"The Thursday of Mysteries"

Isn't that a beautiful way to describe today?
I've only just learned it.

I appreciate that word "mysteries" used synonymously with "sacraments," very much.
At Eastern Rite liturgies I've always thrilled a bit at the phrase, "I will not reveal Your Mysteries to your enemies," as if we were suddenly plunged by the universality and sacred timeliness/timelessness of the Sacrifice into penal times, or the first century and were willing to die rather than betray the goings-on in the catacombs to the authorities.
One doesn't see it much in the West, although the sheet music from which I first learned the Bruckner Locus Iste translated sacramentum that way, IIRC.
This is, I promise you, not about aesthetic snobbery, but the music that will happen tonight at any of the Roman Catholic churches within reach will be so jarringly bad or inappropriate that I was casting about for an alternative, and my default Byzantine parish seems not to be having any liturgy tonight, can that be possible?
(Here, I can prove, at least to my own satisfaction that it's not snootiness on my part - if it were not a thousand miles away I would attend an Extraordinary Form Mass I used to hear with some regularity, where the propers that are not sung recto tono or to a psalm tone would be unrecognizable they would be rendered so badly, by a choir that included on singer with a voice like an electric cheese grater. The appropriate done badly by worshipers giving their best is more fitting than the inappropriate done well by worshipers giving their favorites.)
Anyway, I found a church, (of a rite that I don't know well at all,) whose bulletin gives a time for Liturgy of  Thursday of Mysteries.
(And between Holy Orders and Eucharist, and washing of the feet - do Easterners do that? dont know -  our evening will be filled with Mystery.)
Was this Father Hardon?

"A mystery is not a truth about which we can know nothing. It is a truth about which we cannot know everything."

A Hymn and My Happy Place

I think of myself as a fussy, quick-to-compare-and-criticize person, as do most who know me, and I truly am.

That is why it is such a marvelous state of affairs that a tiny and welcome surprise can make me happy all day - please join in a hymn of thanksgiving, number 34 in the missallette.

I think I would willingly and joyfully sing the words of a washing machine owner's manual to PICARDY.
Add to that tune the glorious translation of Gerard Moultrie of the ancient words from the Liturgy of St. James, and I am transported.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, And with fear and trembling stand; Ponder nothing earthly minded, For with blessing in His hand ,Christ our God to earth descendeth Comes our homage to demand. 

King of kings, yet born of Mary, As of old on earth He stood, Lord of lords, in human vesture, In the body and the blood; He will give to all the faithful His own self for heavenly food. 

Rank on rank the host of heaven Spreads its vanguard on the way, As the Light of light descendeth From the realms of endless day, Comes the powers of hell to vanquishAs the darkness clears away. 

At His feet the six winged seraph, Cherubim with sleepless eye, Veil their faces to the presence, As with ceaseless voice they cry: Alleluia, Alleluia Alleluia, Lord Most High!

It is a shame that those who pursue, perhaps favor, a liturgical minimalism are unaware that the most minimal of embellishment, the tiniest extra effort, lengthening the Mass by mere seconds, is often enough to lift it, and the spirits of the congregants into an entirely new realm.

'Stop Asking “Is the music religious?” Ask Rather, “Is the music liturgical?”

Terrific and surprisingly comprehensive column by Hilary Cesare on the musical tradition of which too many of us have been cheated.

Some of the most divisive conversations amongst Catholics today arise over music at Mass. Most arguments revolve around the style of music or the instrumentation. However, these arguments generally don’t focus much on the texts of the music. The majority of us have grown up in parishes that are unaware of or lacking an essential part of Church’s musical heritage: The Propers. We should stop asking “Is the music religious?” but rather, “Is the music (and its text) liturgical?” The Church assigns specific chants/texts to each day of the liturgical year, just as she assigns certain readings and psalms to each day of the year. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says that these scriptural, liturgical texts (called “the Propers”) are the ideal and most desirable thing to be sung at Mass (see GIRM 48, 74, 86-87). 

It is remarkable to me, how many otherwise well-informed  and zealous Catholic are COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF THEIR EXISTENCE.

I had been leading music at Masses for about five years before anyone ever introduced me to singing the Propers. I had studied them in Music History in college, but thought they must not apply to Novus Ordo Masses because I had never heard them in any parish or been asked to sing them. I had tried to prepare choirs with “sacred” or “traditional” music and hymns, but I felt like I had been cheated out of a great musical tradition that had been present in past centuries of the Church.

Well, no polemics from Miss Cesare, just information, gentle persuasion and a lively discussion begun in her combox.

Step by step!

"But the Birds... SIng"

Mons. [I don't care what Facebook says,] Charles Pope reflects most wonderfully on the voices of creation, and Joseph Ratzinger's proposition regarding them and the right order of our worship of the All in All.

As an unacceptably loud person, I know I have much to learn and much to accomplish in this regard.

It's a noisy world in which we live, and I find I seldom help to alleviate it.

Consider, then, this remarkable analysis by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, written back before the Internet and social media had turned up the volume even more. He paraphrases an insight by Gandhi, applies it to his analysis of our times, and then proposes a healing remedy to restore balance:

I would like to note a beautiful saying of Mahatma Gandhi … Gandhi refers to the three habitats of the cosmos and how each of these provides its own mode of being. The fish live in the sea, and they are silent. The animals of the earth scream and shout; but the birds, whose habitat is the heavens, sing. Silence is proper to the sea, shouting to the earth and singing to the heavens. Man has a share in all three of them. He carries the depths of the sea, the burden of the earth, and the heights of the heavens in himself. And for this reason, all three properties also belong to him: silence, shouting, and singing.
Today—I would like to add—we see only the shouting is left for the man without transcendence, since he only wants to be of the earth. …
The right liturgy, the liturgy of the Communion of the Saints, restores totality to him. It teaches him silence and singing again by opening him to the depths of the sea and teaching him to fly, the angels’ mode of being. It brings the song buried in him to sound once more by lifting up his heart. …
Right liturgy … liberates us from ordinary, everyday activity and returns to us once more the depths and the heights, silence and song … Right liturgy … sings with the angels … is silent with the expectant depths of the universe, and that is how it redeems the earth (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger Collected Works, Vol 11, Theology of the Liturgy, Ignatius Press, p. 460).

This is a remarkable analysis and application of liturgy and cosmology to the issues and imbalances of our day! It is in the vein of “Save the Liturgy, save the world.” For indeed, only in the worship of God do we find our true selves. Only in the liturgy is our true personality formed. The human person in his glory unites the material and spiritual orders. We are capable of pregnant, expectant silence; of the joyful shout of praise and the Gospel going forth; and of the song of Heaven.

Whacha lookin' at?

This is a piece about "great" hymns.

I agree with some choices, don't know others, (seemingly, from the author's choices, the list is complied out of a protestant experience,) actively dislike others, but  I find these kinds of lists to be very valuable -- when I was the go-to wedding guy for music at a parish, I was always very keen about trying to have the B & G program congregation music, particularly a congregational hymn somewhere if it was a mixed marriage - there are many protestant hymns that are fully compatible with Catholic theology, and it was the best way I could think of to make the ceremony respectful of another "faith tradition," to use the buzz word.

But I'm citing the article for another reason, a really fine turn of phrase, wording that is "neat," in the most basic sense of that word.

Truly excellent music angles our attention heavenward

Love that - "angles."
We're all looking at so many things, trying, actually to "multitask" by looking at man things at once.

And we're not "bad", we're not bad people because we're looking at that which is not the most important, it's HARD to focus correctly and and it's difficult to stay focused.

But the wrong POV,  the giving of attention to lesser matters, (much less to wrong things,)  is actually harmful. Harmful.

And sometimes all we need to do to eliminate risk of that harm, to give ourselves the right prospect, is to change the "angle."
Maybe only a degree or two? that may be sufficient! It could be that all you need to do is-

"Angle your attention heavenward!"

And liturgical music does that.
So the question is - what are you looking at?

And when truly excellent music angles our attention heavenward? It changes you. And when enough lovers of God collectively listen to the words and the music—it can cause a shift in the Body, the Church. It changes us.

"The Blood and Bone of the Liturgy"

Great metaphor, huh?

 "Sacred music is the blood and bone of the liturgy, the carrier of its organic life."

Dr Peter Kwasniewski has an excellent piece at New Liturgical Movement,

Sacred music is so massively and thoroughly important that it is hard to know where to begin. Music is the very language of the soul, its most intimate and exalted expression. Sacred music is the blood and bone of the liturgy, the carrier of its organic life, the texture of its being, the architecture of its prayer. If something goes wrong with music, as Plato saw long ago, the culture is lost. If something goes wrong with liturgical music, as Ratzinger saw so clearly, the cultus is depressed and devalued. It is like arguing about the sanctity of human life, or heterosexual marriage: if it isn’t obvious to you that a child is a person with dignity or that only a man and a woman can marry, then where can our argument go next? There are some things so basic, so close, so intimate, so all-pervasive, that we do not know where to begin, and once begun, we hardly know where to end. Music, and liturgical music, is just like that.

and I strongly urge everyone to read the entire piece, (I have that feeling of a kind of hopeless confusion over What To Do with my present situation in life, and I'm letting it spill over into everything else. I digress.)


Perhaps even more important to read is the comment by a gentleman named Thorfinn, (sounds a little Tolkeiny, doesn't it?)

I think part of the 'middle ground' you're missing is the pool of faithful Catholics who would like to rediscover traditional music but who think a motet is a very small something your neighbor may have in his eye. (I just looked up the definition but am no wiser.) If pastors & music directors have formed "battle lines", we're innocent bystanders excited to rediscover traditional Catholic hymns... but who understand Gregorian Chant as something monks do that used to come on CDs. Nearly every Reform of the Reform item calls for an "Idiot's Guide" for those of us on the other side of the generational gap.

I have found, more often than not, that anyone established in a position of any authority, a pastor, a DRE, a choir director, any of these who is ignorant of the Church's musical patrimony and the rubrics and theology that govern its current use is willfully ignorant, and too intent on defending his fiefdom to consider becoming better informed.
He or she would spend a fortune and take endless workshops about what GIA is peddling regarding handbell choirs before picking up and reading an article about the propers.

But your average choir member, or PIP? people like Thorfinn?
THAT'S where we can make a difference, people who already know and love the Lord's liturgy, but have the sense that something isn't quite right, something needs to be fixed.

A Once Thought Endangered[?] Species, Rising Like the Phoenix

No, nothing to do with poor Cecil.... though it is Cecilian, after a fashion.

I am not a subscriber, but Church Times, (British and Anglican church, that is,) has a piece on the resurgence of plainchant, (the "oldest continuously sung repertoire in Western Europe." Was the qualifier of "Europe" necessary?)  that others may wish to, and have the means to, read.
It is in reference to Christopher Hodkinson reflecting on the publication by the RSCM of a guide to plainchant, and a revision of a work by Dr Mary Berry, .(all bow.. eh, Scott? :oD) whose current successor Mr Hodkinson is (not sure how many others in the years intervening...).
He also had this to say, about a Mass in Barking, (a place name I admit to having always loved) -

There are rare moments in life when we are privileged to see the world not merely as it is, but as it could be.
One such was a rainy Sunday morning a few months ago, when I was able to attend Mass in a parish I hadn’t visited before. By the time Mass began the church was packed full, with close to three hundred people present, including many families with children (fifty of the younger ones went out to the Sunday School during the Liturgy of the Word). A team of about eight boys processed with the priest to the altar, carrying candles and incense.
During the Introit, as at the Offertory and Communion, the small choir chanted the Proper texts of the day in English using Adam Bartlett’s Simple English Propers with light organ accompaniment. The music for the antiphon was provided to the congregation so that they could join in, but there was also time at each of these points to sing good, time-honoured hymns. As Mass continued, the priest sang his words to the tunes in the Roman Missal, and the congregation responded confidently. The Ordinary of the Mass was sung in Latin chant: Mass XI (Orbis factor) rather than the more widely-known Missa de Angelis. The strength of the congregational singing suggested deep familiarity with the Gregorian melodies, and this was demonstrated in stunning fashion at the Alleluia, where the whole congregation joined the choir in singing one of the authentic Gregorian Alleluia tones, complete with its melismatic jubilus.
Considered from an artistic point of view, the Mass demonstrated a pleasing aesthetic unity: a happy marriage of English and Latin chants and with some familiar hymns interspersed. In other words, the music served the liturgy, and was for the most part an integral part of it, so that the aesthetic experience was also a liturgical experience. The essential key to achieving this was the priest singing of his parts: the sung dialogue between priest and congregation impressing silently upon us that music was the medium by which the words of the liturgy became the praise of Almighty God.
Where, you might wonder, was this remarkable parish, this model of good liturgical praxis? This was a typical Sunday at St Mary and St Ethelburga, Barking.
At first sight Barking might seem like an unlikely venue for the scene I have described. The church is a modest brick building constructed in the 1970’s, with pews on three sides of the altar and a leaky roof. The congregation I saw was as diverse as any in the country; people who might be described as ‘White, British’ were certainly a minority, and the parish could hardly be described as wealthy. The choir consisted of a handful of faithful volunteers, led by an organist who helps out playing sacred music on Sunday mornings even though his real métier is jazz piano on Saturday nights. Perhaps the only indisputably excellent feature of the church is its small pipe organ, a chamber instrument with a lovely tone which was donated to the church some years ago.
If you are familiar with English parish life you will already realise—it could hardly be otherwise—that the liturgical achievements of the parish are largely due to the tireless work over many years of the parish priest, Fr William Young. Possessed of few resources and largely self-taught, he has nevertheless achieved a genuine realisation of the spirit of the liturgy in his parish; a celebration that is at once genuinely inclusive, culturally rooted and faithful to the practice of the Church.
If this can be achieved in Barking, it is hard to see why it cannot be achieved everywhere.

Also, word of a workshop

Sacred Music Workshop in Georgia

A Summer Sacred Music Workshop, a collaborative effort between parishes in response to the pastoral plan of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, will be held at Our Lady of the Mountains Roman Catholic Church in Jasper, Georgia, on August 15, the Assumption.
Go to this page to register, sound excellent, wish I could attend.

Workshop Highlights:

• Training in Gregorian Chant under professional church musicians, with choices of a chant class for beginners, and courses for advanced men or women.
• Keynote lecture by Rev. David Carter, JCL, entitled: Re-discovery of the Church’s Sacred Tradition: II Kings 22
• A panel discussion on the Liturgy and Sacred Music
• Choral experience with one of the two choirs; a beginning polyphony choir or a choir for more experienced singers.
• A Sung Mass in the Novus Ordo where you can apply what you learn.
• A music packet including all the chants, motets and other helpful resources.

(A plea to the organizers, one that I always make at the CMAA Colloquium - any materials that are not copyrighted, hand-outs, texts of talks, etc - make them available on you web-site, please? Brick by brick, as they say, in this way you can nurture sacred music via persons in parishes that are not able to have someone in attendance.)
p.s. I'd go if possible just to gaze upon this, well done, Beyer Studio!!!!!!-

"Dignity, Majesty and Prodigious Richness”

A parish in Colorado honored their patroness with  newly composed polyphonic music.
(Perhaps a full set of propers for Our Lady of Mount Carmel, not sure from the article, or how precise the author is with her terms.)
This sort of grass roots re-enchantment of our liturgies is what, ultimately, will succeed.
Th two composers,

decided to draw on the Church’s sacred music tradition to celebrate its feast day.
They drew on the polyphony sounds of the Renaissance, known in the musical world as the height of perfection for liturgical music. The sound adds a “dignity, majesty and prodigious richness” to the Mass, Venerable Pope Pius XII wrote in his 1955 encyclical Sacred Music....
“We can write music in the 21^th century that’s just as beautiful,”

Amen!

"Father" Benedict?

Alan Holdren has an article at Catholic News Agency about Papa Ratz's summer plans.
An honorary doctorate from the Pontifical University of John Paul II and its music academy, for Benedict’s “great respect for musical tradition of the Church” and “special concern for the noble beauty of sacred music and its proper place in the celebration of the sacred liturgical rites of the Church.”
Nice.
But this took me by surprise-

Benedict XVI – who now goes by “Fr. Benedict”

Who knew?

The Food of Love? Then Morricone is a Master Chef!

Shakespeare seems to have meant sexual love when he described music as "the food of love," but there are so many more, and greater kinds of love, aren't there?
And there is music that can be, in a small way, source and summit for them.
There is no question that music can stir the emotions, (melt the heart, as Aquinas might say,) or that music, singing specially is the natural outpouring of the expression of these various loves.

True liturgical music must be our love song to God.

I was watching a movie on tv last weekend, didn't realize the entire thing would not be broadcast then and there, (going out, have to ask Himself to DVR the final part tonight.)
Knew nothing about this biopic of Padre Pio 'til I turned it on.
I am generally leery of foreign films on EWTN, they are sometimes rather cheesy, even second -rate, sorry to say, if it's a subject that interests me I'll stick it out, but...

And here's another matter, because of the way all but American films generally record sound, there's a real distancing that occurs, with me at any rate, I have trouble really engaging - the artificiality is more pronounced, the voices less "present" seem less real, and sometimes the dubbing is just plain bad either in acting or synchronicity.
At my most pretentious in artsy student days I probably saw more foreign films than I did Hollywood product, so I learned to usually disregard this, (the way I did static on the radio, or the sound of vinyl, or the fighting of my brothers three feet away while I was reading, ;oD) but it's still a thing.

Anyway, this started out pretty well done, I liked the gruffness of the actor in the title role, I liked the depiction of the dangers of cult of personality, I liked that for a, literal, hagiography it wasn't hagiographic, someone had put real effort into the voice casting.... and then the music welled up and I thought, "Well, A picture, A+ picture production values!"

And so it was - a quick check on IMDB revealed that the score was by none other than the peerless Ennio Morricone.

What a treasure this man is!

I have bemoaned for years and years, why doesn't HE write for the Church? why hasn't HE composed Masses and Vespers and Hymns? why won't HE...? 

And now I learn that he has, at long last!
Thank you, Papa Francesco, thank you, Society of Jesus, for inspiring that!

(Have to go listen to it now...)

Adventures In Progressive Solemnity, Long Form

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend a Mass in the Extraordinary Form recently.

Generally, although one is offered in my diocese every weekend, the distance and timing, and my own Sunday obligations are such that I instead seek a musicless Mass.

My husband, a late in life convert to Catholicism, was raised by a Mother who, Methodist or not, understood the concept of the "Sunday Obligation;" and at the time he and I arrived at an understanding, we usually attended two services every Sunday morning, (a Mass and whatever protestant church in the area gave promise of the best music,) so he was a very experienced church-goer by the time he was received into the Church.

The first time we attended a Mass with no singing or instrumental music whatsoever, he was taken aback, he had never before encountered any kind of Christian worship which did not include singing.

He hated it!

How could you praise God without bursting into song?

We continued in our nomadic life to seek musical excellence where we could find it, but gradually his hunger for the Eucharist eclipsed his musical preferences, and as he grew to understand the level to which liturgical music has sunk in many places, (Protestant as well as Catholic, I might add,) he embraced the quiet Mass.

We settled for a time in a parish that had a not too bad music program.

When I became involved in a "liturgy committee", (mea culpa,) they were in the process of trying to introduce music into the single quiet Mass in the entire town of five Catholic churches, and the congregants were fighting them tooth and nail.

The PIPs, for the most part, refused to pick up hymnals, and kept their jaws clenched.

Someone on the committee bemoaned the fact, and I repeated the complaint I had heard regarding the choice of hymns, which were puerile, to put it mildly; TPTB had supposed that what was needed as an ice-breaker were "easy" songs, so with no change from week to week, they were asking people to sing the stuff programmed at school Masses.

Over and over.

They knew whom I was quoting, so obviously the PIPs were trying to, forgive the paradox, make their voices heard.

I suggested instead of inserting fairly arbitrary songs, they start with the dialogues and the Our Father, maybe the alleluia before the Gospel.

Blank looks.

You know, (I had probably just learned this phrase,) “progressive solemnity.”

More blank looks.

Like it suggests in Musicam Sacram? A document of Vatican Council?

Oh, well, maybe, they all agreed, even the priests, that that might be the way to go - until they realized that "dialogue" meant singing initiated by the celebrant or other minister.

Nope, they just wanted the people to sing more.

Mind you, all of our priests had fine voices and could either read music very well, (including square-note, I later learned,) or were very good natural musicians who could pick up anything by ear.

But having drunk deeply of the spirits of Vatican, Too, they, (with the agreement or even insistence of their lay colleagues,) were intent upon getting the people to "do" more, not altering their own approach to celebrating Mass.

Eventually I was offered a music/choir director position.

(I had had one years before, while I was still in school, but this was so long ago that it was in the period when the job was picking out 4 hymns that used some of the same words as the readings and posting the numbers. The less said about it, the better.)

In this new position I tried to steer things toward a less preference-centric choice of music, but the deeply-ingrained, three generation long, choir culture; competing ethnic and language needs; and the power structure of rectory/school/religious ed office required constant negotiations.

Returned for a visit after we moved, discovered that some practices I had pressed for for years unsuccessfully had finally been adopted, ( singing the verbum Domini dialogues,) others which I had instituted had been discarded, (the Exultet as written, sung Sequences when called for,) and others which only began under my short tenure, not without push-back, were acknowledged as "the way we've always done it,"(singing the Lectionary psalm.)

The parish where I now find myself has a well-meaning but slap-dash approach to liturgical music and liturgy in general.

I have found other ways to contribute, and enjoy the lowest and earliest of Sunday

Since I am no longer responsible, or even much effected by any musical planning, for over three years I have thought of myself as taking R & R from the front lines of the Liturgy Police Action, (it's not a war!)

.............................

When I've worked in a parish setting, TPTB were always slightly Latin-phobic, so obviously only Ordinary Form for Mass or LotH. Convincing them that what they wanted to sing, or were accustomed to sing weren't necessarily the most important things to sing, and that the Church actually gave us guidance on this, (apart from what our diocesan OoW put out,) was like pulling teeth.

Instead of Progressive Solemnity, we were fortunate to even be able to achieve a sort of Regressive Triviality.

I have taken part in Extraordinary Form Masses with great joy, at Colloquia and when I have found myself in the environs of St John Cantius, or had the opportunity to attend one for which Jenny Donelson's schola sang; and I have even been happy to have the chance to hear the traditional Mass when neither the priest nor the musicians, nor we faithful in the pews seemed very sure of who should do what when.

I even accidentally attended Mass at a schismatic chapel, before I knew there were such people and places, and I give thanks for, and "enjoyed" that.

I have never had any musical responsibilities at these, (other than singing as told at CMAA functions,) so never thought much about what is supposed to be done.

I generally position myself near someone who seem confident of his postures and gestures, whose hand missal looks well-loved, and copy him.

But I have realized that there is very little consistency from place to place.

(The first clue that I had was the PBC notation about "IF the confiteor is said again, turn to pg 25," or some such.)

Some places one priest reads the Lesson and Gospel in English while another reads them quietly in Latin, others the vernacular follows the "real" scripture. Some places the PIPs kneel for the entire time except the Gospel and homily. Some everyone recites the Gloria along with the celebrant. One priest stopped in mid-Pater noster to silence the people who were singing along with him, another practically conducted us to sing along.

I was given to understand that this is all because, in the day, there really were no rubrics for the people.

But the rubrics for the musicians are pretty clear, I had thought, especially the distinctions between solemn, sung and read Mass, a la Musica Sacra.

But even these seem to be a source of confusion.

The organist at one parish told me she and her choir "just do what Father wants," and there are four different "Fathers" who might show up on a moments notice.

The Mass I attended Sunday was lovely, and profoundly prayerful.

I found myself entering into it such that I was saved from playing Liturgy Scorekeeper, (a more passive role that Liturgy Police,) no ticking off boxes, wondering why so and so did such and such.

It was only after Mass that I thought, hmmm, 2 Latin motets and one English anthem, or that was nice, that little organ filler, sounds like Rossini, and then repeat the anthem, or, gee, only one voice to a part, none of them very strong but sweet polyphony, or wait a minute, they only sang some of the Gregorian Ordinary, and we all spoke the rest together, didn't we?

It all seemed, it felt appropriate.

Were they, perhaps, applying principles of progressive solemnity from Musicam Sacram to the EF, taken advantage of the provision for varying "degrees" of sung Mass?

And why shouldn't they?

That might sound flip, or combative, but it's really not.

IRL I have no access to anyone particularly knowledgeable about this, and I thank God every day for Those InterWebs.

But the internet is full of Facts that Everybody Knows - that aren't true.

And there often seem to be differences of opinion as to what pronouncements are descriptive and what prescriptive.

I thought I had learned that Musicam Sacram does not apply to the EF, (though of course there are some who try to insist it doesn't apply to the Novus Ordo... who, pray tell, would they be?)

I was startled to learn, (but I am ignorant - people who keep up on these things also seemed startled to learn,) in the comment box of this several month old thread at New Liturgical Movement, which addresses these very questions, that a book of rubrics for the old Mass is available online. The date of publication is 1960, but would it be in effect for the 1962 Missal?

A lot of the conversation there of course is simply opinion - leaned, informed opinion, but not really helpful for those who might be preparing sing half take baby steps in preparing music for liturgy.

It doesn't matter to me right now so much what the Church should have asked of us as what She does ask.

I want to know what's what, and what ought to be, and what ought not -- because I have a premonition, or at least a hope, that I might need to know.

What “legitimate diversity” is there in the Extraordinary Form?

"Forget the 1960s – it is time the Church once again embraced new music in the liturgy"

When did She ever stop?
 From Matthew Schellhorn in the British "Catholic Herald":

To think of “contemporary music” in Catholic worship brings to mind the clearly hastily written and often very poor quality contributions of the 60s and 70s still in use in some places as a meagre alternative to anything of real artistic value. The waters are muddied here by an agenda that extols a particular kind of congregational “active participation”, meaning that in general musical offerings by modern composers – mostly written for the laity to have some part in – have to be supplied at the level of the lowest common denominator.
......As a means of breaking the deadlock I would say that the place of contemporary music in the Sacred Liturgy must be re-evaluated. New and imaginative music should certainly not be cast aside simply owing to bad experience....
This week, the winner of a new prize for sacred music composition I founded was announced. The brief was to write a Eucharistic motet for four parts, thereby precluding monophonic or simplistic entries rivalling Gregorian chant and furthermore requiring the use of capable musicians for performance. I was pleased to receive interest from composers all over the world, hungry to write for the Church and seeking opportunities for their God-given skills to be recognised and valued. I and the panel of judges can testify that the quality of entries was consistently high. The winner is a young composer from the Wirral, Marco Galvani, who has a bright future ahead of him; his piece, Ecce Quam Bonum, will be premiered at St Mary Moorfields in the City of London on Holy Saturday.

Looking forward to hearing it.
Meanwhile, I have what I have as I live where I live.

Funeral Wishes, Funeral Liturgies, Funeral Music

If you are reading this, and haven't already done so, I urge you to make your wishes known to someone who is in a position to see to it that your desires are accomplished, (and if you are a member of a liturgical denom, check with TPTB to insure that the are appropriate, or at least judged so  now. Thinks change.)

At my old parish we often encountered lapsed, apostate or functionally pagan survivors who really didn't care that Aunt Millicent was a daily communicant, they weren't going to put up with any of that priestly mumbo jumbo, nice flowers and some jokey family reminiscence at a funeral parlor would do, well, okay, ya call yourself reverend or father? no mind, you can come along and say some words if ya want.

Wait, what's this going to cost us?

This despite the fact that my parish put a great deal of effort into funerals and never took a fee for a parishioner's or a parishioner's dear ones obsequies.

Cardinal Egan's send-off will, I presume take his stated wishes into account.

One final point: Asked what he would like played at his own funeral, Egan answered:

I didn't expect that question, and let me tell you what I would do if I had the opportunity. And, I would say that if it ever were possible for me to choose what it would be, it would be the Perosi Requiem. I don't know what'll happen, but if they did have the Perosi Requiem, it would be wonderful.

As far as much of Perosi's output is concerned, IMO, Catholic ceremonial was deprived 
unceremoniously of it in the wake of the Changes, in a baby and bathwater kinda way.

(The "Changes"? the Bride of Christ going through menopause? Hmmmm, may have to explore that idea, picking my way through the minefield of sacrilege that is Ecclesialogical metaphor....)

THE LITURGICAL YEAR, but the Very Rev. Dom Posper Gueranger

As someone who badly misses the old card catalogues of my remote youth, I may easily be known as someone frequently distracted, often off task, and occasionally oblivious to something important that is.... in another car on my train of thought, (a train most susceptible to accidental uncoupling....)

Did I know that Gueranger's great work was available online? (I think I downloaded a kindle edition once that proved was not very useful because of some quirk or other, and this format is more useful to me.)
I do put a bit more effort into talking about the liturgical year with my CCD charges than I recall anyone ever doing with me, because the idea of seasons, and the Both/And rhythms of Catholic life seem to strike a chord with several of them. (Well, who's not going to like the idea of feasting before the Lenten fast, especially when it means chocolate?)

I've only ever read bits and pieces of it, always thought i should, and now it would be for pure love of knowledge of the subject since i am not nor probably ever shall again be charged with parish music direction.
So should I stop wanting actual books?
 I'm trying to divest myself of music, articles, books, etc. that were very hard found and acquired, (in some case, thank you eBay, hard won,) just a few years ago, but now virtually blooming, to be had for the plucking.

That's too many silly metaphors trains and flowers, and I digress... anyway, if I ever wanted it, there it is -
Let me be wise, let me fill up that harmony!

Liturgical prayer would soon become powerless were the faithful not to take a real share in it, or at least not to associate themselves to it in heart. It can heal and save the world, but only on the condition that it be understood. Be wise, then, ye children of the Catholic Church, and obtain that largeness of heart which will make you pray the prayer of your mother. Come, and by your share in it fill up that harmony which is so sweet to the ear of God.

A Tidbit from the Fine Liturgical Composer, oh heck, leave out "liturgical", Fine COMPOSER, period, Colin Mawby

From Mr. Mawby's recnet newsletter, (you ought to subscribe):

Q I recently attend a Requiem Mass at which all the traditional plainchant was sung and the Celebrant wore black vestments. The atmosphere was awe-inspiring. Do you feel that the Catholic Church has suffered in trying to make its Requiem liturgy “user-friendly”?   JT, Italy

A Indeed I do. The old Requiem Mass was incomparable. It had dignity and a deep sense of prayer – one felt in touch with the next world. We should try and re-introduce these noble qualities into the contemporary funeral service.

Funding of Music Education

I have no opinion on this at all, as I do not know what the schema is that is currently in place in Britain, ("hubs"?) nor what the alternatives are.

It just make me happy that the greatest deliberative body in the land talks about the issue, and that members of the hierarchy, (of an established church, of course,) know it to be a worthy subject of debate.

Can you imagine a member of the USCCB, maybe from the CDW testifying before a US congressional committee on the practical implementation of a national music plan?
I can't.

Without music, particularly without music in worship, we are only half human. Our children deserve their schools to open the treasure chest for them afresh in each generation.

The Evangelical Power of Beauty

Over at Amy Welborn's "Charlotte Was Both" she has a post called 7 Quick Takes, which I take it is a regular feature. (Haven't visited her blog in quite a while and had forgotten which name was current, AAMOF.)

Tried to comment on one of the "takes," talking about the Colloquium, and mildly chiding the typical, (both of non-musicians and of instrumentalists,) mild slur of failing to acknowledge that singers are musicians whose instruments happen to be built in.

One of the other takes was about a concert, alas, not Mass, at the cathedral:

Speaking of music in our cathedral, this past Monday the cathedral hosted the debut performance of a new (independent) music group in town, the Highland Consort, specializing in Renaissance Polyphony. It was a stunning performance. We sat in the rear of the main center aisles, which were full, it seemed to me.
As I sat there, I listened and I also watched people listening. And I thought, “This is evangelization.“ Because why? Because there during that hour you have a few hundred people sitting in a Catholic church listening to Catholic sacred music (the program had all the lyrics in Latin and English – easily understood), and you could see people, as the music flowed over them, letting their gaze wander around the church.
They watched the ensemble, but that’s not all they saw. Their heads turned, their necks craned as they looked around at the saints in the stained glass, up at the ceiling painting, over at the paintings of the sacramental symbols in the sanctuary, at the altar, the statues of Mary, Joseph, St. John Vianney and St. Paul…there were not only in a church, but they were in the midst of the Church, surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, some silent, some beautifully audible, past and present, transcending time and space, surrounded by the proclamation of the Good News in visual art, music, symbol, structure and hospitality, and guess what….all were welcome.

Beautiful music, in a beautiful place.  It seems like such a simple concept, albeit not so simply applied, we must admit.
But the idea itself seems obvious -- why is it so hard to get some people to acknowledge it?

The last three words of the quote had me started on an altogether different post, but I resist the temptation.
Let me just say, the recently ended synod has given rise to posts, and editorials and articles all over - what about ME? why didn't the bishops mention MY situation? I don't want special attention, I just want a little special attention.

Feelings can't be argued with, if you feel "unwelcomed," you feel unwelcomed.

But there are people who make a hobby of it....

Hurry and get your Pumpkin Spice Latte Mass, available for a short time only!

Someone over at the MusicaSacra Forum brought up the "Rebuilt" program, which, to paraphrase, tell parihses that they  need a worship program not a music program.

Well, thanks, the OHCA Church already has a "worship program," and it's called "Ordo Missae."

Seriously, if we're going to follow some outside model, we'd do better to pattern ourselves after a successful corporation, Microsoft, or Starbucks, or GM, or something, big profits (at least for a time, on paper,) enormous growth, (at least for a time, on paper,) lots of happy customers, (at least for a time, on paper.)

'Cause, you know..... bottom line.

Come to think of it, why not the iMass, the McDonald's Happy Mass, the limited edition F/W 2014 Mass Collection featuring a collaboration between Karl Lagerfeld and Target?

This could be the year of the Pumpkin Spice Mass!

"Outward Signs", Beauty Pointing Us Toward Goodness and Truth

Wonderful site, lately I'm discovering all sorts of marvels that have been around, but I missed though my careless searching skills.
Look at this, a perfect Memorial Day, or Remembrance Day  object for meditation and really, devotion.

Oh, hell, perfect today as the entire world is contemplating war, and the possible justice of it.

It's not a style I think I have encountered in Church, (nor would I this painting, it is located in a museum, I believe,)  but it would not be out of place in a chapel, I think.

Where was it, Cardiff? where the cathedral, (C of E,) had great variety in its decoration, ornament and embellishment, much of which co-existed in a way likely to excite top prayer, and some of it just.... well, Jesus on a Spaceship was jarring, beyond ugly.

But I have been doing a bit of soul-searching about beauty and pleasure in regard to the art of the Faith.

I want my positions to be principled, not preference-based.

Someone wants us to help the kids "make their own Mass," and I interrupted to disagree a little too precipitously... okay, a lot too precipitously.
Maybe rudely.

Of course the entire notion of  "creating" the Liturgy, rather than receiving it is problematic, and I don't think the person doing the suggesting knew enough about the subject to be aware of that.
The message that even talking in such terms send is dangerous.

 But I'm also cognisant that the Mass should be "attractive" and different people are attracted by different expressions of beauty.

Here's the thing -- say you're a searcher, a lurker, a fallen-away, a youthful rebel, whatever....
Say you are not a regular, committed believer.
And say something is designed with bringing you in to Mass in mind.

The art, whether visual or musical or oratorical, that lures you in to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass must then convince you, not to like it, not to say to yourself, wow, I'd come to hear/see this again.

It must help convince you that you can do without it, that even in the complete absence of what you "like", even in the presence of something that you hate, that actively repels you -- that even then, the Mass itself is something you can not do without, that you will not let your preferences deprive you of it, that you would come no matter what.

If it doesn't point you towards this truth, that the Mass is so important, so life-giving, so necessary --  that even with having to tolerate the My Little Pony Mass, or the world's ugliest felt banners, or the priest who thinks he's auditioning to replace Seth McFarland on Comedy Central's roasts, or a choir singing dismally flat Gregorian chant, or a neighboring pew sitter with B.O., or the loudest drummer in seventeen states assaulting -- even then, you must have it, you must go, you cannot do without the Mass, the Mass itself. -- if it doesn't form you such that you would forgo your preferred music or style rather than forgo the Mass, that you would brave things you despise and hurt your head and make your teeth itch in order to have the Mass, then it is bad and inappropriate, no matter how much you "like"  it.

And not just the Mass, but the part of it, the essence of it that you can get there and only there, you must be brought to understand and believe fervently that you would put up with anything in order to have that aspect of it.

And that is why, since fellowship, music, preaching, even -sorry, but I have come to believe this - even the scripture readings, since all of that is something you can get or do somewhere else - if any of those don't point you toward Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, they are useless, worse than useless, they are a distraction.

And for too long, Catholics have been acting as if we were Tiffany's trying to lure in custom with "Free Coffee and Donuts!"
We have a precious jewel, and we've been shrieking like barkers, and passing out popcorn.

Christ in the Eucharist is that precious jewel, the Pearl of Great Price for which we should be willing to do and dare anything.
And we cannot have Him so completely, so intimately any other way.