Liturgy: Rich or Restless?

[VeryTas]

What prompts this question is that my parish has now led us into learning yet one more "mass setting" (of music). Yes, besides more than four mass texts that a priest may opt to use, there are in the U.S. now at least eleven ways for us to sing our parts of the mass, as well as the hundreds of hymns rotated experimentally into a passing repertoire. Certainly our faith is enhanced by feasting on its variety of riches, but by now are we involved in a restless cacophony, fed perhaps partly by a liturgy-industrial complex? What think ye?

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

There are far more than 11 Mass settings. For better or worse.

[Doom]

Depending on how you define it, hundreds if not thousands of musical settings for the Mass have been written.

For centuries, every composer would try his hand at writing a Mass. Haydn alone wrote 17. Beethoven wrote two, Mozart's Requiem is one of his most famous works, even the Lutheran Bach wrote one.

[VeryTas]

Depending on how you define it, hundreds if not thousands of musical settings for the Mass have been written.

I'm happy to enjoy hundreds of settings, but the difference now is that we non-musician, non-choir people are expected to perform them (even while processing up for communion somehow, in the case of hymns).

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I don't like the word "perform" in this context

I can sing dozens, if not hundreds, of hymns from memory. I honestly don't see the problem.

With respect to the communion line, don't sing if you don't know it. You're not sinning.

[Doom]

You don't have to sing and most people don't

[VeryTas]

Around here "full, active, conscious" participation in the Mass is commonly touted as calling for singing all the hymns (and it doesn't help that my wife loves to sing and doesn't understand why I don't always). But I do sing the mass settings, once I get the hang of the latest one.

[peregrinator]

Depending on how you define it, hundreds if not thousands of musical settings for the Mass have been written.

For centuries, every composer would try his hand at writing a Mass. Haydn alone wrote 17. Beethoven wrote two, Mozart's Requiem is one of his most famous works, even the Lutheran Bach wrote one.

But of course most Catholics will never hear them

[Doom]

But classical music buffs certainly will as they are widely available on I tunes and other music download services as well as in CD. And they are frequently publicly performed.

[peregrinator]

Are they museum pieces or part of the living patrimony of the Church?

[Doom]

They have never been used for an actual Mass and were never intended to be, do you think Beethoven's Missa Solemia (nearly 2 hours long) was ever intended for use as a liturgy? It wasn't.

[peregrinator]

They have never been used for an actual Mass and were never intended to be, do you think Beethoven's Missa Solemia (nearly 2 hours long) was ever intended for use as a liturgy? It wasn't.

"They" is doing a lot of work, don't you think? I can't say that I've heard Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in a liturgical setting but I have heard Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass, for example.

[gherkin]

Around here "full, active, conscious" participation in the Mass is commonly touted as calling for singing all the hymns (and it doesn't help that my wife loves to sing and doesn't understand why I don't always). But I do sing the mass settings, once I get the hang of the latest one.

That is how 'active participation' is commonly treated, I'm sure, but I wouldn't let yourself be pushed around by that. If there were actually a desire to have the congregation sing, there would be some attention paid to having singable mass settings and such, and there wouldn't be the felt need to constantly change things up.

[Kage_ar]

Around here "full, active, conscious" participation in the Mass is commonly touted as calling for singing all the hymns (and it doesn't help that my wife loves to sing and doesn't understand why I don't always). But I do sing the mass settings, once I get the hang of the latest one.

What I would do is to ask the music director/choir director what Mass setting(s) they are using at your parish - note, it is not unheard of for the setting to change during Advent or Lent, and sometimes the 8 am will used a different setting than the 11 am Mass... - anyway, find out which one it is, go out to YouTube and listen to it so you can learn it.

[gherkin]

Around here "full, active, conscious" participation in the Mass is commonly touted as calling for singing all the hymns (and it doesn't help that my wife loves to sing and doesn't understand why I don't always). But I do sing the mass settings, once I get the hang of the latest one.

What I would do is to ask the music director/choir director what Mass setting(s) they are using at your parish - note, it is not unheard of for the setting to change during Advent or Lent, and sometimes the 8 am will used a different setting than the 11 am Mass... - anyway, find out which one it is, go out to YouTube and listen to it so you can learn it.

This is a good suggestion, but I want to stress that we're not "required" to sing the mass settings or anything else. Choosing not to sing doesn't make you less participatory or less faithful or less Catholic. Active participation is a desideratum for us laypeople, but you can actively participate in many ways, not all of which include singing. I'm not saying the externals don't matter, because of course they do. But I am saying that active participation doesn't demand song from us.

Also, my experience is that music directors are musicians...and musicians shouldn't be in charge of church music. Because musicians want to play musician. That's part of why they feel the need to change the mass setting every few months, and to change it again during Lent and Advent, etc. Instead of giving us one or two predictable, well-known and musically accessible settings that we can (if we want!!!!!) sing by heart even if our vocal range and skill is limited, the musicians want to give us "interesting" (read: difficult, complex and usually high-pitched) settings that we never get "bored" with by having them around for extended periods. Nobody should actually have to look on youtube to figure out how to sing a mass setting. If they want to sing the mass settings, Which they don't have to do.