Southern Comfort wrote:Not at this time of year, they don't... it appears that no replies are being received from the Liturgy Office at all.
Yes, it appears that the whole place is at a standstill. Not, of course, the fault of the staff of the Liturgy Office but a result of serious underfunding. Worth remembering when various blogs are wittering on about the money pouring into Eccleston Square. In reality, the whole thing is run on a shoestring.
What is its budget? What is it expected to do for that much? Who decides what it attempts to do? What is the order of priority of its various activities? How important are its activities relative to other calls on our money? On what basis are the answers to those questions determined, by whom and how?
These are important considerations. Unless they are examined carefully and dispassionately, "things would be better if better funded" just comes across as a feel-good, knee-jerk response that is likely to cost us more and make things worse.
Last edited by NorthernTenor on Sat Aug 20, 2011 1:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
BTW, the Liturgy office should not be singled out in the matter of things grinding to a halt over the summer. It's some time since I was told that my appeal against a decision of the anonymous five would be moved upstairs in the interests of fairness. My enthusiasm at that response - I was happy to suggest the Process was developing a sense of fair play - is dimming in proportion to the time it's taking to hear anything further. I'm seriously thinking of taking the Mawby option - publish and be damned - with all that implies for the remaining public credibility of the process.
NorthernTenor wrote:What is its budget? What is it expected to do for that much? Who decides what it attempts to do? What is the order of priority of its various activities? How important are its activities relative to other calls on our money? On what basis are the answers to those questions determined, by whom and how?
The activities of the Department of Christian Life and Worship are made public NT. The handbook pdf is out of date (2002) in terms of personnel but the working of the Department is outlined. Annual reports to 2009 are online.
Paul Inwood On Pray Tell blog - 13th August wrote:In England and Wales, call-response settings of the memorial acclamations have been rejected by the E&W approval process on the grounds of undue repetition of the text.
presbyter wrote:This cannot be true as a general policy of the Panel, surely. I sit here staring at Christopher Walker's In Pace Acclamations, that are wholly responsorial. They are approved by the Panel and also by ICEL and they are published.
Perhaps Paul is referring to a particular example. Has anyone here been knocked back for call-response settings?
Decani's new collection, Glory to God, includes the following responsorial settings: Christopher Walker: In Pace Acclamations (mentioned above) Peter Jones: St Chad's Acclamations Peter Jones: Earlsbury Acclamations
The book also includes Peter Jones's Aston Eucharist (not responsorial) which. alternating between 3/4 and 6/8 has a great Latin feel – we'll definitely be using that one in North Liverpool. Superb!
A bemusing week, in which I discovered that there is no appeals process. The plan, if that it can be called, was to wait until someone lodged an appeal, then make something up (which they still haven't).
That explains a lot: the buck-passing, the silence, the absence of documented process ...
It would be difficult to better the Liturgy Office in satirising itself.
Great news! The Liturgy Office have accepted my new Fish-Slapping Gloria. "Glory to God in the highest (slap, slap) and on earth peace to people of goodwill (slap, slap)"
Great news! The Liturgy Office have accepted my new Fish-Slapping Gloria. "Glory to God in the highest (slap, slap) and on earth peace to people of goodwill (slap, slap)"
I sincerely hope not. Piscine interpolations apart (they're within the quotes, so strictly speaking are additions to the text), there's a comma missing after "highest".
What interests me is the liturgical appropriateness of the accompanying instrument (though I grant that’s no business of the Panel, whose only proper concern is textual fidelity). On the one hand, percussion instruments don’t sit well with the contemplative ethos of the Roman Rite, and fish-slapping’s pagan associations might even be held to disqualify it outright. On the other, one should not close one’s mind to the positive use of such instruments, suitably sanctified by liturgical context. Indeed, your fish-slapping Gloria might enable liturgical musicians to connect with those communities (e.g. Teddington) where the custom has deep, even mystical roots amongst the volk. Consider the opportunities such music would offer to engage with performing arts students in the Catholic six-forms of such places.
I have just spent a few hours with an RC full-time parish musician in Maryland. In the encounter he shared with me his own setting of the revised translation which has been through their own vetting procedures by Bishops' Conference and ICEL. (This probably meant passing it across a desk!). He was astonished to hear my observation that he had got the wrong text for the doxology at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer yet it had been passed by both authorities I'd have to say he was more than a little annoyed by their apparent lack of attention to detail There are some positives in our own panel processes!
HallamPhil wrote:I have just spent a few hours with an RC full-time parish musician in Maryland. In the encounter he shared with me his own setting of the revised translation which has been through their own vetting procedures by Bishops' Conference and ICEL. (This probably meant passing it across a desk!). He was astonished to hear my observation that he had got the wrong text for the doxology at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer yet it had been passed by both authorities I'd have to say he was more than a little annoyed by their apparent lack of attention to detail There are some positives in our own panel processes!
Phil,
The process in England & Wales is a good thing as far as it sticks to the purpose stated in its terms of reference: to ensure the fidelity of settings to the text of the 2010 translation of the Roman Missal. To say that is to state the bleedin' obvious, and to ignore three significant problems: the poor drafting of its terms of reference, which include elements that- deliberately or accidentally - confuse that narrowly defined and clearly stated purpose; its unbelievably incompetent and unjust administration (examples of which I and others will doubtless continue to document here); and the lack of accountability of the Panel, on account both of its anonymity and the absence of an appeal process that its own terms of reference supposedly guarantee. ICEL cannot have conceived of this nightmare when it devolved permission to publish texts within its copyright to the Bishops' Conferences - it cannot reasonably have anticipated this degree of stupidity, incompetence and injustice.
Regards,
Ian Williams, Alium Music.
Last edited by NorthernTenor on Wed Sep 21, 2011 11:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I can't resist suggesting that ICEL's dealings with Rome over the past decade or two should have given it plenty of opportunity to practise handling essentially unlimited amounts of stupidity, incompetence and injustice.
Capel-y-ffin Mass, in editions for choir, organist and congregation.
Our Father, for congregation and either/both choir/organ.
Hail, holy queen, which can be sung by choir or choir & congregation (editions are available with & without organ accompaniment).
More to come, from the hon. prop. & others.
For the interest of those following the disaster-in-slow-motion that is the Permission to Publish process in England and Wales, the Gloria setting of the Capel-y-ffin Mass has received permission to publish from both ++Ecclestone Square & the copyright holder, ICEL. All other texts from the 2010 translation of the Roman Missal are in the public domain - but are nonetheless followed with scrupulous fidelity.
