass for choir will be interested. And that is everyone. Making them complex (or rather, admitting you're writing something complex, instead of just stiffing the basses and the altos with something crazy and unsingable, like most composers do) just tightens your musical marketing focus a bit.

    Also, it's live things that go against the stream, and all Christians are strangers and aliens in this world. You are experiencing perfectly normal technical difficulties. Do not adjust your set. :)
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    This is one of those things where I have to continually remind myself that my own experience is somewhat unique. I grew up in a singing parish. The repertoire was pretty typical of mid-to-late 90s pop/folk Mass stuff. People sang it. Every now and then we'd do more traditional stuff (Pange Lingua on Holy Thursday every year, for example)- people sang that too. People came an hour early before Midnight Mass to sing carols. We did Taize services on Fridays during Lent. People sang. Daily Mass, with no "musicians" present- the (mostly old) folks sang. I'm told that when they introduced a Gregorian Agnus Dei last year (Mass XVIII? the one everybody knows) they all sang that. You should have heard the singing at my wedding!

    I was introduced to the Daily Office, and chant, at a retreat center run by Franciscans. I was a tag-along with my mother on several occasional while she was taking classes there. Wildly different music than at my home parish and... all the people were singing!

    I grew up assuming people just sang at Church, so "the people will sing this or not" never really entered my mind as a requisite for choosing either styles or specific pieces.


    I have to say, I have since learned I was in a unique place, at perhaps a unique time. My experience since then has been hit-or-miss in regards to congregational singing.
    But: Simple chant in the vernacular seems never to go unsung, which is why I'm a big fan of the ICEL Chants for the new Ordinary.
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,051
    Thanks for the words of comfort.
    "instead of just stiffing the basses and the altos with something crazy and unsingable" LOL, Maureen! Not me, I hope...I try to give my altos lovely singable lines, because it is very nice to be loved by altos...even if nowadays it must be Platonic. ;-) Though yeah, when I was in high school (before I started copying "the Byrd's" licks) I would write inner parts that would meander chromatically within the range of a major 3rd.
  • incantuincantu
    Posts: 989
    There's nothing wrong with writing a Mass for concert performance or for occasional use in the liturgy. There may also be Masses where the choir makes up most or all of the congregation (such as at the CMAA Colloquium) where the singing of a complete ordinary would not preclude the people's participation in the singing. Individual movements may always be used at different Masses. What is prohibited is all choir all of the time.

    Having said that, I still think composers would serve the Church better by writing high quality settings that may be performed with or without a choir, with or without an organist. And I personally would avoid simply adding choir "parts" to an otherwise congregational setting. In my personal experience I find this does little to add to the beauty of a performance (even possibly confusing the congregation), and that the best choral music is that which is written in a truly choral idiom. Exceptions, of course, do exist.
Add a Comment