I'm a Mess

Between my organizational skills (my organization laziness?), the weather which wreaks havoc with rehearsal schedules, the particular problem of this week (donuts and a Box o' Joe were a grand idea though -- camaraderie building., so feel free to make use of my loft!) and my increasingly lousy memory, I failed to rehearse three items in our repertoire that I'd already noted were so perfect this week liturgy
practically demanded their programming.
And of course, I collected the Ippolitoff-Ivanoff after singing it last week, and it also is a psalm from this Sunday's Mass, so out it goes again.
Between that, the Routley and the Taize pieces ("All ya need is love!") and the trying to work in two favorites since this is our last chance to sing Alleluias for quite some time... well, my choir is good to put up with me. (Hence the bribe of beverage and pastry -- I OWE them donuts!)

The Routley "Of Love Divine" took a bit of time, but seems to have caught on now (and don't tell the copyright police -- I re-arranged the verses so that each line had the same"incipit" as in the other verses,) though not, of course, with the solidity of the Manz "E'en So." (That has become a chestnut that they misremember as having known for as long as all the Slovak goodies.)

The text and the form are so useful. I am hoping that I'll have the same success with the new Langlais. (The dissonances in that were not as pleasing to them on first try, but they are what I love about the verses.)
The Proulx arrangement of the Elizabethan (yes?) 84th psalm has taken longer to learn than I expected, but should pay off -- because no, much as I love it, we cannot make similar use of the Brahms.

And I was very glad that M. brought up his previously voiced complaint about new texts for old tunes.
It gave me a chance to state a few principles (I'll take homophones whose differentiation defeat me for $300, Alex.)
While I agree with him about stupid modernization (Joyful, joyful, we adore YOU,) and Male Pronounophobia, (what did someone call that? The Tonto Psalter? the same butchery is done to old hymns and carols,) an entirely new text for an old favorite tune is a different matter entirely.
So his complaint gave me a chance to express yet again that the text is paramount, that we need to try to match the text with the Propers, or at least with the theme of the scriptures of the day, and standard meters for new texts coupled with a tune the congregation already know and loves is the surest way to do this (especially since the Boss has a horror of new music that the people might not sing on the first try, and an equal horror of weekly, disposable, depleting-the-earth's-forests "worship aids." (I share the latter, abhor the former -- it, in effect, puts a liturgy committee, or a music director, or a pastor from twenty or more years ago in charge of programming decisions TODAY. "We can't do that! We've ALWAYS done this! We've never done it that way before! We don't KNOW that! And no one ever seem to hear the irony when I tell them that they didn't know what they know until they knew it...)

Well, well see how it goes this afternoon -- gad, I dread leaving the house in this weather, my very fingernails ache with the cold...

I am right glad, I should add, that a long ago decision was made that the Lenten ordinary must be the same as the Advent ordinary, "to highlight the connection between the two seasons." So since we did a Gregorian Agnus, and I continued it throughout the Christmas season, we will have ended the "chant is for penitential seasons" mind-set, AND used it for a large part of the year (since everyone know, the liturgical year lasts from September to June -- right? Catholics don't have to go to Mass when school is out, right?)