Regarding the topic of this thread, just as an FYI, each week I am setting Simple English Psalm Tones.

These are for those who (for whatever reason) cannot sing the SEP.

URL link

ian

I am confusing different things? Please clarify.

I rather like Pierrot Lunaire, tho' I grant the approach might not work liturgically. Still, it would be fun to try, and perhaps the Propers would be a good place to begin.

MIGHT not? Fun to TRY? Are you just being TIC, half serious or do you REALLY like Pierrot?!

Francis,

You can say that your participation in Rock Masses gave you a foretaste for the future, whatever it is. No need to be embarrassed about that. For Pope St. Gregory said, "The one who aspires to the highest place advances by steps, and not leaps and bounds". Or something like that.

Have I attended Masses with guitars, etc.? Yes. Did they often contain some quality hymnody, and during Advent, also some chanted Ordinaries? Most certainly. Am I embarrassed that I attended these Masses? Most certainly not. But I prefer not to repeat these Masses if I can get to something better. But not everyone can. So, we go to what is available, and make the best offering to our Lord and Majesty as is possible, since not every Roman parish can afford an organ.

I will repeat what said in another thread once. When I was in first grade, ca. 1990-1991, I went to a Saturday Mass with a rock band. This was before I knew anything at all about sacred music. But I knew already in my gut that something was wildly amiss. I am pleased that in the next 20-21 years, I have never heard this type of liturgical music again.

Now, as for the title question: whether more settings of the propers should be made? I answer that: why not? There may not be a true "need", if you will, for more music, but it is humanity's great desire to praise, or at least, cry out to the Lord. Anyone who doubts that can go to your neighborhood coffee shop or wherever you transact business and listen to the people's talk. Who do they cry out to the most, even if only in a blasphemous fashion? Buddha? Muhammed? No, no one else other than our Lord Christ. This is evidence, believe it or not, that we were built to cry out to the Lord.

So, let the trained composers write so as to please the Lord, and the proper church authorities judge if these works are suitable for divine worship. Why should we limit the desire of composers to make "a joyful noise unto the Lord"?

Paul

You would not want to have seen the Masses that I participated in... they were on an auditorium stage with flashing lights and VERY LOUDDDDD overpowering rock music throughout... I actually believe they may have been perverse and sacreligious. We are talking ROCK CONCERT MASSES in high schools with the Bishop of Boston presiding back in the 80s. VERY controversial.

Nothing you have ever been to was anything near the abuse that this abomination was. It still makes me shudder for my soul.

Oh my, I want to say something, but I'm just not sure what to say or how to say it. I will say that, as a composer of what I think is sacred music, I find all this somewhat troubling.

MCW:

Well, here is a short synopsis of my experience:

I managed to escape the darkened world of much of the music that many were subjected to in their college days. I consciously rejected all things atonal, experimental and contrary to the art right from the start. My composition teachers were very invested in the mess, but I had no interest whatsover. I would bring in SATB a cappella pieces that I had composed to one of my teachers, and one time he pretended to vomit in my presence after reviewing one of my pieces (see 1 Corinthians 13 in my catalogue). It was sheer mockery toward me and the art of sacred music as far as I was concerned. I was about 19 at the time, and it was devestating.

I had the exact same sentiments of Collin Brumby (see above). In my mind the entire school of thought was not only chasing after gibberish, but involved in a cloaked mockery of the very art I was trying to learn and master. I had very little guidance as I did not know anyone who was committed to sacred music. I did not even know that programs (degrees) of sacred music existed till many years after I had left school. Once I had attended the Peabody and saw the degradation of what 'the best in the world' represent musically, I became totally disenchanted and forsook everything and threw my life on the mercy of God. I was a musician of sacred music, but I could not find a path to pursue my calling nor anyone to collaborate with. My organ professor was a student of Gustav Leonhardt and a Catholic, but he was very much into the organ and not so much the whole concept of sacred music. He was a good and profound influence in terms of learning the organ and performance, but composing polyphony was a self-possessed interest that I constantly pursued and practiced on my own.

I stood up in the middle of composition class (at the Peabody Conservatory in 1980) and told them all (teachers and students) that I could not participate in the things that they were doing and promptly left the school without finishing my degree. I removed myself from the collegiate world and went into a proverbial cave and learned to compose sacred music through prayer, studying and listening to the masters of old.

I unfortunately did get caught up in the (false) ecumenical Charismatic movement for about 15 years which was a very confusing time in my life, and from what you read above, great confusion within the ranks of the Church in terms of liturgy and experimentation. God forgive us all.

Then the clouds parted when I discovered the CMAA in 2005 when I attended the Colloquium in DC. There were only 57 attendees at that time. I was out of work, and Fr. Skeris invited me to come to the event and waived my fees. I took the metro from Baltimore every day to attend as I could not afford rooming on the campus at CUA. That weekend forever changed the course of my pursuits as I finally found those who were dedicated to true Roman Catholic sacred music. To this day it amazes me that God kept me 'in the dark' for so many years, but it was a time of testing, forging and spiritual formation that I was apparently supposed to undergo without external support from those who 'knew'.

I do remember feeling uncomfortable with the technique of the Solesmes method, but other than that, I told them it was like 7 days of musical heaven. Don't know if that is how they adopted that phrase for the colloquium, but that certainly was my experience. Not long after I moved to Wyoming to take up a position as DoM here in Jackson, and because it is so remote this forum has been my only contact with musicians ever since.

Thank you Fr. Skeris and CMAA.

This discussion calls to mind the words of that great musicologist Anna Russell about modern (atonal) music: "It makes me wonder if they're serious, or if they're trying to put one over on the audience."

As for Pierrot Lunaire, I love that piece. I've used some of those methods myself in secular pieces. However, imagining Sprechgesang (kind of like Rex Harrison's "singing" in My Fair Lady, only sinister, and in German) with the Proper texts is too bizarre for even the most outré Catholic composer. Or at least it should be . . . maybe it's been tried, but the attempt has faded into merciful oblivion.

Define, please, "contemporary style."

Exactly... We sometimes do use the psalms from the Gather hymnal - the broadway-style haugen-esque ones - as well as the more syncopated P&W style psalms from OCP's Spirit and Song. I'm just hoping for something similar that contains not only the psalms but a paraphrase of the actual antiphon.

Thanks Matthew - we don't have OneLicense and since we already have WLP, Licensing, and CCLI, I don't think we will be getting another one. That's the kind of thing I had in mind though