mcb wrote:But DS has changed the rhythm - the "O" is on the upbeat and "Lord" is a dotted minim. It'll never catch on!
Agree with this absolutely. And did anyone notice that in "Sing a new song" he's changed "Yahweh's people shout for joy" to "Shout with gladness, shout for joy" when the veriest imbecile can work out that "All God's people shout for joy" is a perfectly acceptable substitute.
It all goes to point out the dangers of trying to adapt things which are engrained (the Americans would say "ingrained") deep in people's memories. The same problems will arise when/if people start trying to adapt existing Mass settings to the new texts, if they ever actually happen. People will simply sing the old version without thinking. It's what comes naturally. We're going to need to jettison a lot of good stuff and ask composers to write new things. Pray hard that the Holy Spirit can relieve us of the awful mess that threatens if this comes to pass.....
Southern Comfort wrote:It all goes to point out the dangers of trying to adapt things which are engrained (the Americans would say "ingrained") deep in people's memories.
No one puts new words into old wordskins; otherwise the new words will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new words must be put into fresh wordskins.
As Jesus almost said in the synoptic Gospels (but sounding suspiciously like Humph introducing one song to the tune of another). Luke, tellingly nearly adds
And no one after singing old words desires new words, but says, “The old is good.”
Much as I am very happy to have this directive, having read the letter from the CDW I think they're being a bit harsh:
Card Arinze wrote: Not withstanding such a clear norm [in Liturgiam authenticam], in recent years the practice has crept in of pronouncing the God of Israel's proper name.
In fact the practice crept in way before LA came out as Dan Schutte's reflection linked from the OCP site points out. LA states that new translations should avoid using the tetragrammaton, and makes no mention of current translations. It is one the these translations, the JB (itself authorised by Rome) that started the practice, being faithful to the original Hebrew in using the name of God in print. The problem was simply that we didn't have the tradition of substituting the word when reading it aloud, because previous translations made the substitution for us (and in my opinion lessening the richness of the text in the process)
For the CDW to imply we've been disobedient in using YHWH is not really the case. Misguided maybe, but not disobedient.
Last Sunday we sang what I believe is a Scottish paraphrase of Psalm 22 (23). It began, "My shepherd is the living Lord, Jehovah is his name". To the best of my knowledge not one soul passed any comment on this text, and that includes the highly knowledgeable members of our choir. Lectors, however, have been fully primed to substitute "the Lord" for all occurrences of Yahweh in scripture readings.
We have used it as 'This is what the Lord asks of you' transferring the minim to 'Lord'. It worked well especially as it was for a Confirmation with a service booklet.
