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Friday 22 January 2010

"The Worship of the Singers"

If only all the discouraged Catholic music directors and choristers and organists could know and embrace this! The great Dr.Mahrt writing about sung Vespers:
Attendance at vespers is pretty sparse; at first this was a disappointment, but I became reconciled with the fact that the Divine Office is principally the worship of the singers; [emphasis added] it is conducted without congregation in many monasteries. Among the benefits are a radically different sense of the psalm texts of the Mass propers for the singers, which comes from chanting whole psalms regularly, as well as a much expanded view of what the liturgy is about.
Thomas Day, IIRC, says something similar in reference to the praying of the Seven Last Words, I believe.

(Gaude [sp?] in reference to the time it was taking to build his masterpiece - something like, my client is patient and has all the time in the world, it expresses a similar, deeper understanding of for Whom we should do what we do.)

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