Category: Liturgy and Music

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.

The Abbey of Solesmes web site shows the first volume of a new Antiphonale Monasticum (description in French) available.
The three-volume set is to be a successor to the 1934 Antiphonale: it is designed for Benedictine communities, presenting the Office in chant “in a renewed form conforming to the liturgical principles promulgated by Vatican II”: that is, consistent with the Liturgia Horarum, and approved by the CDW in February.
The first volume includes the Ordinary parts of the Office and the seasonal propers, while the remaining volumes will present the offices for feasts and saints’ days. Hymns are not included, as they are in the already published Liber Hymnarius.
The editors of the book have placed a fifteen-page article about it on-line (sorry, it’s in .doc format), describing the principles and choices guiding the work. There are some changes in notation, particularly in the abandonment of certain markings invented early in the 20th century: the dot or mora vocis, the vertical episema, and the horizontal episema. The result is that a lot of rhythmic interpretation that once seemed standardized will now be left to the discretion of the chant master.
If you’re interested in getting a copy, please note: some people are reporting that credit-card sales are not being accepted (successfully) by the Solesmes web site, but if you request direct billing, the order does go through.

Come, Holy Spirit, and send down from heaven the ray of your light.
Come, father of the poor, come, giver of gifts, come, light of the hearts.
Best consoler, sweet host of the soul, sweet refresher.
Rest in work, cooling in heat, comfort in crying.
Oh most blessed light, fill the innermost hearts of your faithful.
Without your power nothing is in man, nothing innocent.
Clean what is dirty, water what is dry, heal what is wounded.
Bend what is rigid, heat what is cold, lead what has gone astray.
Grant to your faithful who trust in you, your sevenfold holy gift.
Grant us the reward of virtue, grant us final salvation, grant us eternal joy.

Last night we had a tough rehearsal. We were polishing up the Palestrina “O Rex Gloriae” for this Sunday and working on the Victoria “Veni Sancte Spiritus” for double choir.
I was missing 6 out of the 7 basses I had so I moved the lone bass up to the front row where I could sing his part along with him. A straggler from the bass section finally arrived 45 minutes into rehearsal, and I said, “Come on down! You’re the next contestant on ‘The Notes are Wrong!'”

For those who’ve never heard or sung the hymn “Long Live the Pope“, seminarian Bryan Jerabek has posted a scanned copy suitable for parish use. Somehow I hadn’t heard it before, but at the German parish in Boston, the music director has: we sang verses 1 and 4.
Enjoy!