Extraordinary Form Mass to be celebrated weekly at Sacred Heart in Robbinsdale, MN

Excerpts from today's bulletin article by Fr. Bryan J.B. Pedersen, Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Robbinsdale, MN:

Over the last few months I have been praying a great deal about pastoral generosity. This is so because I have been receiving requests in written form and also verbally from some parishioners, and other Catholics who live in the western suburbs of Minneapolis, for me to celebrate a weekly Sunday Mass in Latin. ...

Because of the requests made by our Holy Father to be generous to those who desire the older form of the Mass, and because I am one of the few priests in the Archdiocese capable of responding to such requests. Therefore for these reasons and in a spirit of generosity I have decided on an experimental basis to add a third Mass to our Sunday Schedule in the extraordinary form of the Mass. ... The additional Mass on Sunday will begin on March 1st, which is the first Sunday of Lent, and will ordinarily start at 11:30 am. The additional Mass will be in the extraordinary form using the Roman Missal in use in 1962 per the instruction of our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI. One of the reasons the additional mass will be on an experimental basis is due to the fact that I must determine if the requests I have been receiving do in fact constitute a stable group who will respond with generosity to our parish. The additional Sunday Mass will initially be celebrated at the Side Altar of St. Mary in the transept. If the number of people attending the older form of the Latin Mass is greater than initially expected then I will shift to using the main altar in the sanctuary. For the time being the Mass will be a low Mass, which means that it will be without music.

Ring in the new year with Christ!

And His mother, too, I should add!

Hugh Henry has made available a booklet for Vespers of New Year's Eve (1st Vespers for the Octave of the Nativity according to the extraordinary form) ending with Benediction and the singing of Laudes Regiae (Christus Vincit). But coolest of all is the recording of Christus Vincit by Juventutem. The strength and energy of this hymn in praise of Christ Our Lord and King blew me away! Have a listen, and then sing along.

Christus vincit. Christus regnat. Christus imperat. Exaudi Christe.
Christ is victor, Christ is ruler, Christ is Emperor. O hear our prayer, Christ.

Let my verses go!

Jeffrey Tucker at the NLM:

From the instant that the USCCB announced that the Revised Grail Psalter would become the new standard for Psalms in the ordinary form of the Mass, musicians in the UK privately issued warnings along the lines of “welcome to our Hell.”

The problem is not the translations of the Psalms, which are said to be an improvement over what is in use today in the U.S. The problem has to do with the law, copyright, permissions, expenses, enforcement—and the problems are so pervasive in the UK that one of the least spoken about aspects of liturgical life in the UK is the proliferation of samizdat Psalms.

What are samizdat Psalms? These are Psalm settings written by composers attached to parishes and cathedrals, by composers and directors who are required to use the Grail text but cannot bear to sing the musical settings published by the mainstream publishers. They write their own, but understandably fail to jump through the copyright hoops and pay the exorbitant fees associated with the texts themselves. So they are copied, handed out, kept under wraps, delivered from parish to parish in brown envelopes, and spoken about in hushed tones. It’s like a sector of an underground Church.

The same situation could happen in the U.S. when the Revised Grail becomes official here too. The Psalm that are currently made available online will be forced down. The settings made available by independent composers will have to go underground. The job of setting the Psalms to music will fall to the “Big Three” music publishers who provide the mainstream fare today. Incredibly, one of those publishers, a for-profit company, has actually been named as the literary agent to decide the terms and conditions under which people can publish the Psalms. (more)

Sights and sounds of sacred music courtesy of the CMAA Sacred Music Colloquium

It's been said that it is, "too hard," "no one wants this music," that "it is not possible for a regular parish," that "this music is completely outmoded." Yet, here were more than 270 musicians of all ages, from all over the country doing everthing that was presumed impossible.



Corpus Christi Watershed and Jeffrey Ostrowski (Chabanel Psalms) did this with the help of Arlene-Oost Zinner.

I'd love to head to the 2009 Sacred Music Colloquium should the funds become available.

Sancta Cecilia, ora pro nobis

Our quartet sang at a lovely mass this Saturday morning for the feast of St. Cecilia, patroness of musicians. We sang A Hymn For St. Cecilia by Herbert Howells as best we could. Here is an mp3 of the piece recorded by the Musica Sacra Choir of Auckland, New Zealand.

The splendor of truth in liturgy

Shawn Tribe at The New Liturgical Movement expresses what is becoming more apparent to me: liturgical worship is not about about entertainment, feel-good emotions, or personal preference. The liturgy has an objective quality that communicates the faith. How we pray will shape how we believe. He quotes the following:

... people are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year - in fact, forever.
-Pope Pius XI Quas Primas

And later from Four Benefits of the Liturgy by Dom Gerard Calvet:

Take a group of Japanese tourists visiting Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. They look at the height of the stained-glass windows, the harmony of the proportions. Suppose that at that moment, sacred ministers dressed in orphried velvet copes enter in process for solemn Vespers. The visitors watch in silence; they are entranced: beauty has opened its doors to them. Now the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas and Notre Dame in Paris are products of the same era. They say the same thing. But who among the visitors has read the Summa of St. Thomas? The same phenomenon is found at all levels. The tourists who visit the Acropolis in Athens are confronted with a civilisation of beauty. But who among them can understand Aristotle?

And so it is with the beauty of the liturgy. More than anything else it deserves to be called the splendour of the truth. It opens to the small and the great alike the treasures of its magnificence: the beauty of psalmody, sacred chants and texts, candles, harmony of movement and dignity of bearing. With sovereign art the liturgy exercises a truly seductive influence on souls, who it touches directly, even before the spirit perceives its influence.

Sacred liturgy is the body language of the Church - the people of God and the Body of Christ.

Vespers Update - Assumption of the BVM

You can now access the chanted Sunday Vespers booklets for Ordinary Time and Advent in the "Liturgy of the Hours" links list at the left. These booklets include all the prayers for II Vespers on Sundays except the proper Magnificat antiphons and concluding prayers (too much to type). I also include in each booklet at the end the traditional Marian anthem usually sung after Night Prayer - Alma Redemptoris Mater, Ave Regina Caelorum, Regina Caeli, or Salve Regina.

I'm still working on getting this prayer started in my parish, but that hasn't stopped me from putting together a booklet for the upcoming Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary! Feasts are missing from my other booklets, so I figured I'd arrange them individually as I go for future use. Here is my chanted Assumption booklet for II Vespers. Summer is great. :)

Happy praying!

O God, come to my assistance - Sunday Vespers

Perhaps I mentioned at some point my ongoing project to set a simply chanted Sunday Vespers to sing weekly at my parish? I went about typing the texts and setting music in the hopes that the more I had done before pitching it to our pastor and choir director the more likely it'd be to get started. I stalled for a while, stuck on the strange canticle from Revelation. But thanks to a tip from this discussion on the Musica Sacra forums, I was able to move ahead and finish the main part of the project (minus readings and propers for Advent, Lent and Easter).

Here is the result presented for review: (See edited links at bottom).

If you are so inclined, could you offer feedback? Specifically regarding the pointing of the antiphons and psalms:

1) Are any of the chant tones really ugly or awkward?

2) I used the simple method employed by the editors of the Mundelein Psalter. The italic syllable is where you first change pitch. Each note after the change corresponds to one syllable with any extras falling on the last note. And also the final note should correspond to the final accented syllable in the phrase. I had some difficulties following this last rule with the antiphons for Psalm 110. Making the final syllable line up with the last note over-emphasized an insignificant word or awkward syllable.

3) I originally wanted to keep the "official" text for everything. For the Magnificat (Canticle of Mary) the traditional tone I used works poorly. I have a better arrangement from The Hymnal (1940) but it uses King James English. It's beautiful, but not "official." I'm leaning toward using the different translation unless someone can offer a way to fix my version.

As a beneficial aside, I also set the English translations of two traditional hymns from the Divine Office in square notes. They look nice and are wonderful to sing. Feel free to use and distribute these as you like (all text and music is common domain):

Lucis Creator optime - Sunday, II Vespers, odd weeks
O Lux, beata Trinitas - Sunday, II Vespers, even weeks

Head over to my friend Geometricus' blog Hymnos Debitos Canamus for helpful info about these and many other hymns of the Divine Office!

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EDIT: Here are the updated booklets in PDF files, the first combined, one for Ordinary Time and one for Advent:
COMBINED - This booklet has multiple antiphons for each psalm depending upon the season. I moved away from this, thinking instead to have different booklets for different seasons.
ORDINARY TIME - Simplified layout with only the OT antiphons for each psalm.
ADVENT - Psalms have antiphons for advent only. Hymns are english translations of the the proper Advent hymns from Liturgiam Horarum, Conditor alme siderum and Verbum salutis omnium, set to a tune from the Liber Usualis. I also selected a different chant tone for the Advent Responsory and Magnificat.

They are set in half-sheet size (5.5"x8.5") for printing as a booklet on 8.5"x11" letter paper. I decided to just use the latin Magnificat. The booklets have everything you need to pray Sunday II Vespers for Ordinary Time and Advent except the Magnificat antiphons and final prayer. It seemed too much work to try and type and included these in a section that you'd have to flip to anyways. I plan to just look them up from another psalter when praying.

The practicalities of chant

Jeffrey Tucker offers commentary over at The New Liturgical Movement about the June-July issue of Pastoral Music. The issue has an atypical focus on chant, but falls short of what Tucker would have like to see.

The articles are interesting and worthy, and cause for celebration. The authors are experts who are worth reading. They make some good points and some points that I personally find weak but this latter point is a matter of opinion.

But in another way, the issue and these articles miss the mark and this is not the fault of the writers so much as the editors here. This issue does not sufficiently address the top questions that Catholic musicians have about Gregorian chant: how to read it, how to sing it, what to sing, and when to sing it. These are the practical points that vex musicians all over the country when they think about this subject. In fact, only one of four articles addresses some of these points, and even in this article, the author doesn’t quite speak the language of parish musicians.

[...]

Musicians these days do not know how to read the notes. They are terrified by Latin. They fear the people’s reactions. They are dealing with skeptical pastors and Bishops. They have weak singers who use instruments as a crutch. Also, Catholic musicians tend to be a bit too satisfied with doing the same thing week after week, and there needs to be some inspiration to bring about change. To introduce chant is a major step. It takes work and there is a risk here. The musician will be called on to provide a serious defense. He or she has to believe. Doubt will lead to failure.

[...]

My fear, then, is that the novice will read all of these articles and still not have a strong rationale to take the next step or anything like an intellectual apparatus that will prepare them to pick up a single piece of music and sing it with their choirs and congregations.

As someone who is keenly interested in the practicalities of increasing chant within a parish (my own), I agree with Mr. Tucker that the basics of how to read chant and what to sing are the necessary foundation. For a good, brief introduction to reading Gregorian chant check out An Idiot's Guide to Square Notes co-authored by Jeffrey Tucker and Arlene Oost-Zinner.

Vespers, Wednesday of the Fourth week of Easter

With Pope Benedict XVI from the Crypt Church at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception! A beautiful vespers. I like how all the bishops could sing along without much help from their prayer book whenever the traditional latin chant was used (Deus in audiutorium meum, Magnificat, Pater noster). What a lovely expression of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.

I'm still working on my simple setting of Sunday Vespers to propose singing at my parish on a regular basis. Mine is all simplified chant mostly in English similar to the Mundelein Psalter. Which, BTW, I highly recommend.

Exult now O ye angelic throngs of the heavens

Fr. Zuhlsdorf has a beautiful recording of the Exsultet chant from Easter Vigil. This is my favorite chant of the year, stunning in its simplicity and strength.

Here is Fr. Z's translation. Download his podcast here.

Exult now O ye angelic throngs of the heavens:
Exult O ye divine mysteries:
and let the saving trumpet resound for the victory of so great a King.
Let the earthly realm also be joyful, made radiant by such flashings like lightning:
and, made bright with the splendor of the eternal King,
let it perceive that it has dismissed the entire world’s gloom.
Let Mother Church rejoice as well,
adorned with the blazes of so great a light:
and let this royal hall ring with the great voices of the peoples.
Wherefore, most beloved brothers and sisters,
you here present to such a wondrous brightness of this holy light,
I beseech you, together with me
invoke the mercy of Almighty God.
Let Him who deigned to gather me in among the number of the Levites,
by no merits of mine,
while pouring forth the glory of His own light
enable me to bring to fullness the praise of this waxen candle.

Deacon: The Lord be with you!
Response: And with your spirit!
D: Raise your hearts on high!
R: We now have them present to the Lord!
D: Let us then give thanks to the Lord our God!
R: This is worthy and just!

Truly it is worthy and just
to resound forth with the whole of the heart,
disposition of mind,
and by the ministry of the voice,
the invisible God the Father Almighty,
and His Only-begotten Son
our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who, on our behalf, resolved Adam’s debt to the Eternal Father
and cleansed with dutiful bloodshed the bond of the ancient crime.
For these are the Paschal holy days,
in which that true Lamb is slain,
by Whose Blood the doorposts of the faithful are consecrated.
This is the night
in which first of all You caused our forefathers,
the children of Israel brought forth from Egypt,
to pass dry shod through the Red Sea.
This is the night
which purged the darkness of sins by the illumination of the pillar.
This is the night
which today restores to grace and unites in sanctity throughout the world Christ’s believers,
separated from the vices of the world and the darkness of sins.
This is the night
in which, once the chains of death were undone,
Christ the victor arose from the nether realm.
For it would have profited us nothing to have been born,
unless it had been fitting for us to be redeemed.
O wondrous condescension of Your dutiful concern for us!
O inestimable affection of sacrificial love:
You delivered up Your Son that You might redeem the slave!
O truly needful sin of Adam,
that was blotted out by the death of Christ!
O happy fault,
that merited to have such and so great a Redeemer!
O truly blessed night,
that alone deserved to know the time and hour
in which Christ rose again from the nether world!
This is the night about which it was written:
And night shall be made as bright as day:
and night is as my brightness for me.
Therefore the sanctification of this night puts to flight all wickedness, cleanses sins,
and restores innocence to the fallen and gladness to the sorrowful.
It drives away hatreds, procures concord, and makes dominions bend.
Therefore, in this night of grace,
accept, O Holy Father, the evening sacrifice of this praise,
which Holy Church renders to You
in the solemn offering of this waxen candle
by the hands of Your ministers from the work of bees.
We are knowing now the proclamations of this column,
which glowing fire kindles in honor of God.
Which fire, although it is divided into parts,
is knowing no loss from its light being lent out.
For it is nourished by the melting streams of wax,
which the mother of bees produced for the substance of this precious torch.
O truly blessed night,
in which heavenly things are joined to those of earth,
the divine to the human!
Therefore, we beseech You, O Lord,
that this waxen candle, consecrated in honor of Your name,
may continue unfailing to dispel the darkness of this night.
And once it is accepted as a placating sacrifice,
may it be mingled with the heavenly lights.
Let the morning star meet with its flame:
that very star, I say, which knows no setting:
Who, having returned from the nether realm,
broke serene like the dawn upon the human race,
and now lives and reigns forever and ever.

Tweeeeet!

Ruling courtesy of the liturgical referee.

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See Fr. Z for what's going on here.