The Recovering Choir Director

You’re not just a musician, you are a poet.

FYI Lauridsen alos arranged the piece for mezzo-soprano solo.

I worked on the piece a little bit with the junior choir last winter, hoping they could sing it this Christmas.

Ah, well, the best laid plans….

As I have said on other fora (especially RPINET’s), I would love it if the USCCB would commission Lauridsen to compose Mass settings for the Missa Normativa in the vernacular (once we get the translation settled), with parts for the people and choir, and perhaps also in the Latin (ditto for the people and choir).

I am sure myriad Catholic musicians in the USA would gladly help fund such a commission.

“, I would love it if the USCCB would commission Lauridsen to compose Mass settings for the Missa Normativa in the vernacular (once we get the translation settled),”

I’d chip in, heck I’d forego my weekly bottle of tequila, the one I need every Sunday afternoon to get rid of the ear-worms our cantor helps embed in my brain. (Today it was City of God. YEESH.)
I could give you that money. Ordinary time alone, my sacrifice would amount to a nice chunk of change.

You think the pedestrian current translation is why so few composers from outside the little world of Ritmus have done much with the Ordinary in the past few decades?(The translation and the hopeless editorial decisions of the big publishers)

I’d probably ask Tavener first — is the Mass used at WYD, (which I believe featured only the premier of the arrangement for mixed voices, wasn’t it written for treble originally?) doable by the average parish/congregation? Or is it for 12+ voices?

And Einhorn, I’d be interested in that.

But would the USCCB?

No, they want to commission something, and what do they do? they hire Marty Haugen who comes up with “You are God, We Praise You.”

With regards to parish Mass settings by good Catholic composers, you may want to consider James Macmillan, a Scottish lay Dominican who has written some beautiful Masses for parish use and some more challenging stuff for parishes. His Westminster Mass is wonderful.

Also, the Westminster Mass by Roxanna Panufnik, which must be one of my favourite contemporary Mass settings for choir.

There is much of the British liturgical music scene that is musically excellent and liturgically apt…

I recently discovered this gym earlier this summer when I bought Robert Shaw Chorale’s CD, ‘O Magnum Mysterium’. This song has to rank up there with one of my all time favorites (along with Gorecki’s ‘Totus Tuus’ and Allegri’s ‘Misereri’).

What a fantastic song! I am a highschool choir teacher and I am strongly debating whether my students have the foritutde to do this song next year.

This song could just have been easily written in the time of Allegri and Tallis. It sounds so Renaissance!