« Previous: Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Next: Gregorian Chant Psalm Tones »

The power of Audblog

Fr. Jeffrey Keyes, CPPS sends me this post of a Graduale Simplex chant recording made over the phone to an audio ‘blogging service. The Graduale Simplex, a true innovation of Vatican II, is aimed to make available simpler chants for smaller/amateur church choirs and perhaps even congregations. As you can hear, the melody is quite simple, haunting, and beautiful.

Kudos to Fr. Keyes, Audblog, and the Church’s liberal copyright permissions for tacitly encouraging creativity like this. Could you imagine the hoops one would have to jump through (and dollars one would have to spend) in order to legally do this with a major publisher’s music? Have you jumped through them already?

Posted 11.18.2003
by Aristotle A. Esguerra
4 comments.
Filed under: Notable Links.

Leave a Reply




*Required. E-Mail will not be published.


*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word

4 Comments

The chant that the Audblog played is beautiful, no question. But am I the only one here who thinks that the phrase “perhaps even congregations” is a little too optimistic? I had to listen to it three or four times to get it… imagine how much harder it is for somebody not musically trained.

Further, and we never really discussed this yet so forgive my ignorance here, but being in Latin, while preserving the universal language of the Church, makes it nearly impossible for the congregation to enter into the sentiments of the translated text. The words would have no meaning for them in their hearts, as they would not understand the meaning of what appears like holy, reverential gibberish. (Not that I hold this opinion, mind you).

Some folks have highly recommended “By Flowing Waters” for simple English chant. Yay! But their chants listed for this week do not correspond to the actual Roman Gradual text for this very week, so I’m left to write a praise and worship chorus on the text, which is singable, reverent, and faithful to the text. If I had the tools, I’d put it on the audblog site, too.

Nick


Nick Kleszczewski
11.19.2003 @ 8:51 am #

Nice post, Nick. We use “By Flowing Waters” as well as the “Graduale Simplex.” They are essentially the same thing, one is in English and the other is in Latin.

If we sing a refrain in Latin, the translation is always posted in the program beneath the music. Generally we will sing the psalm in English, although we use the grail text intsead of the NRSV in BFW.

Often we will sing the refrain in English, but occasionally we retain the Latin. The Editor of BFW did his best, but sometimes the melodies with the latin are vastly superior, and simply more beautiful.

Repetition is a key here. Most of the students remember this refrain from last year. If we sing it next year it will be even more memorable. My concern in finding a recording was for the new students. Admittedly these are well educated students at the University of Chicago and are a select group from most congregations, they did greet the rehearsal of this refrain with a bit of delight. They find the latin more enriching. It says more that some of our English phrases, they recognize a rich spirituality and they delight in it. They too, recognize that the latin melody is a bit more beautiful than the English version.

The Simple Gradual and the Roman Gradual are different and there needs to be no correspondance between the two. We get to do a few selections each season from the Roman Gradual but they take more time and rehearsal and these busy students are simply unable to commit to that at the later half of the quarter. That is why the simpler melodies in the Graduale Simplex are so welcome.

pax+


Fr. Jeffrey Keyes CPPS
11.19.2003 @ 9:42 am #

Fr Keyes,

Thanks for your comments. May I ask, are you using anything from By Flowing Waters this coming week? As I wrote earlier, I could not find the exact text for this coming week, Ps 72, methinks, in their “Christ the King section.” If you found it, what page is it on?

Thanks again!
Nick


Nick Kleszczew...
11.19.2003 @ 10:31 am #

Never mind… Just made the connection between the Fr Keyes who graciously responded, and the Fr Keyes who set up the audiofile. Question is answered. “D’oh!” on my head…

Nick


Nick again
11.19.2003 @ 10:33 am #

« Previous: Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Next: Gregorian Chant Psalm Tones »
A Musical Journey through GIRM