The Graduale Parvum (Continuum)

[Eastern Promise]

I'm all for the widest possible definition of chant. Football chant, for example. Why shouldn't that have a rightful place in our liturgy, eh? After all, there are many Catholics who are football fans, eh? I remember hearing 'Sing Hosanna to the King of Kings' being adapted to the praise of a football player, and I just thought, thank god all these sad ****ers went to Catholic schools in the 1970s, eh? All in the name of anti-elitism. Up the people! Down with gregorian chant! And all that divisiveness...

[johnquinn39]

I have always thought that Gregory Murray's music was a cross between footbalI and gregorian chant!

Slade's 'We'll bring the house down' is another example of this type of music.

If it's being sung on the terraces - then surely these 'chants' have passed into the public domain: 'One-nil, to the champions ... ' -- 'Go, the match has ended ...' -- ' Aston Villa. Aston Villa, we'll support you evermore ... ' etc.

Joking aside, if we ARE going to sing the propers, how are we to do this? - How do we make this digestable?

Will the Graduale Parvum, for example, yield anything as memorable as 'Here I am Lord'? - Or will it just reduce the congregation to silence?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FaMOuyD_Yc

[alan29]

Singing the propers is a mind-bender, especially as those with antiphons seem to require a congregational participation ..... unless the idea is choir sings the simplified antiphon and a cantor sings the psalm verses in the three processional propers (introit, offertory and communion.)
Maybe that's what the powers that be have in mind, with the assembly just singing the simple responses ... and with your spirit, amen etc, since they are all that can be sensibly crow-barred into English without setting musical teeth on edge.
Is that restoring chant to the liturgy? Really?
Are we honestly to ditch our rich vein of scripture-based song for that?
It seems like a terrible impoverishment in order to make a specific cultural point.

[Eastern Promise]

That's the stuff! Get the excuses in early!I love this place.

And I think that 'Here I am Lord' is probably the greatest piece of music ever written, composed by and ex-Jesuit who is showing the nasty Pope where he can stuff all his anti-gay wedding nonsense.

[nazard]

Does anyone know where the idea that the choir or cantor sing the verses and the congregation sing the verses came from? I first heard it in the late seventies. The practice of singing psalms at mass was relatively new then: singing psalms before that belonged in the offices. It was, and still is, the practice there that the verses are sung by the community and the antiphons by the schola. The antiphons are musically interesting and form a little light relief to the austerity of the psalm tone. As such, they require more skill. The present mass system has two consequences: the antiphons have necessarily become a bit bland, and the congregation are silent most of the time. However, the older system remains in use for the offices, but most catholics are probably completely ignorant of that. I would like to know what caused the change, has it ever been called for or endorsed by the church, and is it a good idea?

Our parish has tried the whole congregation singing the psalms to the Gregory Murray et al type tones, but it sounded dreadful. The parish extrovert tried standing on the sanctuary and waving its (gender randomised for anonymity) arms to keep everyone together, but being a sixties church and completely flat floored, most of the congregation couldn't see.

The anglicans have been chasing an english chant idea for centuries and not really come up with anything.

[alan29]

In my experience Anglican congregations don't sing psalms, even at evensong which is heavy with them. psalms are something the choir does...... a relic of monastic practise where the community was the choir, maybe.

[NorthernTenor]

Will the Graduale Parvum, for example, yield anything as memorable as 'Here I am Lord'? - Or will it just reduce the congregation to silence

That assumes the whole congregation should sing at all times and in places. This is a strange warping of the ideals of the Liturgical Movement, not least in its concentration on externals. In practice, every place will have its happy medium somewhere between the congregation singing everything and nothing. If you try to force the congregation too far from this you will engender disengagement and maybe resentment (perhaps almost as great as if you tried to get me sing “Here I am, Lord”); or end up choosing music and texts to encourage participation, irrespective of its suitability to the liturgy.

The anglicans have been chasing an English chant idea for centuries and not really come up with anything.

This comment may reflect a similar misunderstanding. The higher end of the Church of England rediscovered Gregorian-style chant in the later 19th Century. This included Merbecke’s English setting of the Ordinary, which has been widely and lustily sung by Anglo-Catholic congregations since then (though perhaps less so of late, since the relative decline of Anglo-Catholicism). There were experiments amongst the Anglo-Papalists with English settings of the Latin Propers (e.g. Palmer), but they were not designed for congregational use, and their use was no more widespread than the element of Anglo-Catholicism that produced them.

In my experience Anglican congregations don't sing psalms, even at evensong which is heavy with them. psalms are something the choir does...... a relic of monastic practise where the community was the choir, maybe.

Similarly, Anglican psalm-chant is, on the whole, something for choirs, not congregations (tho’ I remember low parishes in my youth where the congregations joined in at Matins and Evensong). It has been immensely successful, and to suggest otherwise because it tends to be sung by choirs alone is a point that would bemuse Anglicans as irrelevant.

[alan29]

I won't quote you NT, but I agree with your observations. However what would a parish do about all this if there is no choir?

[NorthernTenor]

I guess most places have a cantor or choir or two, Alan; the issue is what texts they should sing, to what music. As has been observed previously, singing the propers isn’t necessarily the same as singing the chants from the Graduale Romanum (tho’ I believe that to be an ideal we should always have in mind). Indeed, I understand the purpose of the Graduale Parvum as being to provide a simpler, chant-based alternative; just as John Ainslie has encouraged members of the Society of Saint Gregory to attempt settings of the Proper translations he has collated and published on the Liturgy Office website. Similarly, I prepare a psalm tone-based responsorial psalm setting for the first Sunday of the month in my own Parish. And if there are no singers at all, the imperative to sing the mass puts changing that high on a parish priest’s agenda!

[Nick Baty]

In my experience Anglican congregations don't sing psalms, even at evensong which is heavy with them

That's not quite the same as my experience: In my CofE days, the congregation sang the psalms, Magnificat and responses at Evening Prayer because few of the choir could be persuaded to come back for seconds.

However what would a parish do about all this if there is no choir?

Leave the singing to the primary singers – the assembly! Choirs are lovely – and I hate to be without ours – but our task is, surely, to find music which can be sung by the whole assembly. A small choir might grow from that, and might take on the task of leading, or of singing more complicated verses, but the assembly must, surely, come first.

As for singing the propers, have we ever? The Lectionary works on a three-year cycle but the propers work on just one so – with some obvious exceptions – for two years of the three-year cycle, the propers are not proper.

[alan29]

I must have worshipped in posher places.
Totally agree with the rest. We need to make the distinction between what is appropriate for monastic/cathedral use and what is appropriate for parish use where time and personnel constraints open the opportunity for apt music.

[presbyter]

As for singing the propers, have we ever?

Making a guesstimate of your age NB, you might have early childhood memories of your parish/cathedral choir doing just that and in Latin too. Perhaps when our first steps into the vernacular were being taken, you might have heard your parish choir singing from the Simple Gradual in English?

The Lectionary works on a three-year cycle but the propers work on just one so – with some obvious exceptions – for two years of the three-year cycle, the propers are not proper.

Looking briefly at the Missal of Pius V and its one year cycle of readings:

Septuagesima Sunday

Introit – Psalm 17:5-7
Epistle – I Cor 9:24 – 10:5 Paul’s allegory of the arena
Gradual – Psalm 9,10,19,20
Tract – Psalm 129:1-4
Gospel – Matthew 20: 1-6 The Parable of the vineyard and the workers.
Offertory – Psalm 91:2
Communion – Psalm 30;17f

Sexagesima Sunday

Introit – Psalm 43:23-26
Epistle – 2 Cor 11:19-12:9 Paul’s exhortation to glory in our infirmities that the power of Christ may dwell in us.
Gradual – Psalm 82:19,14
Tract – Psalm 59;4,6
Gospel – Luke 8:4-15 The parable of the sower
Offertory – Psalm 16:5-7
Communion – Psalm 42:4

What point are you trying to make? That the propers were always somehow intrinsically linked “thematically” to the readings? With respect, not in the so-called “Tridentine Missal”.

It is even a bit of a stretch of the imagination to see how the notion of kings offering presents to the Lord (Offertory, Pentecost – Psalm 67:29f) fits in with the “theme” of the day, unless, perhaps, one recalls passages such as Isaiah 2;2-4, that might be seen as a future fruit of the activity of the Spirit, driving the mission of the Church. Lateral thinking is needed, don’t you think?

[Eastern Promise]

But what if it turns out that the 'monastic' stuff can actually be used in parishes too?


WHOOPS !! APOCALYPSE!!!!!!!

[Nick Baty]

Quite, Dear Presbyter. I'm just asking how a set of introits which appear to fit rather well with Year A will necessarily fit with Year B. Wouldn't that be rather like singing what we sang on this day last year and just hoping it will fit. And if the propers don't lead the assembly into the themes of the day (and many of them do) then what would be their point?

[Southern Comfort]

Quite, Dear Presbyter. I'm just asking how a set of introits which appear to fit rather well with Year A will necessarily fit with Year B. Wouldn't that be rather like singing what we sang on this day last year and just hoping it will fit. And if the propers don't lead the assembly into the themes of the day (and many of them do) then what would be their point?

Precisely. We know that the antiphons were only perpetuated to keep the plainchant buffs happy. There is no connection (except by accident) between them and the three-year Lectionary, which was produced by a different working group of the Consilium.