The Great Amen

[sidvicius]

Need I say more?

[docmattc]

You need say no more!
What do you do with it at the moment Sid?
I think saying the Amen should never be an option if anything else is sung (but persuading PPs of this is not easy-its the key acclamation in the Mass and should be acclaimed. I wonder though if the congregation (or even the clergy)realise the importance of the Great Amen? If not, some education is needed!
Celebrating the Mass has a good paragraph on the Great Amen:

The profound importance of the assemby's ratification and acclamation [of the Eucharistic Prayer] can be difficult to bring out in the one short word Amen. It should be sung or at least spoken loudly both at the Sunday and weekday celebrations. Musical settings which prolong the Amen or repeat it can all help the assembly to experience and express its true power.

Thanks Allen and Martin!

I find that the single Amen given in the missal tone often sounds like its being sung by Marvin the android from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy! I'm planning to introduce a threefold version soon to give it a bit more umph and have this as a 'default' Amen.
Singing the Amen is difficult if the presider can't (or won't) sing the doxology, but a work round to that could be Marty Haugen's Mass of Creation, the intro can be started on the last word of the doxology to preempt the congregation just saying the Amen
The Great Amen in Lawton's Mass of the Celtic Saints (publ GIA) is impossible to sing without gusto and our congregation really go for it. The doxology was written with priests of limited singing ability in mind so is dead easy too.

[sidvicius]

It's not so much that I'm looking for composed Amens - I know there are many, but I understand this should be like a crescendo of the Eucharistic prayer, and so often it plops like a dead fish. It strikes me that it arrives at the end of a rather long prayer, all too often poorly recited, by which time celebrant and people are on 'ritual autopilot', and the Great Amen is crushed by a wave of relief ("phew - that bit's over, and what a relief to stand up again, only X minutes to go before...").

It shouldn't be like this, but in all my life I swear I've only ever heard the Eucharistic Prayer properly delivered ONCE by a celebrant who prayed every word. Too often the (beautiful) Eucharistic prayer is mauled by a strange impatience to finish it (which leaves us all stumbling over a fumbled and not very great Amen). Why should this be?

Every place I've ever been the Great Amen is mucked up. It's either mumble-spoken, or a musical missed beat, and yet a plainchanted EP I find unprayerful. The only thing that seems vaguely to work is the plainchanted Doxology but this is a pretty tired cop-out isn't it?

Sorry I may have a 'double-threader' going here - hangups over both EP delivery and Amen response, but I humbly request your opinions. For me there is a weakness in this area of the mass which could have bottomless depth and inspiration. Priest and people should be deep in this prayer, so deep that little else matters. We ask much and yet we have so little to offer. I find it amazing to think that God can "look with favour on these gifts". We didn't even make them, we bought them from some Hayes & Finch catalogue.

[Crumhorn]

Funnily enough I've just raised the issue of the Great (or not so great) Amen on our parish discussion site (rather fewer members than this one, alas - it's almost as if Suffolk people are suspicious of anything vaguely technological...)

Alas, I was at our Deanery mass the other day with 450 in attendance and our Bishop as celebrant -- and he actually replaced a good, solid, sung Amen which a marvellous group of musicians from Haverhill had chosen and rehearsed with a SPOKEN one! Maybe he wasn't paying attention during the relevant discussion...???

I think it HAS to be sung (we do, but just the simplest possible plainchant as being all that a rather non-musical PP can manage). And I'd be prepared to do a threefold plainchant Amen written for the occasion if necessary, so that the PP can do his bit as per usual and we can then respond rather more resolutely...

[pacabella]

I think the Bishop mentioned by Crumhorn (He the shepherd of the eastern angles) may have felt that everyone saying Amen was preferable to just a few of us singing it. However, I am in favour of us using something like the .... Negro spiritualish aaaamen, aaaamen, a-amen,amen, amen. because I think every one could join in with this. Crumhorn (private message) said he did not think this would marry well with the plainsong 'Thro' him etc..' however we manage to modulate seamlessly from the plainsong 'let us proclaim...' to a melodic Eucharistic Acclamation so I disagree.

At a meeting of diocesan reps we did a short exercise on creating a list of absolutely essential bits of church music. This exercise needs to be disseminated more widely in my opinion but what I really want is to have this list (or something like it) accepted and promulgated by the bishops. What I really want, of course, is absolute power to make all priests want to sing and to promote music and singing in churches, but failing this sort of omnipotence, I want those who have more clout than me to send a message to all PPs that music matters and that good liturgy lingers longer in the hearts and minds than many a well crafted sermon. (Choir member tonight contributed the findings of a German survey of church goers this summer that found that only 3% could remember at the end of mass when asked what the sermon had been about.)

[sidvicius]

Amen to ALL that, but for the benefit of this thread, can I ask that we focus our discussion on the essential bit of preferably sung mass that is "the Great Amen". Thanks!

[oopsorganist]

We have been banging on with the Celtic Amen since the beginning of summer. As yet I have never got to do it on the organ as I do not dare to interrupt .......

We just get to do it when we do the guitars as this gives me more chance to lead what is sung. And I usually do it all very badly. Luckily no one cares.

This is my question. How come I didn't know about singing the Great Amen. Until we bought the CFE book and I read the intro. Even then I didn't believe it really. And the singers. They didn't believe it so much that they all got a strop on and refused to sing. 49 years a Catholic and i didn't know. Amazing. Good job I practice cos I am really bad at it. (practising Catholic)

[Crumhorn]

Poor oops. I'm sure you are not alone in having missed out on some of the essential things that we ALL need to know -- in fact I suspect large numbers of PPs don't know them either, which is part of the problem. With due respect to sid, that's the point Pacabella was making earlier on -- that all musicians (and all clergy), at all levels of knowledge and ability, really need to understand what's essential and what is merely desirable. After all, if the bishop can get it wrong what hope is there for the rest of us...?

So OK, let's hear about some solutions! What do other people do. Does it work -- as well as you want it to? And does your PP get behind the clear message that this needs to be sung clearly, enthusiastically, and with conviction?

[Tsume Tsuyu]

How come I didn't know about singing the Great Amen...... 49 years a Catholic and i didn't know.

I think this is where what presbyter is talking about in his new thread comes in. Each diocese needs a committee for musical and liturgical formation to help us all to understand what we should be doing, and why. Perhaps it would be a good idea to find out whether there is such a committee in your diocese. If there is, you could ask how it can help you. I am in Birmingham Diocese, so I'm waiting with interest to hear what our new committee is going to be doing.

[docmattc]

If three other 'Amens' have been sung to the missal tone Amen, the Great Amen fails to be great if it is also sung to that tune. That makes it the 'just the same as any other' Amen.

Now where might this have happened recently...?

[presbyter]

I am in Birmingham Diocese, so I'm waiting with interest to hear what our new committee is going to be doing.

It might be looking for a secretary