For tradition-minded music pros, adverse decisions are no big surprise, so here's a milestone in my development as a church musician: I've been fired for the first time! Well, really it would be correct to say I've been laid off.
The suburban parish near my home welcomed me and some fellow volunteers to sing a Sunday Mass with Gregorian chant monthly, starting last September, but when the parish's new building addition opens this summer, the Mass schedule is being cut from 9 services each weekend down to 5, and we are being cut along with it.
It's understandable that the music director wants to allocate the 20 Sunday Masses per month to the groups she's trying to foster. She's doing the best she can, one must assume. The result is the parish's loss, however, as our 4th-Sunday service became known as "the Mass with the really good music".
I'm going to meet with the pastor to give him a chance to tell me in person. He's a decent enough guy, and looked genuinely embarrassed when I ambushed him halfway up a flight of stairs today. It'll be an opportunity to find out what sort of feedback he got from the priests and the congregation. It'll all be indirect feedback, since despite his enthusiastic welcome, he never actually scheduled himself to celebrate the Masses for which we sang.
We'll be "on duty" this Sunday evening at 6 for our last time.
I'm sorry to hear that. You might think one of the choirs would welcome an opportunity to take a break and/or have more rehearsal time.
Maybe the people will miss the Mass with the good music, and this won't be the end. I certainly hope so.
Sounds like the staff is managing the pastor, rather than the other way around.
A similar thing happened to our traditional group when our parish opened its larger building (=fewer Masses). Enough people (still don't really know who) complained to the pastor that we got offered First Friday evenings as a regular thing. We also end up doing a lot of the daytime Masses for Holy Days because no one else can (?wants to) do them. Don't despair though. Perhaps a door is opening elsewhere and you just haven't seen it yet.
Man - I am sorry to hear that, RC. It's good you're holding the pastor's feet to the fire though.
I am also sorry to hear this, and like Jenny I'm hoping a door is going to open somewhere else - or perhaps right there, in time - and may it be sooner, rather than later. Puts me in mind of *Why Catholics Can't Sing*, by Thomas Day, a very depressing book.
RC: I've heard you sing at HT and you are truly gifted and with your volunteering at the local parish, you are performing a service to all those Catholics who've never had the beautiful experience of hearing traditional chant.
Sounds like the director has some sort of agenda and you've been shunted aside for the children's choir. Sad.