I dreamed once that my enthusiatic choir, brass and tympani and me at the organ directing it all were in church on 'Easter' performing our glorious Easter music, but we realised after a bit that the church was empty... then we realised that we were there on the wrong day. So, we had to do it over 'for real' some days later when Easter actually arrived.

CharlesW, I have had the exact same dream before, as odd as it is. It's as if I am getting ready for Mass and taking my time, all the while knowing full well everyone is waiting on me...yet I don't even care, and I can't help but continue doing what I am doing, even though I try my hardest to get to the organ and play. I also have dreams that I start playing music I've never seen before, and have no idea how to play. I hate those.

I have a dream similar to CharlesW. Priest and ministers are in the back waiting for me to start the hymn, and the people are on their feet with their hymnals open - and I can't find the hymn. I frantically turn the pages of the hymnal, but it is nowhere to be found. At this point I usually wake up in a cold sweat.

Oh, the nightmares - they start about 2 weeks before Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Easter and any other major feast. I laugh about them, but they really do drive me nuts. The most common is several variations on the theme of not being able to find my music - I open my book and it is either all gone, or something different that I have never seen before is there instead. Interspersed with that is the recurring nightmare that the choir loft stairs have folded in on themselves many times over and I have to squeeze myself through a maze to get to the loft - only to find that the organ/piano or whatever instrument I need is missing. I won't even go into the dreams where I am falling from the loft - yes, my nightmares keep me entertained. (Ha! - not)

I have dreams where I sit at the bench and look at the music and can't read the staff......or can't relate the staff to the manuals.

Interesting that we all have the same fears and dreams. I know that I still get nervous before playing, more than 50 years after I first started.

I often dream that my alarm clock displays the time Mass is supposed to begin. It sure get's me to jump up out of bed before I wake up fully and realize Mass doesn't start for two hours.

My anxiety dreams are rather more bizarre that the ones you guys have had. When I was teaching music in grade school (500 kids a week in 3 days) and directing on the weekend (only one mass, Thank God) - I dreampt I was in the choir loft getting things organized when suddenly I realized I was in a choir loft I didn't recognize. The choir showed up and they were wearing strange, old fashioned clothes and acting like children out of control in a classroom. I couldn't find my music and it was all disorganized and suddenly, Bill Clinton showed up and started making a very self-serving speech. I got disgusted and woke myself up.

I have two recurring dreams that seem to be common with other organists - the one where I'm flipping through pages of the hymnal and cannot find the page I need, and oversleeping a Mass.

I think that they're based on fears rooted in reality. I recently had an experience where the new Pastor, despite being told that we don't (for reasons I won't try to explain here since I don't totally agree with them and don't want to create a rabbit hole) sing the responsorial psalm during the summer months. Having failed to understand his comments in the sacristy before Mass, and not being well-schooled in mind reading, I sat at the console preparing to play and chant the "Alleluia" and discovered that the lector had finished the first reading and was standing at the ambo waiting for me to chant the psalm. For what felt like hours, I frantically scrambled to pull out the necessary materials to chant the psalm and proceeded to sight-read it. It was embarrassing and I think there was a hint of passive-aggression on the part of the Pastor in the way it was handled.

In the case of the second kind of nightmare, I suspect we've all overslept a Mass at least once in our career. Since we all take what we do seriously, such a mistake made once burns on the brain and I can't say I'm surprised that we occasionally revisit the experience and embarrassment in the form of a nightmare.

I had one recently where I was having someone else play while I cantored and she couldn't find the music. I kept telling her that it was on the music rack already, but she wouldn't believe me. Everyone was waiting for us to start but she kept on insisting she didn't have the music.

That sounds an awful lot like my real life some days.

I overslept once........

EASTER SUNDAY MORNING.

Ran into the Church 1 minute before Mass.

So much for that amazing easter prelude you had planned.

Not my own nightmare, but twice when I was directing in a 'regular' parish, our organist forgot to 'spring ahead', and thus sauntered in at about the Gospel Acclamation, thinking that he was a few minutes early. So we sang the Entrance Hymn, the Gloria, and the Responsorial Psalm a capella (which actually turned out quite well).

If I have a nightmare, it usually involves missing an interval when singing an antiphon, and singing the rest of the Proper with the intervals in the wrong place (which has happened on a number of occasions).

If I have a nightmare, it usually involves missing an interval when singing an antiphon, and singing the rest of the Proper with the intervals in the wrong place (which has happened on a number of occasions).

If you sing the Gregorian Propers solo enough, this is bound to happen to you. I've actually gotten "better at messing this up," so to speak, where I have enough confidence in myself to realize what note of the scale I'm incorrectly on and adjust from there.

I had a nightmare once that my organ blew up during Holy Week. Oh... Wait that actually happened. BTW Ben Yanke are you from Sauk? I keep seeing posts by you on my friends FB wall. Wondering if it's the same Ben.

I just had a nightmare last night in which I was at my last Catholic church. The priest (a solid guy, though often willing to make concessions to the congregation) insisted I conduct the choir in hits from Phantom of the Opera while he celebrated the EF Low Mass, facing the congregation, wearing a mask that looked like a deer's head.

Another "dream" that, LITERALLY, happens to me in real life at least once a month.

I am SO glad I never remember my dreams.

The little known MISSA NUDA.

At our ages, it would be Missa Laughriota.

Dream this morning, after choir rehearsal previous evening where we were rehearsing Kyrie Cunctipotens genitor Deus (Trent Codex 90):

I had warned the choir to be there on time for warm-up/run-through before Sunday Mass - On Sunday morning I was way-layed for 15 minutes by old church ladies in the vestibule, which only left 5 minutes to run-through this Kyrie, all of the propers and the Motet.

I ran down to where the piano is, only to discover that that part of the undercroft was blocked off for some reason. I frantically asked various people where my choir had gone to and they sent me off to one of the class-rooms. I walked in and there were 15 random people from other parts of my life, none of whom are musicians, who were standing there with their music talking to each other.

I tried to get them to do something, but nothing happened they just kept talking, I began loosing my cool and started shouting when one of the women came over and started to get a little too friendly. It was then that I discovered that apart from my overcoat I was in my "birthday suit". I flipped three tables in one motion and ran out of the room screaming, meanwhile everyone else kept talking to each other like nothing happened.

Then, thankfully, I woke up in a cold sweat.

Which "Pan de Vida?" ;-)

My major one is oversleeping a Mass. Not being there when I should have been with no excuse is one of my biggest fears. The there's the one where we rehearse like mad for some big choir piece and then nobody shows up... Wait, that really happened.

I'm 74 & have been a church organist for 50-plus of those years. As a 20-something raising a family & able to only help with the music part time I experienced the following: A parish priest's housekeeper fancied herself an organist & even though she couldn't play or accompany singing for sour apples, she basically took over the Sunday music when they first arrived. It was so horrendous I had worked myself up into quite a state, reaching a point where I considered testing an interesting (to me) hypothesis (can a person survive a fall from the choir loft & live?). An accidental fall, of course. I was extremely frustrated, felt totally intimidated by her (she was 60-ish), plus I knew I'd not have backing from the priest, should I go to him about her.

So....my subconscious took over after about two months of this severe musical abuse. To wit: I dreamt I arrived late to Sunday Mass during the Processional hymn (which sounded like something rising from the gates of you-know-where). I strode up the steps, into the church, down the main aisle to the Communion rail, stopped, turned around, pointed my finger at the organist & shouted, "STOP!!!" Everything went quiet. I shouted again, "For the love of God and the preservation of our ears get away from that organ and never plant yourself on our organ bench again as long as you are here! God & His people deserve better than what we are hearing!" Our church was small so there was no difficulty hearing me. Then everyone started to clap!! I turned around, said, "Thank you, Father," started back down the aisle and proceeded to wake up with a smile on my face. Well, that was all it took. From that dream on I had no trouble putting up with her ineptitude. My anger had disappeared. Even though where I confronted her was only a dream, it was good enough for me. My sanity was saved. And let us remember our wonderful history of divine intervention through dreams!

I dreamed that at my old parish they needed me to sub for Christmas eve Mass, and they had new plastic numbers for the hymnal board, and since it was Christmas, we needed a lot of 4s, and I spent so much time trying to get the 4s out of their packaging, with the vicar's help, that by the time I gave up on the hymn boards and decided just to announce the hymns, the Mass had already begun.

So I went to where the choir was, near the pastor, who now had gray hair. The Worship hymnals had been replaced by boxes of beef broth. So I took two and sat down on a bench to see what would happen next.

A few weeks ago I woke up at 4am in the night after I dreamt I had not two but three almost simultaneous Masses on the upcoming Sunday (for one of which I had found someone to substitute for me). I immediately checked my calendar to be sure that it was just a nightmare (which it fortunately was).