Saturday, December 03, 2011

Propers and Hymns



I found this video over on Paulinus' blog: we don't have this problem with our "young lady", she always sings the "Entance Chant" or as we call it the Introit.
It is so easy as a priest to live in a liturgical bubble, but really does anyone still sing hymns instead of the Proper Chants? We occassionally sing hymns and then the chant but never a hymn as a substitute for the Liturgical texts - such wickedness.
My experience is that it would be the young women correcting the older man about liturgical abuses.

12 comments:

Physiocrat said...

Where would that leave the liturgy group?

Anita Moore said...

In my corner of the world hymns virtually always replace the proper chants. In fact, it wasn't until this summer that I realized it's not supposed to be like that in the Ordinary Form.

JamesP said...

"It is so easy as a priest to live in a liturgical bubble, but really does anyone still sing hymns instead of the Proper Chants?"

Around here? Everyone...

Jonathan said...

" but really does anyone still sing hymns instead of the Proper Chants?"

I don't think I have ever sung the Proper Chants.

John said...

At the many churches I have visited over the years, I have sadly never heard the Proper Chants. Only mostly tacky hymns....

Victoria said...

Anita, it was only when I read about it on this blog that I realised that hymns weren't supposed to replace the proper chants. I don't think I have ever heard a chant in church.

Anonymous said...

I have never heard such beautiful chant as this for 2nd. Sunday in Advent ( on clip from the St.Mary Magdalene choir website) since I was a little girl. My father took me to the London Oratory when I was five years old ( and that is over fifty years ago ) I remember being transfixed by the beauty of the liturgy , though of course I couldn't have explained it. So sad that very few children will ever experience such sublime music. Will they perhaps come across it one day ? Lindi

Physiocrat said...

Anon - thanks for comments, as a choir member. We have been trying to get to grips with the new English translations over the past few weeks.

Amfortas said...

At Sacred Heart Bournemouth this morning- not my own parish - we had an Advent sequence (lots of Alleluias and Maranathas; probably written by Graham Kendrick) followed by an opening hymn (Come thou long expected..). Liturgical nonsense. I long to be in a liturgical bubble! You're very lucky Father.

John Fisher said...

This is a CRUCIAL point because the first Sunday of Advent in Adelaide Cathedral South Australia we had the new translation. YES. But we had songs in place of the introit, gradual etc from http://hillsong.com/ This is the problem. The new translation is being reshaped to fit in with the banality we have now. If I approach the Cathedral Administrator I will be told it is all about taste. In fact it is about theology and using the set texts to teach. These Protestant love songs with "jesus" inserted disturb and malform the faithful. It is a type of institutionalised spiritual abuse.

Peter Simpson said...

I am so used to singing hymns that it doesn't really cause me much concern - what does concern me is the dreadful choice of hymns. I attended Mass recently at a church where we had both. A well-chosen hymn sung by all, followed by the entrance chant sung by the choir. I was very happy with this arrangement! The hymn was more of a processional hymn round the church and then the entrance chant marked the entrance to the sanctuary.

John Nolan said...

The four-hymn sandwich may be an immemorial custom, dating as it is from the 1950s, but it is well past its sell-by date and now needs to be binned. One problem is that Musicam Sacram (1967), while admitting the idea of 'graduated solemnity' still preserved the distinction between Missa Solemnis, Missa Cantata and Missa Lecta, and said that the singing of hymns at Low Mass was still admissible. This is in fact contradictory to the pronouncement of Bugnini's consilium at the same time that since the Mass was now to be sung as the norm, the previous practice of singing hymns no longer applied.

What is needed is that the GIRM drop the three words that are the fons et origo of this problem - 'alius cantus aptus'.

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