The Recovering Choir Director

i am currently in a parish where, when the choir sings at all, the mass is exclusively choral (about once a month). in this case it’s not just a polyphonic setting of something for the offertory and/or communion, but a whole choral mass (and no gregorian at all). personally, though i’m glad there is a choir to help make the mass something celebratory and beautiful, i find the choral aspect of it very distracting. especially the sanctus, because this director separates the sanctus from the benedictus, which is sung after the consecration. it means a lot of shifting around in the tribune as people move to kneel then rise again and find their music … blah.

there’s also the issue that the particular choral mass setting we sing (this choir knows only one - a half-hearted attempt at palestrina’s missa brevis unaccompanied during lent ended in sharp tongues lashing out) dates from about 1913 and is both tired and musically uninteresting. but that’s a separate, aesthetic, question - and after all there’s no accounting for tastes. or so they tell me.

Jeffrey

But those opinions of Paul VI and then-Cardinal Ratzinger do not by their own terms provide an authoritative interpretation of current law, let alone substitute for it. It would be a mistake (equivalent to the “spirit of Vatican II” trope) to argue too much from them.

There is a theological reason for the special treatment of the Sanctus that I suspect many are missing here: the Sanctus - uniquely amon the liturgical ordinary - is expressly the song of the entire Church on earth and the heavenly court. This theological nuance is highlighted by the norm for the entire congregation to participate in singing it.

I think Aristotle poses a good solution, in addition to the normal Roman allowance for occasional deviations from norms according to circumstance (that is, overlooking noncompliance on occasion so long as the noncompliance there is no attempt to raise into a norm of its own.)

Todd, I’m curious: is it wrong somehow for the Lord’s Prayer to be sung? Why?

Of course, all of this nonsense about choir vs. congregation seems a bit like the argument between the Doublemint twins: “It’s a dessert topping! It’s a floor wax! Wait, you’re both right!”

Why not have the choir sing everything, and invite the congregation to sing along? That’s what we do at my little parish of St. Andrew’s Russian Catholic Church. Of course, we’ve decided to go with mainly chant-driven music, and sing the music often enough so as to let it get in the memories of the people. But then, we’ve long ago come to the conclusion that the cantor/choir is the leader of the congregation in prayer, not their replacement.

Returning to the original topic, I think that a fruitful thing for the Latin church would be to return to the use of chant, either in the vernacular, if Latin should happen to frighten the horses, or even (if you have a spiritually mature congregation) sometimes in the original with glosses in the vernacular. That way, the composers in the congregation (and that includes the young) might be able to hear it, to sing it, and eventually, even to be inspired by it.

I have to agree with the general thrust of Todd’s argument, that encouraging the people to sing at Mass is something good, and was intended by the Council fathers.

I regularly attend an indult Mass with a well-established choir. I try to chant the commons with the choir, but I notice that very few others do. I find this a bit disconcerting - almost as if most people see the choir only as an aid to meditation.

At another indult Mass I attended years ago, there was a small congregation and no choir. If we wanted chant, we all had to do it. We only ever sang the Mass of the Angels and Credo III, because no one knew anything else. But, I’ll tell you, we filled that little chapel with song, and I believe we were fulfilling the intent of the participatio actuoso that the Council wanted, even though no one thought of it that way at the time.

I still recall those days fondly, wishing that energy could be captured in my new surroundings. This is where I think some traditionalists have dropped the ball: rejecting the will of the Council by under-appreciating the spiritual value of a singing congregation.

No polyphonic Sanctus this week–my argument in favor of the possibility is an abstraction since we use chant in the ordinary for most every Sunday–but we distribute as much music as possible for everyone every week. Here is the parish Pentecost liturgy which excludes any polyphony to keep from over-egging the pudding. Polyphony comes next week, when we do the a piece by Josquin and the Palestrina Missa Brevis Agnus II during the reception of communion.

I think the employment of the word “responsorial” in the instructions re the Gloria was equivocal and therefore misunderstood as referring to the employment of a refrain antiphon, rather than simply alternating the hymn text — through-composed settings that simply reserve the middle section for the choir alone have a better sense of the intended meaning.

I always find it intriguing when progressive liturgists agitate to have the congregation sing more hymns but gut the congregation’s participation in their biggest liturgical hymn in the ordinary, the Gloria….