WARNING! VERY LONG RESPONSE.

My questions? Can anyone please provide examples of how you brought the chant to the people so the Mass exodus (pun intended) was minimal if at all? … I'm particularly interested in catechetical material and method for the congregation.

Advent greetings and welcome, Mike.
First of all, Mike, one of the factors that is a smoking gun is in your first question above. “Chant to the people” might have been the fly in the ointment from the moment someone made that decision. Chant isn’t the sole qualifier of the needed reforms as now understood by the revisiting and extrapolation of post-conciliar documents. In my first encounter with CMAA, summer 07, I was provided and graced by what is generically called the Mahrt paradigm (after our CMAA President’s name.) This paradigm, which I’m sure you can discern from his recently published “THE MUSICAL SHAPE OF THE LITURGY,” systematically offers many paths to hopefully, but not necessarily, one road objective, namely the normative chanting in its entirety of the Solemn High Mass in Latin. This organization’s watershed project, THE PARISH BOOK OF CHANT, as compiled and edited by Richard Rice, provided in itself a template for that objective. But at many colloquia, one would be exposed to many other options that would supplant and suffice as worthy replacements to what are called “Fourth Option (GIRM) hymns and songs,” but also a large culture of Mass ordinaries that are undeniably influenced by non-sacred, popular and ethnocentric musical styles, very view of which will likely pass the austerity and generationally universal acceptance tests that chant and polyphonic ordinaries have maintained for centuries. So, what does that boil down to? With a few exceptions, the truly licit and righteous zeal for the “first place” of chant was imposed imperially, any amount of catechesis notwithstanding. There is no universal strategy that I’ve ever heard of that would provide clear, concise and attractive catechesis to large numbers of the faithful who really haven’t been paying much attention for over a half-century. The change within a parish, IMO, has to be infused with their interests in mind, with a corporate approach rather than individual, and that is truly progressive (one that leads to and graduates up to the next level of competency.) So, besides doing a U Turn from the status quo, replacing ensembles and choirs with cantors (a big No No in my estimation), and employing (I presume) Latin chants for “hymns” and ordinaries, you got off on the wrong foot, maybe?

There are definitely other factors here. For example, the pastor has given the music director seeming carte blanche over this whole project (and liturgy for that matter), …

Your honor, the prosecution rests. I also am a music director of 21 years tenure in my current and last parish who enjoys carte blanche. But I’ve been a student of liturgy since I fell in love with it in my late teens to my sixties. I don’t give a fig about advice that leverages problems and solutions by maxims and dictums. This is a Christian enterprise. So, if the rest of the church clocks time in centuries, couldn’t the strategy have been planned and gradually grafted into S.O.P. in your parish?

The congregation is at least 80% non-caucasian (mostly those of Filipino descent, with a good bit of Vietnamese, and Hispanic as well), the choir/cantor location is at the front near the Sanctuary in this 80's-built church building so especially in Masses without a choir the propers are being sung at the people, and the (caucasian) music director to this point over his 9+ years there has 'evolved' the 'traditional' Mass from the 4-hymn sandwich to ad-libitum communion chants (albeit in English), and even throwing in Negro spirituals as recently as 3 years ago.
My parish, too.

Is your white guy director (I’m an old version of that) aware of the deeply embedded post V2 musical culture of the Philippines? He probably doesn’t care that they have their own version of the St. Louis Jesuits (and they are jebbies) whose music is as saccharine as anything Carey Landry’s ever “written?” Would your guy just announce one day at Masses, “We’re going to sing the music of the late, great Berthier of Taize. It is ecumenical (PC) and lots of it in Latin AND some other languages, and its easy to remember! You will zeeng ziss und like it.”
Well, that would be easier to do than reprinting the Graduale Romanum or Simplex, or even using a modern notation Kyriale for the people in the pews (PIPs.) So, as you say, people have voted with their feet quietly. In a way, it’s as perverse as anything that Thom Day wrote about in “WHY CATHOLICS CAN’T SING.”

Here it is:
1. You want ‘em to chant? You didn’t make mention whether all yer celebrants are chanting ALL of their orations. If they would do that, and it doesn’t take any more time than speaking them, the people will accept their lack of choice in responding. Catholics, even in this era, understand that they are obliged to respond to the priestly collects in the same manner they are orated.
2. Have your DM look into the myriad of chant based ordinaries that are in vernaculars besides English, like Tagalog and Spanish, and that are easily accessed by rote acquisition. You can find these in the new Lumen Christi Missal and a host of other free sources in print and online at Musica Sacra. And then, by God, get some choirs and scholas into the rotation. The predominance of cantor led singing is cancerous, period.
3. Look up in this sites search engine the term “Stuffed Mass.” Learn how many of us have gradually paired various versions of proper processionals, graduals, alleluias, tracts and sequences with congregational hymnody with no muss, or violence to either form.

There’s so much to learn. But slow, steady and superbly is the method. And BTW, singing ”at” I take to be a very negative circumstance. But, singing “with” doesn’t always necessarily mean that the congregation is enjoined in the singing. If they’re “with” what’s being rendered truly on their behalf, the affect will be obvious to all. Godspeed.

People deserve a choice. I suggest that this parish is becoming a true home for those who do not want guitars, folk masses or four hymns. Sounds like a parish that you are dissatisfied with for how they have implemented the changes, a parish that many, if not most of us, would love to be at.

Do we really want all parishes to be exactly alike?

Please accept this as not being critical, but just thoughts to consider:

This is not your parish. Unless you are a member and involve yourself, your best efforts may cause you more pain and anguish than good. There is nothing more irritating than an outsider or, as in a local parish here, a musician who attends Mass, criticizing everything but will not join the choir, be a cantor or anything else.

People do not attend Mass because of the music, they do not leave because of the music. They leave parishes because of being dissatisfied by other, more important issues, especially being unhappy with the priest. And if the priest asks them, I suppose most are afraid to criticize the priest and will come up with excuses.

If you live next door to a house that is lowering the value of other houses in the area, unless the house is dangerous and can be condemned, there is nothing you can do unless you buy it or move away. A parish belongs to the pastor, the bishop and, as we go up the chain of command, God. God seems to be working his own way with that parish, as He always does.

When a parish has a priest the people love and admire, they will walk over hot coals, sing chant and do whatever they can to follow in his steps.

Sorry, but if people are truly not attending Mass because of the music that is their personal problem, not yours nor the priests. Music can be an integral part of the Mass, but it is not the Mass.

The parish is fulfilling the need for a local Mass for people to attend. They do not have to attend that Mass. Your nearest TLM Latin Mass sees people show up because they missed their OF Mass and otherwise would not be caught dead at a TLM Mass...but they attend the Mass.

Could these changes have been done better? Probably. Worse, also probably.

Please accept this all as thoughts...if this were an email you could hit delete and I would not be hurt.

We onlly chant at one early Mass, and we have a guitar Mass at the parish. After five years we have modest schola Here is what we achieved It is unpretentious music yet it elevates the prayerfulness of some of the popular songs that we include during the offertory or recessional like" Christ be our Light," or " We Remember." All the music is acapella except the hymns. Our congregation can easily chant an Intoit set to a Meinrad psalm tone, right out of the OCP's Today's Missal.

As Melofluent says so well:

many church musicians (not just RC's) enter, habitate and then triangulate their territory in a worship program because they know that they have a captive audience, some enabler that gave them backing and defends them, and over time believe and behave as if they've become indespensible.

It is absolutely essential to run a church music program with an eye to the fact that one day, sooner or later, you will be gone. What is important is not what you do this Sunday, but what will be done in the future after you leave because of your work.

Huh.

Baby Steps usually work well, particularly if there is plenty of catechesis--written and oral--distributed by the pastor. Baby steps are most helpful if the Parish' music program was very loosely run, using the 4-hymn sandwich 'enhanced' by accompanists who are completely un-informed in the Catholic tradition.

It took 50 years to get to the rather awful situation most parishes are in; no reason to think that it will only take 2 years to turn it around, particularly if there is noticeable passive resistance.

Polite points: 10. "Get-my-drift" points: 1

Froggie, as the Big Kahoona of Music at the parish, I can do whatever I want. Tomorrow I could announce that we're going strictly Mass VIII, Latin propers (all very OF)....no problem!

Of course, when the late-AM Mass attendance drops to 10 people from ~200, there WILL be a problem. IOW, what can be done is not always what should be done, if the parish' membership is left-of-center by habit, or worse, if that's what they want to be.

A key factor is the support of the pastor. Without that, it can be an impossible situation. If the pastor supports you, it makes all the difference in what you can do.

As for the support of that pastor: while true, it can also be the kiss of death if the pastor alienates a sufficient plurality of the parish.

Repetition reaches Catholics. Variety does not. Great work, donR!

Liam said:

As for the support of that pastor: while true, it can also be the kiss of death if the pastor alienates a sufficient plurality of the parish.

...and unfortunately it's the latter that happened.

donr: thanks for your story; the real example is especially appreciated.

It is one of those things which you do have to do progressively.

The first and most important thing you need to do is gain the support of the parish priest. If he doesn't support it, then it is going to fail before it has even started.

Get the priest to sing the chant greetings and the preface dialogue. (The Lord be with you/and with your spirit/ lift up your hearts/we lift them up to the lord... etc)

A great place to start is to sing the our father to a chant setting and use it every single week.

Then I would suggest use the ICEL Chant Mass for the Assembly (2010). The Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei are a great place to start even if you have to keep using a familiar congregational setting of the Gloria.

Use this same Sanctus (From Mass XVIII) in either English or Latin (English to start with perhaps best). I never use a different sanctus.

You can sneak in the offertory chant, by having the choir sing it from the Anglican Use Gradual before going into a Hymn or a motet.

Similarly, you can sneak in a communion chant before having a communion hymn. I find that if you have at least 70 people going for communion you can manage nearly all of "O Taste and See" from the Simple English propers and then a communion hymn. Most parishes have a communion hymn and a "thanksgiving hymn" immediately following anyway. From the SEP there are 7 Ad Libitum Communion Chants, so you can select from these and they become almost like another communion hymn. You will get most of the congregation joining in at the antiphon. Explain it to them that it is just like another responsorial psalm and they'll get the idea.

I find that having a communion chant then a hymn works well. Have a group of the men singing the chant whilst the organist and rest of the choir goes to communion. By the time they come back, a portion of the congregation will have already recieved communion and be ready to sing a communion hymn if they are not going to be praying quietly. Then your chant group can go to recieve communion whilst the rest of the choir and organist lead the communion hymn.

I usually omit the introit all together, but if you are lucky to be at a parish with a reasonably long entrance procession and they use incense, then you can usually manage to get 3 verses of a hymn and then use a simple introit chant such as that from the Anglican Use Gradual or Simple English Propers. My preference is to chant the introit whilst they are incensing the altar. At a pinch, just chant it to a psalm tone even if you only get the antiphon in. It may help if you ask the procession to ring a bell to let them know when they are ready to proceed and ask them not to start walking forward until you have finished playing the hymn tune once through so that the congregation can start singing. Then ask them to wait at the foot of the altar until the end of the hymn verse and for the chant to start before they start incensing the altar. This might be all too much for them, so you'll probably have to guesstimate how much of the hymn you can manage before having to cut to the introit chant. I play in a small chapel with a very short procession, so you can see why I don't bother with the introit usually. I try to use a well-known and popular hymn at the start. It means that you can get away with more traditional stuff that the congregation might not be used to later on.

If possible, have the choir prepared to sing an offertory motet. This seems to be a good point of the mass where people are happy to sit back and listen for a bit. They get to sing the Our Father and the Sanctus before long anyway. Sicut Cervus seems to go down well most times, but vary it. Latin some weeks and English in others. "If Ye Love Me", "Rejoice in the Lord Alway", "From the Rising of the Sun" are three really good pieces (okay, the middle one is a bit of a challenge since it has a trio solo and organ accompaniment, but it isn't musically difficult).

With the Agnus Dei, I only every use Agnus Dei XVIII and Ad Libitum II. Typically, I use Ad Libitum II on feasts/solemnities and XVIII the rest of the time.

Also consider singing the Marian Antiphon of the season instead of having a recessional hymn. I usually go straight to a postlude on the organ. On some occasions when a Te Deum would be appropriate, I use "Holy God We Praise Thy Name" which is just the Te Deum set to a hymn tune anyway.

But as I said at the start. This is something that you've got to do in stages. You're not going to achieve it all within the first 6 months.

One thing that is a must these days to be very gradual with introducing latin. You want to vary its use alot so that there is some latin and some english music in all masses.

I hope to preserve the Gregorian melodies and use English texts: But singing English to melodies ( in a note-for-note transcription) that are meant for Latin texts can be destructive if they are not judicously transcribed. The phonetic, grammar, and rhetoric of the English will be so overwhelmed by the melody and the rythmn of the Latin chant that people will not even hear the text as English. In fact they will hear Latin. Like proclaiming the scripture feigning a foreign accent. The SEP is a good place to start and will be an important learning tool for the dynmaics of English chant- even for directors.

Donr - If you can get this established as the normal practice at your church it would be great. Lots of clergy just want to get up into the sanctuary and carry on with business. Some have a decidedly hurried pace in their procession.

There are two schools of thought on the Introit:

1.) Sing the Introit immediately followed by a suitable Hymn.

This is the easiest to co-ordinate since the procession can start at any point and then does not have to pause at all.

2.) Sing a Processional Hymn and then start the introit when the procession reaches the altar.

The latter practice is meant to hark back to the missal of 1962. Both are correct, but I do tend to favour the latter because I think that it is good to have the congregation silent and watching the incensing of the altar to emphasise the holy mystery about to take place.

In the small chapel where I help co-ordinate music I just stick with a hymn because 3 hymn verses is long enough to cover the entire procession and incensing of the altar.

The procession doesn't start until the second verse of the hymn. It generally takes two more verses to get them to the front - one additional verse if the altar is incensed. Somehow, it works.