Chants during Confirmation
  • MarkB
    Posts: 1,025
    Confirmation season. At my parish Confirmation Mass in mid-May, my choir will chant "Veni Creator Spiritus" during the anointing with chrism. That, in itself, will be a huge improvement over past and diocese-wide practice. The anointing will probably still be occurring when we finish that chant. Would there be anything wrong with chanting the entrance antiphon at that time as the second piece, since we won't be singing the antiphon at the entrance? ("Come, Holy Ghost" will be the entrance song.) The antiphon from Ezekiel has baptismal imagery, and I think it is appropriate for the moment, but I don't know if there's anything wrong with singing something intended for the entrance at that or another time in the liturgy. I'd use the Weber setting from his Proper of the Mass, Volume 4. I don't want to "fill the time" with instrumental music nor a contemporary composition. To follow the "Veni Creator Spiritus" with a contemporary composition would be jarring.
  • irishtenoririshtenor
    Posts: 1,296
    Why not? At worst, it's a very worthy alius cantus aptus
  • mmeladirectress
    Posts: 1,075
    Beata Nobis Gaudia ?
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    How about "Confirma hoc, Deus"?
    Thanked by 1Chris Garton-Zavesky
  • Palestrina
    Posts: 364
    The rubrics are silent...

    Why not alternate versets of the Veni Creator on organ (e.g. Titelouze) with the plainchant? Pace, Francis, am well aware of the cognitive dissonance... but the congregation won’t be!
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn rich_enough
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    If ever alternatim practice could be used in modern liturgy, this would be it - or even for an offfertory anthem and such - only the ritual text itself is a no no.
  • mmeladirectress
    Posts: 1,075
    in the Cantus Selecti (which is downloadable from the CMAA site),
    there is "Qui Procedis"

    Has many verses, in case you need some length.
  • RevAMG
    Posts: 162
    We sang Confirma hoc, Deus at our parish during the administration of the sacrament. It's also the offertorium in the Ordinary Form so perhaps you are already singing that. There is also a nice setting of Confirma hoc, Deus in the Graduale Simplex that you could use along with the regular setting of Confirma hoc, Deus. I'm always in favor of more widespread use of the Simplex.
    Thanked by 1Paul F. Ford
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,704
    in the Cantus Selecti (which is downloadable from the CMAA site),
    there is "Qui Procedis"

    Has many verses, in case you need some length.


    If that is the version that is also found in the Antiphonale 1949/60 it does not have all the verses from the original sequence! It is very beautiful though.
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