The Recovering Choir Director

Oh dear, the Tom-tom song, Massive Cremation AND the You-you song?!?@?#???
Bad day all around, when Be Not Afraid and its double dots are the best music on the program.

I have equated the “Mass Of Creation” to the Borg. It seems like the churches around here in Dallas-Fort Worth get slowly “assimilated”, one by one. One Tuesday I went to this one church for Eucharistic Adoration, a church that has NEVER used that Mass setting… and guess what the pianist was practicing in the room next to the chapel. Last year another church I used to attend all the time fell victim to the Haugen Borg, and I couldn’t go back.

I will not hesitate to say that I do not like “Creation”. I wouldn’t think twice about leaving a Mass upon hearing those first minor-key lines of “Glory to God in the highest” and finding a different Mass to participate in. Nothing against Mr. Haugen himself, he does write a few good songs, but this sounds like it belongs in a haunted house (with the exception of the “Agnus Dei”, which I actually do like). And it’s WAY too popular, not to mention that music directors who use it don’t seem to get sick of it after a few years of usage.

This is one reason why I’ve been going to more Latin and Spanish-language Masses recently, since non-”Creation” English Masses seem to be in the minority around here. But you know the Haugen Borg is eventually gonna come up with a Latin or Spanish version of “Creation”. I fear that day almost as much as the apocalypse.

Thomas Michael,

I think you should be forewarned that the Chrism Mass at the Dallas cathedral on Tuesday of Holy Week will feature what the music director there less elaborately calls the Mass of Cremation, along with emininently forgettable choral music including some piece recently commissioned by a Fort Worth diocese parish. Sorry I cannot give you more details: cf. the “f” adjective in the previous sentence.

It is really sad that we have Haugen Everywhere pograms when Pius XII and Paul VI specifically requested that we have at least one particular mass in common. There are perhaps two novus ordo parishes in Dallas where you can hear it, the one where I was before and the one where I am now.

The Mass of Creation Lamb of God has rather interesting liturgical parameters, shall we say. The actual phrase “Lamb of God” is musically and textually lost in the commotion.

I am somewhat surprised that you could be musically happy at a Spanish Mass in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Except for an aborted attempt at the Dallas cathedral some years ago, I am utterly unaware of any good music at any Spanish Mass in the state; they stand in stark contrast to the vast majority of Masses I have attended across Mexico in general — and in strange similarity to certain celebrations in Cuernavaca in particular.

Daniel, do you have ANY print resources for the music at “the vast majority of Masses I have attended across Mexico in general” that you could suggest?

I help out a Spanish-speaking choir from time to time, and all they have to use is an OCP book, whihc has, for the most part, drek.

I would love to be able to suggest better musical fare, but I don’t even know where to look.

On another toopic, on the rare occasions when I am asked to help with bi-lingual liturgies, I am almost always given a setting of the ordinary that sounds like rejected jingles from the old “Frito Bandito” commercials, and I walk around muttering about what a shame it is that the Catholic Church has no simple settings of the Mass, in some universal liturgical language, that would belong equally to ALL her children, regardless of their native tongue.
If only, in her wisdom, Mother Church had thought of, oh, I don’t know… chant, perhaps? in Latin, perhaps?
But she did not, it seems.

Thank you!

Post-p.s. to Geri,

A reference from Argentina: the congregational songbook on the Web site of the bishopric of Gualeguaychú (”Wally, why chew?”).

Panning is necessary to find gold here, and some of it just has to be under copyright (e.g., Lucien Deiss, C.S.Sp.). Still, it was interesting; e.g., I had never seen this Tantum ergo — or so many hyphens.

Well, do not forget to share, Gere! Or, as a friend of mine says, “¡Cuenta! ¡Cuenta!” (Best interpreted with a couple of hops or a short dance.)

This is off topic, but I am curious if there is a Taize mass setting (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, etc…) I’ve been able to only find a Kyrie and Gloria.

Thanks, John