Average parish choir knew more than one Chant setting of the Mass and sang it and propers by Rossini every Sunday as the High Mass, Usually accompanied. Often by male choir. While I am sure that there were some choral settings sung in larger cities with $ and a talent pool, most parishes were happy to sing the ord and prop.

Low Mass on Sunday might have a women's choir singing Latin motets from the St. Gregory Hymnal.

Other Low Masses might conclude with a hymn after mass, organ played during offertory and communion.

Daily High Masses were very common, in the late 50's some young priests pushed for unaccompanied during Lent.

No one should assume anything about things "back then" - for example, the organist before me practiced on the 4 rk Robert Morton Theater Organ in the parish and on the RT Hammond he had at home (32 pedals), got into Juilliard and is now DOM at the Brooklyn Cathedral - after being in braces from polio as a child.

The nice thing about chant is that any parish could sing it and master it. While protestant churches struggled through music both good and bad.

Congregation could sing Holy God, Come Holy Ghost, Immaculate Mary, Hail Holy Queen and....that was about it.

Congregation NEVER sang the ordinary. Though someone will say that they know a church that did and it may well be possible that they did. But you'd have about as much chance as dropping in for Mass when traveling and hearing a Latin Mass today. We know they exist, but not at a place and time that normal people might wander in!

Sorry to be pesky here, but… if the choir sang everything and the congregation never sang the ordinary, then what's the origin, really, of the idea that the "Kyriale" is for the people and the "Graduale" is for the schola? Was that always just an ideal?

If so, then it seems that the Vatican II notion of "full, conscious, and active participation" was well-placed, indeed, even if the subsequent manner of implementation was really far off the mark.

At that time, there was little available for the average parish musician to study, aside from the Black List/White List and other things produced by the publishers, which were minimal, so at our parish we had no idea the people were expected/allowed/invited to sing the ordinary!

Being young, we devoured what little we had to understand what our role was, and would have caught this and questioned this - not sure that the pastor would have gone along with it, though his assistants would have.

Truly buried treasure.

i have it on good authority that many parishes sang with gusto Masses i, ii, iv, v, ix, xi, xviii and credo i, ii, and iii

Should I have titled it something like "interconciliar" — ? ;)

Noel, the phenomenon you are describing (city-hick) illuminates problems with the original question. There is so much conflicting data that drawing general conclusions would be difficult.

I can say that, in the course of living in suburban Chicago, northern Utah, and southern Georgia before 1964, I never once heard a MIssa Cantata. Straight Low Masses and 4 hymn sandwiches.

We have no data. We're trying to extrapolate from anecdotal evidence.

Steve, I think you really hit the nail on the head. The kaleidoscopic picture Day paints melds with recent historical research. American Catholicism has always been ethnically and, hence, liturgically fractured.

Absolutely! After I read it, a member of my congregation (former parish, some years ago) loaned me her copy of the sequel, "Where Have You Gone, Michelangelo". She said it reminded her of me. I don't own a copy yet, but it was an even more enlightening read.

Not only did I live it, but my maternal relatives are it! Half German and half Irish, when my Grandfather died (my Mom was 12) my Grandmother married his brother (a deathbed promise) who managed to lose the farm so the family had to move into town. The Irish parish was more than a mile away, but the German parish was right across the street. That's where my Mom attended, and they had a Knight of the Order of St. Gregory taking care of the music there. Half the family were older and already moved out, and had Irish Mass background. Only the youngest had the German Mass experience. Ever since reading "WCCS" I see this dichotomy in my cousins - those from my older aunts are liberal, maybe don't even still consider themselves Catholic.

I'm the Secretary of our local Ancient Order of Hibernians, and don't want to speak negative about the Irish. But this is simply fact - American Catholic high/low Church.

The most extensive hymn-singing model was the Betsingmesse in Germany, where in the 30's (I think) there was a practice of singing a hymnlike setting in the vernacular for each of the parts of the Ordinary, while the priest recited the text in Latin. This was authorized by indult. It was still going on strong when I was in Germany in 1967; it could well still be.

There was some movement towards congregational participation before the Council. The diocese of San Francisco produced a card they recommended to all the parishes, which contained Kyrie XI, Gloria VIII, Credo III, Sanctus & Agnus IX. I believe this was introduced in quite a few of the parishes. When I came to Stanford as a graduate student, there was a choir forming at the Newman center, which sang for a high Mass, using that card and singing all the propers out in Gregorian chant. (I still direct that choir.)

I distinctly remember the congregation at one Chattanooga parish singing the Missa de Angelis in the early 60s, and singing it fairly well.

Another thing I am not so sure of -- but I believe I recall finding, when hauling out accumulated junk from the choir loft of another parish there, preconciliar missalettes, latin on verso, english on recto. Anybody else remember such a thing?