Another thread got me thinking. I believe its common to have half an hourish of carols before Midnight Mass. What do people do?
We've tried alternatives to carols; 1st Vespers one year (went down like a lead balloon) and a service of Advent readings and music, but discovered that as people drift in throughout then a coherent liturgy is pointless because so few experience it as a whole. We now have 15 mins carols- having anything else but carols caused ructions.
I know of a parish where they had the rosary and a carol between each decade.
What is the origin of this half hour? Is it actually necessary or wanted?
I suspect its origins were to occupy those who came early in order to get a seat, but now that those with kids come at 5pm, and the elderly who don't like being out late do the same, the midnight Mass crowd could have 5 seats each!
pre-midnight Mass carols
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oopsorganist
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Yes I always wonder what that is about.
PP announces the week before Christmas that there will be a "Carol Service" before the Vigil Mass and Carols will be sung before the Midnight Mass (but nothing before the Mass on Christmas Day).
This used to mean me being there for 2 hours per service. The Carol Service of course never happened because no one prepared for it. The Midnight Carols were never sung. Because people trickle in and sit a bit lonely and bemused until someone starts them off towards the end of the session. And since we only know 6 carols they would be the same ones sung during Masses which is good for practice but boring, and somehow reduces the meaning. It also meant that I started the Mass feeling somehow isolated and unsupported, lonely. I once played for half an hour before the Midnight Mass alone, then the so called choir at that time, came in with everything else before I could get an introduction in. So I went home.
We could just play a tape.
I have just had an argument with some one in my group who says that people like to sing Carols before the services at Christmas. No they don't. They just sit there looking sheepish and carry the same attitude into the Mass. And if they do, well, why? If you want to hear nice carols sung, go to the supermarket I say. Or pop along to most other churches in the area for their planned and yearly Carol Concerts/ Services. She says it is some how meaningful. I think it means diddly squat. And it has impact on the start of the service really. One year we got enough teenagers and young uns stood at the back of the Vigil (from our C of E high as it happens) to rip out Gaudete and other carols with harmony and real strong singing and the service went like a rocket. I am toying with the idea of singing outside the church but I doubt I can convince anyone else that it is a good idea. This year I would like to do some readings from "Cloth for a Cradle" but it does not look like it will happen. And anyway, that would be better as a proper "Carol Service" at another time.
I think Doc 's idea of making it 15 minutes is good compromise. I really cannot see the point in terms of Liturgy because we are supposed to be waiting for something so no point in singing about it before it happens. Maybe Catholic priests suddenly realise that Carols are big in other churches and feel guilty that not enough Christingles and such like have happened.
PP announces the week before Christmas that there will be a "Carol Service" before the Vigil Mass and Carols will be sung before the Midnight Mass (but nothing before the Mass on Christmas Day).
This used to mean me being there for 2 hours per service. The Carol Service of course never happened because no one prepared for it. The Midnight Carols were never sung. Because people trickle in and sit a bit lonely and bemused until someone starts them off towards the end of the session. And since we only know 6 carols they would be the same ones sung during Masses which is good for practice but boring, and somehow reduces the meaning. It also meant that I started the Mass feeling somehow isolated and unsupported, lonely. I once played for half an hour before the Midnight Mass alone, then the so called choir at that time, came in with everything else before I could get an introduction in. So I went home.
We could just play a tape.
I have just had an argument with some one in my group who says that people like to sing Carols before the services at Christmas. No they don't. They just sit there looking sheepish and carry the same attitude into the Mass. And if they do, well, why? If you want to hear nice carols sung, go to the supermarket I say. Or pop along to most other churches in the area for their planned and yearly Carol Concerts/ Services. She says it is some how meaningful. I think it means diddly squat. And it has impact on the start of the service really. One year we got enough teenagers and young uns stood at the back of the Vigil (from our C of E high as it happens) to rip out Gaudete and other carols with harmony and real strong singing and the service went like a rocket. I am toying with the idea of singing outside the church but I doubt I can convince anyone else that it is a good idea. This year I would like to do some readings from "Cloth for a Cradle" but it does not look like it will happen. And anyway, that would be better as a proper "Carol Service" at another time.
I think Doc 's idea of making it 15 minutes is good compromise. I really cannot see the point in terms of Liturgy because we are supposed to be waiting for something so no point in singing about it before it happens. Maybe Catholic priests suddenly realise that Carols are big in other churches and feel guilty that not enough Christingles and such like have happened.
uh oh!
We used to do a sort of compressed recap of advent, with suitable music and the OT readings from one of the other years and silences. Was good at getting the waiting sensation going. Always started the Mass with O come all ye - raised the roof because people had been gently psyched up to let rip at that point.
Alan
Alan
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oopsorganist
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That is a good idea Alan29. Much better than spilling the carols out too soon. Much better than expecting people to sing, make them wait!
Good news. I have teenagers on the job, planning whatever they like, and taking control of it, reading "Cloth for a Cradle" as I type and thinking of when they can practice. I can now deny all knowledge of it. And at least some people in the parish will be happy.
At any second coming people in my parish will complain that they don't like change, and they want it the same as last year, even if they can't remember what happened last year.
Good news. I have teenagers on the job, planning whatever they like, and taking control of it, reading "Cloth for a Cradle" as I type and thinking of when they can practice. I can now deny all knowledge of it. And at least some people in the parish will be happy.
At any second coming people in my parish will complain that they don't like change, and they want it the same as last year, even if they can't remember what happened last year.
uh oh!
oopsorganist wrote:At any second coming people in my parish will complain that they don't like change, and they want it the same as last year, even if they can't remember what happened last year.
Am I the only one who misread that as "At the second coming people in my parish will complain that they don't like change"?
It's not a generation gap, it's a taste gap.
Surely I can't be the only one who remembers the deeply liturgical reason for the pre-midnight carols? - as told to me by an aged pp long since gone to sing around a different tree and in a better place - namely that in the days when licensing laws prevailed and when, within the church, regulations being more important than realities, the Mass of Obligation on Christmas Day could not start one minute before midnight, there had to be some way to get the people in and the doors closed and manned by Wardens (aka bouncers) before the traditional extension in the pubs ended and hordes brimming with good will (at least) and memories of childhood observances would head for the churches to renew their suddenly-cherished contact with the faith of their fathers.
These days it seems to me to create more problems than it solves - by the time I've fought off the populist movement - "Can't we have things we all know like - er - er - "Jingle Bells" and - and - (Why not "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" while you're about it?) - or, more subtly "No, we can't have "We Three Kings " - yet, or more practically "Yes, but that's not in the hymn book", or persuaded people that any suggestions for change are welcome as long as they are made before the choir starts to practise in September, or parried the thrust of the pp when discussing the difficulty of getting the timing exactly right ("Whatever you're doing, I'm coming out at five to twelve to bless the crib.") I end up not feeling very Christmassy at all.
Hmmm - touched some sort of button there - think I'll go and lie down in a darkened room.
Q
These days it seems to me to create more problems than it solves - by the time I've fought off the populist movement - "Can't we have things we all know like - er - er - "Jingle Bells" and - and - (Why not "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" while you're about it?) - or, more subtly "No, we can't have "We Three Kings " - yet, or more practically "Yes, but that's not in the hymn book", or persuaded people that any suggestions for change are welcome as long as they are made before the choir starts to practise in September, or parried the thrust of the pp when discussing the difficulty of getting the timing exactly right ("Whatever you're doing, I'm coming out at five to twelve to bless the crib.") I end up not feeling very Christmassy at all.
Hmmm - touched some sort of button there - think I'll go and lie down in a darkened room.
Q
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nazard
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quaeritor wrote:... or persuaded people that any suggestions for change are welcome as long as they are made before the choir starts to practise in September...
Q
On a similar vein, it was traditional that the music for Easter was fixed by Septuagesima. The clergy could not cope with this, which is the real reason why Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima were abolished.
I don't normally get the chance to work with our choir and I don't have the time to commit to a weekly rehearsal which I'd want to take charge of. However, but I'm playing for Midnight Mass and the carols before. I think the music is being selected this week and we have a rehearsal on Saturday and that will be it. Not sure who (apart from myself and the two who are organising the music) will be there but there always seem to be a few 'extras' in the choirloft on the night itself who couldn't make it to the rehearsal. There is a separate team organising the carol service beforehand so we may well need to alter some of the carols for Mass if the carol service people want to use them for their theme...
JW
JW wrote:I don't normally get the chance to work with our choir and I don't have the time to commit to a weekly rehearsal which I'd want to take charge of. However, but I'm playing for Midnight Mass and the carols before. I think the music is being selected this week and we have a rehearsal on Saturday and that will be it. Not sure who (apart from myself and the two who are organising the music) will be there but there always seem to be a few 'extras' in the choirloft on the night itself who couldn't make it to the rehearsal. There is a separate team organising the carol service beforehand so we may well need to alter some of the carols for Mass if the carol service people want to use them for their theme...
Help!!!! I could say 'Wot! No co-operation?' It's only a list of carols! You would think comparing notes would be possible. But it has been that bad here occasionally during the year.
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oopsorganist
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September?
Wow!
You don't wait for the Liturgy Planner then? (I have always thought it was a season behind for planning purposes, sorry). Or default to "what we did last year"?
I have discovered that I have got Midnight Mass this year. Good. I like driving home late and quiet after Midnight Mass. We'll be able to have traditional Carols before the Mass.
Deep deep respect to those who time it and plan it in such detail before the event. I must get on and think about it. It is common to have half an hour of carols before the service? Full circle.
Wow!
You don't wait for the Liturgy Planner then? (I have always thought it was a season behind for planning purposes, sorry). Or default to "what we did last year"?
I have discovered that I have got Midnight Mass this year. Good. I like driving home late and quiet after Midnight Mass. We'll be able to have traditional Carols before the Mass.
Deep deep respect to those who time it and plan it in such detail before the event. I must get on and think about it. It is common to have half an hour of carols before the service? Full circle.
uh oh!
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Nick Baty
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I have heard of such things but we'd never get the people there in time. If you are doing a sing before Mass, I'd omit the angels and Glorias in excelsis Deo and save those for Mass.
As for the liturgy planners, they're all excellent but, yes, they are far too late for general use. However, if you refer to the one from three years ago or, in the case of Christmas Day and Easter Sunday (and other single-cycle feasts), you can look to last year.
I suppose if you have lots of pros to hand you can plan and rehearse at the last minute but we don't have that luxury: it's taken four rehearsals to learn a simple three-part harmony for Away in a Wotsit.
However, we do have some rather wonderful pro brass players who come along every year and they can sight-read anything – still working on their parts.
As for the liturgy planners, they're all excellent but, yes, they are far too late for general use. However, if you refer to the one from three years ago or, in the case of Christmas Day and Easter Sunday (and other single-cycle feasts), you can look to last year.
I suppose if you have lots of pros to hand you can plan and rehearse at the last minute but we don't have that luxury: it's taken four rehearsals to learn a simple three-part harmony for Away in a Wotsit.
However, we do have some rather wonderful pro brass players who come along every year and they can sight-read anything – still working on their parts.
Re: thread
oopsorganist wrote:It is common to have half an hour of carols before the service? Full circle.
Not in my church, where the previous PP supported Dunstan's and Docmattc's view, expressed on another thread, that Christmas begins with the Midnight (or possibly for those who attended that instead, Vigil) Mass and that Christmas carols had no place in Advent, even its last half hour. However, we have developed a custom in recent years that the instrumental group plays a sequence of relatively reflective carols in the last 10-15 minutes before Midnight Mass whose subject matter, were they to be sung, which they aren't at this point, would lead from a general announcement via the Annunciation to the Nativity. Then after a Mass in which every hymn is a Christmas carol we play another sequence, this time of jollier carols to send people out in a festive mood. Whether anyone has spotted the reason for the choice of carols in the sequences, I haven't a clue but people seem to like them.
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Scholastica
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