What do you do if you, your choir or cantors foul up?

[asb]

I'm sorry, asb, but I'm struggling to see why this is so awful.

OK. In a nutshell, rightly or wrongly, I live and work in a small town. I want to walk down the road, and be known as a bloke who helps to make the mass prayerful and edifying. Not the one responsible for big foul-ups!

Incidentally, cantor was apparently on duty as usual at Mass yesterday!

[Peter]

The cantor didn't know why it happened. We have weekly rehearsals, for cantors alone as well as full choir, and every singer has a detailed music list.. He had been having trouble with the syncopation in the verse for The Baptism, but had got it "sussed" and told me had been looking through it and singing it in his mind during the 2nd reading. The correct verse was the 2nd on the page - the 1st being the Epiphany verse which he sang by mistake but cannot explain why.

In other words, it was the sort of human error anyone is liable to make from time to time, especially when under pressure. You really cannot be blamed for that, asb – in fact it's even less blameworthy than your daughter's practical joke, for which your then priest over-reacted (IMHO).

The only way to avoid it would be to photocopy, which for obvious reasons cannot be done.

Copyright law is not an end in itself: it is there to ensure that authors, composers and publishers get a fair reward for the use of their work. I agree with Tsume Tsuyu: if you've bought enough books for you and the cantor to have one each (and no-one else is using them) then you're not cheating anyone by making a photocopy with pages blanked out and I'm sure no-one would prosecute you for doing so if that helps to solve your problem.

Or, more radically, drop this set of Acclamations and use ones where the verses can be sung to any psalm tone; had we been doing one of those, I could have gone with the flow and the mistake would have been less noticeable in as much as, ok, the wrong verse would have been sung, but we wouldn't have ended up with an "exchange" from the organ loft to the ambo!

Very true. Similarly, having realised that the cantor was singing the Epiphany verse, you could have jumped to the accompaniment for it and, apart from a brief hiatus, I doubt many people would have noticed or worried. Although I always try to give my singers the correct Psalm and acclamation verses, the PP wouldn't mind if we sang something different: we might get momentary flak from a pedant reading his Missal at the time but no more than that. However, that's hindsight and you needn't beat yourself up for not having thought of it in the particular split second when it all happened. On the other hand, you can learn from the experience and having had that idea store it up in case a similar situation arises.

OK. In a nutshell, rightly or wrongly, I live and work in a small town. I want to walk down the road, and be known as a bloke who helps to make the mass prayerful and edifying. Not the one responsible for big foul-ups!

The general feeling of the message board seems to be that this was a one-off foul-up and not a particularly catastrophic one at that, not "foul-ups" in the plural.

Incidentally, cantor was apparently on duty as usual at Mass yesterday!

Delighted to hear it! I hope next Sunday you'll be there as well, having agreed between the two of you and the PP to put the past behind you and also agreed how you can give yourselves the best chance to get it right next time and every time. Then you should be able to rebuild your reputation as a bloke who helps to make the Mass prayerful and edifying.

[asb]

Similarly, having realised that the cantor was singing the Epiphany verse, you could have jumped to the accompaniment for it and, apart from a brief hiatus, I doubt many people would have noticed or worried.

That's just it - I DID; and the accompaniment is so radically different that in changing from the Baptism accompaniment to that for Epiphany it sounded as though I had gone wrong, and that is why the cantor stopped dead and glared at me.

And I don't want to have to rebuild a reputation that I didn't intentionally demolish!

[gwyn]

Enough's enough now, isn't it?

[asb]

Enough's enough now, isn't it?

Yeh - I'm on the liturgical scrapheap now! Nearly 35 years unblemished record not bad I suppose!

Would love to have retired under better circumstances!

[musicus]

Enough's enough now, isn't it?

Yeh - I'm on the liturgical scrapheap now! Nearly 35 years unblemished record not bad I suppose!
Would love to have retired under better circumstances!

Oh, come on now, asb: Gwyn didn't mean it that way, as I'm fairly sure you know. As someone has already remarked, you have been offered much excellent advice here (I have just re-read it all, from the beginning). Most telling, for me, was Peter's comment: Foul-ups have been happening as long as we've had the Mass. The night we remember when we celebrate Mass two of the Apostles realised that they had fouled up in a really big way. One of them responded by ending it all; the other wept, was forgiven and welcomed back into the fold and went on to do great things. You seem in danger, asb, of emulating the former as far as your career is concerned. Haven't you wept enough to give the latter option a try instead?

That's a serious question that merits thinking about. Peter and Judas both betrayed Jesus, but Judas couldn't believe that God could love and forgive him, and killed himself. Speaking for myself, that puts my failures into some sort of perspective.

[gwyn]

Abso.

Take a sab(b)atical. During which, go and visit other parishes and sample their delights. You'll be surprised - or maybe not - at the crud that so often gets served up that passes for good liturgy. But if it's their best then that's fine, isn't it?

If you really don't want to go back to your community, there'll be plenty of parishes who I'm sure will welcome you with open arms.

Have a whiff, it'll help you to be more objective. If you want to see real foul-ups then come and visit us in Abergavenny. We could play it safe, use the same mass setting every week and never try to offer anything different or special - but where's the fun in that?

Wherez the schpell checquer when you kneed it?