1) To help people to pray along with the 1962 missal, by providing the full text of the Order of the mass, including all responses, and some of the more noticeable movements of the priest.
2) To establish a standard cycle of music for the Ordinary of the mass.
3) To bring forth more of the riches of the Kyriale.
Key features of the booklets:
- The first and last page give easy access to the music for a weekday/feria mass. - For the rest of the booklet, the music for Sundays is placed at its time within the mass. - Because the booklets present the entire Order of mass, they can be used as a bookmark for your missal, or with a single printed sheet that presents the proper prayers and readings. - Following the mass, there are Marian antiphons and music for Adoration and Benediction, which also follow a seasonal cycle.
Sunday should be first. Most places will not have a weekday high Mass, and I highly doubt that they’d have one on a ferial day.
It’s Sundays of the year: Ordinary Time is not used, and there is no connection as there is in the new Mass other than the customary chants and the texts of the office used in common. Only the collects and readings ever transfer from winter to fall whereas OT resumes awkwardly after Corpus Christi. Now of course per annum is the real name for OT but…
If it’s for the 1962, I’d completely omit that English Credo.
Use a standard slashed V and a slashed R (for Deo gratias and in the ordinary) not the //. The character exists in Unicode. Use it.
Use a font that has the Maltese cross (the custom is to put the cross after the first words (Our help; Father etc.) for the sign of the cross.
You should annotate the chant to tell people when to sing: there will be different customs but the Asperges should never be sung by all in unison in full. The Agnus should always be reintoned by cantors. (Mass XVIII is a disaster if this doesn’t happen.)
If you want to have two Kyrie choices, put the seasonal annotation first.
Personally English only is not that helpful, but it also has stuff that is recited silently with no context like in a missal to signal where one is at in the Mass.
The Te Decet Laus should be omitted or moved to after the Divine Praises as an alternative to Holy God.
I don’t think that this would be a helpful booklet for Christ the King, unless your parish doesn’t know Mass VIII or IV, II etc. but only knows XI. So I’d omit that preface.
I would not use red text for anything said out loud. Real small capitals would work. (Only use the ones from your typeface.)
The Amen after the Canon is sung and should have a slashed R before it. Same with the response to the Pater Noster, to the embolism, and to Pax Domini. In these cases it might be helpful to print the chant (because while the collect tone varies, this won’t ever vary, and in theory the tone here is not the one for after the ancient solemn collect tone ad lib).
X is not obvious for striking the breast.
The dagger for the tiny sign of the cross on the head, lips, and breast really should be after Sancti, then Evangelium, and secundum. It’s explicitly not made at Initium (the priest signs the altar or if it is a proper last Gospel for the pre-55 the book).
At this point I would include Benedicamus for weekdays and the gesimas. There is too much pre-55 interest to do otherwise if you intend to distribute this. The Institute would need that for the gesimas.
For the gospel dialogue, you have thou etc. elsewhere but you here.
The Marian antiphon and the different suffrage and benediction versicles should just be in normal font with the slashed V and R. It’s custom. Not using it is idiosyncratic and confusing even to me since you have no directions.
Standard notation would be appreciated for the O Salutaris (and surely the organist has access to the harmonization?).
StPatricksSongs, I think this is an excellent concept, especially since it integrates the liturgical music itself into the ‘Missal’ and sends a polite message to the congregation that it has a role in singing the Mass.
Might I suggest that you try to work with LaTex (etc) instead? There will be a wider range of options available to you, and the season-to-season variations will be significantly easier to implement.
I think the fundamental concept is excellent but I don’t think you’ll ever be able to please everyone because of the variability in liturgical practices around the place. Having it all coded will make things easier for others to customise foe their own purposes and contexts.
This very worthy project has been on my mind for a few weeks now.
A further question has come up in my mind: is it necessary (or even preferable) to have all the texts of the Mass set out in this booklet, or might a smaller selection be made? I am reminded of FSSPMusic’s apt observations about perceptions of chant as ‘mood music’ and wonder, for instance, whether a brief explanation of the overlapping texts when the Introit and Kyrie are sung in lieu of their complete inclusion might be a better approach. There will be other parts in the Mass where a similar approach might be helpful too (e.g. omission of the priest’s private prayers of preparation for Communion).
I am a weirdo but: I have stopped including the Secret at Masses where there is a booklet. The hint is in the name! I don’t bother with dialogues besides the sprinkling, the dismissal, and the Marian antiphon (we do the versicle and collect) either. Those are memorized. Or people don’t care/can’t follow. The thing is that my exceptions are short and are all out loud. I have seen booklets for high Mass with the Orate fratres. You can’t hear it and might not even see it being recited quietly, as the priest hides behind the deacon!
So I would omit those parts of the ordinary that are not sung as well.
Agreed to both above. As an infrequent attendee of the TLM (and in those instances usually providing the music), Mass books which include pages and pages of silent text are quite unhelpful. Include only what is obviously occurring - i.e. the music - and perhaps a brief explanatory note as @Palestrina suggests
the only other alternative is to print an ordinary separately and then refer to it with cross-references; for example, if you prepare a booklet for the entire Mass of a special occasion, then put the introit, and then cross-reference Ps. 42 etc. between two horizontal rules, so that it is subordinated to the chant.
You can do this for the silent parts like the Canon as well, and in this case, the secret should get printed as it typically is in a handout. But it’s definitely a project that I’d do in LaTeX so that the labels and multiple typesetting passes take care of the references (we hope: you need to proofread). I have considered this for weddings and funerals if something more robust is required and you can print a longer booklet, the length of a fundraising banquet booklet for example.
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