The Recovering Choir Director

On NLM, Jeffrey Tucker and numerous commenters have shared thoughts on yesterday’s Installation Mass of Timothy M. Dolan as Archbishop of New York.  I watched the liturgy online as it was unfolding, and provided live commentary on Plurk and in Fr. Zuhlsdorf’s UStream.TV chat room.  (If you go to the chat room, you will find seasonally appropriate sacred music streaming from his channel, even if the chat room itself is closed.)

Here is the program of the Mass in PDF format.

Here are my observations on some of the music; they should not be taken to diminish the efforts of the musicians involved.

Much of the repertoire seemed to be taken from the previous Easter Triduum liturgies — Victoria’s Victimae Paschali Laudes; Duruflé’s Ubi Caritas; Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus; the Easter hymns “Jesus Is Risen,” “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today,” “At the Lamb’s High Feast,” “This Is the Feast of Victory,” “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today”; Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” — which is perfectly justifiable due to (1) its being the Octave of Easter, and (2) the massive rehearsal time put into the music for the Triduum.

The Bruckner Ecce sacerdos seems to be a de rigueur choice for high-profile episcopal liturgies like these. Choirs greeted Pope Benedict with this motet during World Youth Day 2005 as he stepped into Cologne Cathedral.  In the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, this responsory is sung at the solemn reception of a bishop after the singing of the antiphon Sacerdos et pontifex.^[1]

The chant at the entrance “Venite benedicti Patris mei” and the communion chant “Christus resurgens” are both taken from Wednesday in Easter Week.  The tempo did seem to drag, especially in contrast to the other choral pieces; while acoustics and lack of technical familiarity with the chant may have dictated the choice of tempo, the concern I have here is that people will come away from such an execution with the impression that this kind of music is best done (and should only be done) by monks.^[2]   Generally, however, these were gamely chanted by the men of the Cathedral Choir; certainly the inclusion of these chants — in their Gregorian form, no less — should be commended.

The Gloria from Carroll T. Andrews’ New Mass for Congregations struck me as a safe choice, perhaps because in my childhood, this setting was the one most used at my family’s liturgically conservative parish (St. Mary, Roslyn, N.Y.).

The refrain of the Responsorial Psalm was in English and Spanish, as are many of the settings I’ve seen by Jennifer Pascual.

The deacon is to be commended for chanting the Gospel in English, while maintaining the pitch and respecting the melodic formulas, especially the one for the interrogations (questions).

Michael Hay’s “Trilingual Intercessions” seem to be a default choice for large Archdiocesan Masses, as evidenced by their inclusion at the Papal Mass at Yankee Stadium a year ago.  The hiccup after the first prayer — where the reader spoke the “Let us pray to the Lord” and the congregation began a spoken response into which the choir interrupted with the sung response — illustrates the need to sing the Prayer of the Faithful, either in full or at least the invocation.  (The former would be preferable.)

The Ronan Tynan anthems (Schubert Ave Maria and Franck Panis Angelicus) were in my mind safe, play-to-the-crowd choices.  He sang both from the loft in the back of the cathedral, which helps draw attention away from him (in as much as that is possible).  Generally, I am not a fan of including operatically informed pieces during a liturgy; invariably, someone who ought to be paying attention to the liturgical action (or at least the words being sung) will be distracted by the delivery of the music, or even the singer.

The Sanctus, Memorial Acclamation A, and Amen from Richard Proulx’s A Community Mass struck me as “safe” choices, for the same reasons as the Gloria.

The Lord’s Prayer and invitation were sung well to the familiar Robert J. Snow English-language adaptation.  However, the prayers immediately afterward were spoken; this always seems to give a crash-landing type of anticlimax to the entire exercise.

The Salve Regina, strictly speaking, is out of season.^[3]  However, if the telecast was any indication, it was sung well by the faithful; in fact, it may have been the item sung most loudly.

Again, I repeat that my observations should not be taken to diminish the efforts of the musicians involved; indeed, many if not most of them are at a technical level I shall not attain in this lifetime.

However, for those who are striving towards the more noble form of the sung Mass, regardless of the form, this does illustrate how far we have to go (and truly, how far we’ve come) in informing people about the liturgical ideals intended to give proper glory to God.

(I cannot help but wonder if cathedrals, in some cases, may be the last place where ones see the fruits of a reform-in-continuity-with-tradition approach to liturgy.  It’s a hunch I may need to develop in the future, if it has any merit at all.)