OK, we did the Gloria today, and frankly, it sucks. It's dull and repetitive, and most chant Glorias are not. And I'm not convinced that it's easier, because there are no "hooks". The rest of everything is OK, though when we sing swathes of the Requiem every Sunday, we shouldn't be surprised when it sounds like death. I'm tempted to wear my tinfoil hat to preserve me from the idea that the chants selected for the Missal were chosen to discredit the idea of chant.

They are pretty pedestrian, aren't they. Insulting even to the pedestrians among us.
Will it ever end? Heirarchs and Publishers do not think much can be expected of Catholics, nor do they want anything out there that will prove them wrong, which they are! We had 3 or 4 hundred people singing the Willan mass at Walsingham this morning (gloria, too) and it was a glory to hear. Catholics could do this... but (methinks) nobody wants them to - in fact they want them not to. This is not music for the passive aura which they like to cultivate.

OK, Charles, I was cranky last night, and yes, the Gloria is a step in the right direction, and maybe not as bad as all that. But it's also not everything it could be.

I'm going to be contrarian and say that I like Gloria XV. I use it as often as possible. Of course, we are singing for the EF High Mass, without any accompaniment. As Charles says, YMMV.

Charles in CenCa -
I accept your gentle chiding. Sometimes I am needlessly (and self-defeatingly?) harsh when I do not wish to be. I apologise for this. The chants, though overly simple, are a far cry better as spiritual and liturgical expressions than the settings by any number of favoured Catholic composers that seem to be staples in our churches and cluttering our hymnals. That said, it is most puzzling why people are given chant that isn't the least degree challenging and more engaging. You refer to my 'back yard' as being Walsingham: so it is; my frame of reference is also years of singing all the Gregorian ordinaries set to English and sung heartily by entire Episcopalian congregations. Catholics CAN very well do this, too, if people would stop saying they can't and telling them they can't. Stop treating them as though they were incapable and start treating them as though they were, because they ARE. Still, I laud the step in the right direction.

Now, of course, I am talking about these chants in their English form, so EF doesn't apply, I think. (Is anyone doing the translation of the EF?) And please see my comments exactly along the lines that Jeffrey made: they make you want to do more. So I am not saying go back--please, no!

There are other options: the Shrine has been doing a plainsong Gloria that is quite old, it turns out, and works quite well with the congregation that they have to deal with, which may be the point.

I have gotten to know the BrightLights among the keyboard performance majors, who tend to hang out in the practice room across from Leo Nestor's office (not that I see Leo very often.) These kids are all extremely sharp musicians, and they feel that teh Great Upper Church kind of leaves you as an observer (for any Mass with less than 3000 people--the Vigil for Life is a transcendant experience.) So perhaps my responses are colored by that. But music in the Crypt sounds pretty "live," and that is where I normally go to Mass in English. And since I hear the melodies in English and Latin in fairly frequent rotation, I just feel they aren't quite THERE, if you know what I mean.

I don't hate all the pop settings that a lot of folks might. The "Celtic Alleluia" is quite satisfying to sing, although perhaps not for all seasons. (And thank the Lord we do it slowly, because done fast it is the most annoying jig.) But I think this is working out about right: many people now know these ancient melodies. I kind of want to call them not the Missal Chants, but the Communal Chants. They are roughly what you will hear at any large Latin Mass around the world.

And William F. Buckley liked to quote some line about, "The Church I love, she changes slowly." I did not want this new translation NOW, the way some of us did, because of the harm that the 1970 changes did. So I am surely not saying, "Go back." I am saying, "Now people understand that Chant is not scary. Let's introduce some more chant melodies written in English." I was going to make some pun about simple and proper, so it's not like the work isn't being done, and magnificently. I just kind of think these English chants are lacking somehow.

Not to pick nits, but speaking as a person from the pew...

Many of us haven't heard chant of any sort in church for a very, very long time.

Inferior as the ICEL chants may be...they are the beginning of a reintroduction to chant for many parishes.

Which I personally can only regard as a step in the right direction.

Whatever you do avoid the "Mass for a Servant Church" by Michael Guimont, unless you have a full trained choir and don't expect the congregation to sing the Gloria. It was a hot mess both to teach and to listen to.

Yes I live in the Lansing diocese. Which probably does a lot to explain why I consider the ICEL chants to be a vast improvement. :)

These chants are thrilling! I think I undertand the reason for every note. The text carries the melody well. The words sing themeselves. This GLORIA has the reatraint of holy humility before God's Majesty. I don't think the Gloria is not being put to the test, but we are.

I have seen ordinaries that were difficult to sing and/or not worth the effort to bring to a singable state. I have seen more that were quite singable that were met with a rudeness of epithets and the most irrational protestations that nobody could sing them (translate: I don't like it and your not going to teach it on my turf). The problem, as always, is with the professional expertise of choirmaster and teachers. Truly good music can be taught to any congregation that hasn't been treated like a basket case by any skilled and dedicated choirmasters and teachers who present the material in a positive light and have no truck with gainsayers; who literally know how to get people to sing anything they want them to and like it.

I know of a number of congregations that can sing the cum jubilo mass, in English, with great confidence. I also know several emminent chant scholars who proclaim (un-)authoritatively that such masses were not menat for the people and that they cannot sing them. This is a patent falsehood. We sang it at Walsingham all through Advent, and, as a matter of course, will be expanding our repertory of the Gregorian masses in English. I have heard 300 monks sing these masses. I have heard 300 strong Episcopalian congregations sing these masses. This is to testify that it can be done and is a Good Thing. Catholics do not have damaged vocal chords or music aptitudes pitifully lower that other groups. They are trained in very subtle ways not to get overly enthused or proficient in their musico-liturgical efforts

As for the mass settings in any of our current spate of hymnaries, whether big or small publishers, they are uniformly pedestrian. devoid of inspiration, lame with the most woefully transparent shallowness of form, and depending almost to a man on clever little rhythmic gimmicks which are both unspeakably boring and unbelievably hilarious. How does one sing them with a straight face? And THIS is what the Church thinks of its people.

Although I do know that harder chants than the ICEL ones can be sung by a congregation (the parish I grew up in used Missa de Angelis most of the time), all I have to say now is that they're a heck of a lot better than what most people in this country are getting - my parish is using Schutte's "Mass of Christ the Savior" for the most part, though I have permission from our pastor to use the ICEL chants when I cantor or play organ. So I'm not gonna complain about them. At least CHANT is being printed in the missals now and not the Celtic Mass (OCP's old standard missal Mass setting, I believe).

Yes, Mark, agree. Regardless of what anyone says about these chants, they are massively significant as part of the liturgical history of our times. They represent a wholehearted embrace of the chant tradition by the contemporary Church. They demonstrate that English is not an obstacle to chanted music. They are normative and universal in the new Missal. Forty years late, they are a sign of an emerging stability after so much upheaval for so long. I still can't believe that they got out of the committee to become reality!

No, they are not the end point. Obviously. They are there to get us on the right track. They have accomplished that seemingly impossible goal to some degree.

Well, I was sick for a week,and look what I missed. In general, I think the fact that many Americans will now know the communal melodies is overwhelmingly a plus. So I agree with everything Jeffrey T. says, but land with emphasis on the "starting point." I came to the Church with a good grounding in Reformation history, and what I can say with confidence is that things have always been "bad." "Work out your salavation with fear and trembling." And so we have a year of people getting used to chant...and then we slog on. What a glorious burden, though!

Has anyone sung from the Meinrad Kyrialel? There are too many good things to say about these chant transcription of the traditional ordinaries. They will teach you how to chant in English with expression, becuase so many phonetic and rhetorical dynamics of English are perfectly painted into the melodies. It's time to post some updates for these settings. I have the new MASS I and X.
The first time I saw a score by Fr. Kelly was a real eye-openner. Everything from Mocquerreau to Cardine just fell into place.

We've begun using the Mass in Honor of St. Benedict (listen here: http://www.litpress.org/Detail.aspx?ISBN=978081463434).

This is the "official" Mass setting for our Diocese.

Shockingly, support for it has been pretty high in my rather contemporary parish. However, I must say the polyphonic middle section of the Gloria dies when sung at a non-Choral Mass. I'm not sure what the answer is to it, but without a choir... it just.. dies.

I'm not sure that Ordinary would work without accompaniment.

It's not a bad Gloria... but it sounds very empty without the polyphonic center. Kinda like biting into a chocolate-covered-cherry only to find it hollow.