music and then some

This afternoon the Renaissance Chancel Choir practiced George Dyson’s Magnificat and Edward Bairstow’s Save us O Lord; it was a wonderful balm for the soul. One of the men read a poem he had found in his mother’s belongings; she has passed on, and he, who is 74, said that he found this poem in some things of hers that indicate to him that she had obtained it before his birth. Hope you enjoy it.

CHOIRS WERE MEANT TO SING IN,
NOT TO LAUGH AND PLAY IN.

HE WHO TALKS WHEN OTHERS ARE SINGING
IS A VERY INCONSIDERATE BEING.
YOU MAY TALK WHEN YOU ARE TOLD,
BUT ALWAYS THE SILENCE YOU SHOULD HOLD.
YOU SHOULD YOUR OWN BUSINESS MIND,
NOT THE ONES BESIDE YOU OR THE ONE BEHIND.
WHEN YOU’RE IN CHURCH, AND YOUR’S SUPPOSED TO BE PRAYING,
BOW YOU HEAD, AND QUIT DELAYING.
TO HAVE A CHOIR SO THAT EVERYONE CAN BE PROUD,
YOU SHOULD SPEAK VERY QUIETLY, AND SING VERY LOUD.
THE LORD IS LISTENING, SO DO YOUR BEST
IF EVERYONE WOULD READ THIS POEM AND DO JUST AS IT SAID,
OUR CHOIRMASTER WOULD NEVER LOSE HIS HEAD.
--Written and posted on the bulletin board in the choir room by a junior chorister.


On another note…

GK Chesterton, turning worldly wisdom upside down, as usual, said that

“If something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

It can be argued that the parish which uses OCP music attempts to prove this weekly, but I shouldn’t go there. Rather, I have an observation to make about the Pentacost mass where, for a variety of reasons, the music provided by the fledgling Schola Cantorum, ahem, might be said to have crashed and burned. Personally, I think it was salvaged from what amounted to sabotage rather nicely, all things considered, but the period of guilt and recrimination must be attended to. The point I would like to address is a comment from a liturgeist who has complained that singing in Latin makes “active participation” impossible.

To this individual, I would ask that he consider carefully the following. When the music is provided by the guidelines and contents of the OCP, with a mic’d and amplified operatic female crooner aka cantor belts out the selections, virtually no one sings along, because it is impossible. Yet somehow this does not prevent active participation? You, dear fellow, also are pushing for New-Age skank-dance aka liturgical-dance; please tell me how this allows me to “actively participate?” Perhaps your worry about lack of “active participation” is misdirected? Consider, on the other hand, that the document of Vatican II on the sacred liturgy (SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM), which brought us the term “active participation,” says absolutely, and I repeat, absolutely nothing about abandoning Latin in the liturgy of the Latin Rite; so I would suggest that if the Vatican Council fathers believed that active participation is possible in a mass said and sung entirely in Latin, and demanded it be so, then if you are correct that this active participation is not possible, I submit that by your argument you are saying that active participation is simply not possible under any circumstances, for that is the necessary conclusion of your statement. You claim to be a supporter and follower of Vatican II. Please, let us together do so in actual fact rather than in name only.