In all fairness, the Chabanel Psalms have gotten better, too. I wasn't enamored with some of the early efforts, but they have improved with time.

Yeah, I agree with that too. I've used some of them. I like some of them, but I also like Gelineau and Guimont too.

Alstott OTOH (who might well be a competent composer, but didn't show it with R&A) = someone must have locked him in a room and given him 3 hours to complete Psalms for every Sunday and Feast of the three year cycle.

PGA, the legendary Jason Pennington wrote the best essay on that subject I've ever encountered. Does anyone have a copy of it?

I could send you the essay I wrote on the subject.

I am sure you could, but please don't. LOL. I never liked the term since it sounds like one of those feel-good, made-up terms from the seventies. I will stick with Organist/Choirmaster, or Director of Music/Organist. Those are pastoral enough for me.

replacing with anthems

what now?

Obviously, my opinion is just my opinion, but I'm quite opposed to the replacement of the Easter Vigil psalmody with anthems and choral-performance music.

(In fact, I'm currently working on an essay which addresses this in the Episcopalian context of turning the Vigil's liturgy of the Word into an Esater-themes lessons and carols.)

This probably isn't outright illicit but I think you're on shaky ground.

They shouldn't need light to repeat a simple refrain.

Sorry that a simple uplifted arm in time, akin to what a conductor would do is so offensive.

"Traditional Catholicism" has so many straw men and monsters under the bed.

Ha! Let me try to remember...Yes, I have been called worse names than Catholic traditionalist.

If you want a service of 14 Readings, why encumber them with refrains at all?

I don't think Adam is objecting on legalistic grounds, and the Vigil escape clause permitting different Psalms or Canticles seems quite clear to me. Certainly Charles will agree that the "Responsorial Gradual from the GR" (a slightly odd expression) is explicitly an option for Sundays? The question maybe is whether it is still a 'fourth reading'.

Well, there are limits to how much of one's own discretion one may employ, and technically it's not pastoral if the Pastor is not on board. But out of curiosity, do you get to choose after the first Lesson between Bless the Lord O my soul and Upright is the Word of the Lord (the GIA options), and would your head roll if you sang Jubilate Domino out of the Gradual or Bruce Ford's O be joyful in the Lord instead?

I'd be quite interested to hear how many churches do the 7 Gregorian Tracts (should I be reading something into Solesmes calling Ps. 99/100 a "Canticle" while GIA calls Isaiah a "Responsorial Psalm" btw?), all to the same tune.

responsive chanting of the whole Psalm with the congregation, exposing them to the full range of Anglican and Gregorian chanting.

Yeah, that would be my preference.

I don't think Adam is objecting on legalistic grounds

Quite right.
As I said - it is only my own opinion. I certainly did not mean to suggest you were doing something illicit.

Adam, are you talking absolutism, ala our friend Todd F.?

I try to never be an absolutist.


Again - this is just my own thinking, and is based on my understanding of what the whole point of liturgy is generally, and the vigil in particular.
------------------
From my unfinished essay....


I think this approach ['Lessons and Carols' rather than the appointed Psalms] to the Easter Vigil liturgy of the word is quite wrong, and misses the mark wildly with regards to the purpose and intentions of the Vigil itself.

A Lessons and Carols service is a time to reflect and remember the stories presented. We hear them, we ponder them, we listen to a choir sing beautiful music that gives us hope and joy and connects us with the traditions of our local community and family - that song we sang last year, that hymn that my grandmother loved.

The Vigil's Liturgy of the Word is something else entirely - an invitation to enter into the ancient narrative directly, to join not just with our parents and grandparents, but with the Moses and Miriam, with Abraham and Isaac. We gather in darkness and fire, as they did, and slightly drugged by the incense, tired because of the hour, mesmerized by the movement of candles in procession and the sound of the Exsulstet. Then we begin at the beginning, listening to the story of the creation of the world, with the hypnotic repetition: "Evening came, and morning followed."

When we have heard the whole story of the first seven days, marveling at the wonder and greatness of God, we respond as the ancient Israelites did when the Holy Spirit first inspired them to record this story: by singing Psalms together as a whole people, unified by our shared memory of an event outside of human history.

Later, we hear the story of the Exodus from Egypt, that most important event in the history of our Jewish predecessors. It, too, is hypnotic and musical - repeating over and over the details of the story "a wall of water on the right and on their left" "Pharaoh, and his horses, and his chariots, and his chariot drivers." The story ends with a song, "I will sing unto the Lord... he has been my savior." And indeed, because God is our savior, we sing the same words that they did.

We are not there as a congregation to learn about our history, or to celebrate our history.
We are there to enter into it, to experience it.

There is much good to be found in listening to a choir, and a great deal of beauty and value in the anthems and spirituals that predominate choral literature. The "Lessons and Carols" approach to the Vigil liturgy has much to recommend it in terms of comfort, delight, and spiritual engagement.

But - I would suggest that it also lacks something. Critically, I believe it removes the gateway by which we enter into community with the 'great cloud of witnesses' that has gone before us, turning liturgy into concertizing, and ultimately alienating us from our past and from a direct encounter with God.
---------

the lights are supposed to be turned on before that part of the service begins

I wasn't aware the Missal specified the status of the "house lights."

Does it? (I'm genuinely curious.)

Thanks for the citation. Good to know.

(Does not impact my understanding of what is going on or what should be sung.)

The lights have been discussed before. Local tradition of having someone at the circuit-breaker box waiting for the Gloria sometimes trumps the rubric, unfortunate as the symbolism in making congregants quench their lighted tapers may be.

Richard

I get that. I will just always do my bit to illuminate why the practice is not well thought out.

We're still waiting on Adams solution

I gave it above: sing the Psalms.
Gregorian and/or Anglican tones and/or Responsorial settings.

A candle and oil lamp Vigil with Gregorian Canticles would certainly be solemn, but would it unite us with the 'great cloud of witnesses' who have celebrated the OF Vigil since 1994 or so to Guimont?

Clearly, I am referring to the texts, not the lighting.

Appropriate time for overhead lights. See my quote from the Roman Missal above. That is the appropriate time.

I wasn't aware I was whining. I think I said (more times than usual) this is just my opinion.

It's not an absolutist or a legalist argument. To me it's a more of a poetic issue, and I think about it wholly poetic terms. (My little essay-excerpt above is pretty much exactly what I think on the matter, in more -or-less the same language I think about it with.)

You said:

The lessons and carols approach was actually my second choice; I wanted to replace the lukewarm responsorial participation accompanied by arm-waving with responsive chanting of the whole Psalm with the congregation, exposing them to the full range of Anglican and Gregorian chanting.

What you wanted to do is also what I would want.

No to satanists no matter how cuddly.

But they're SO CUDDLY sometimes.

[EDIT: PICTURE OF FREAKY-DEEKY SATANIST REMOVED - NOT CUDDLY ENOUGH]

Don't you just want to hug him?

.

I wish that picture was an April Fool's joke. It'll give me nightmares.

This thread has actually spun far off topic. That photo was horrible.
Adam, I truly liked your essay. I hope you won't mind if I send it to my singers.

Adam, I truly liked your essay. I hope you won't mind if I send it to my singers.

Honored. Please feel free.

Adam, it's just that I've become so used to hearing the word "concertizing" in a certain tone of voice that it's a red cloth for me (particularly in this thread's context); your essay doesn't come across as whiney. It does express a certain ambivalence which makes me take the "unfinished" label at face value, so please excuse any undue roughness in my prodding.

This thread has actually spun far off topic.

With rue I have to admit the picture is probably more to the point of the original query than the Easter Vigil digression!

There are concerts, hymn fests, hootenannies, operas, sing-offs, fireside singalongs ... and then there is singing Mass.