What four singers can do with Victoria’s O Magnum Mysterium:
But this are many modern settings, such as this wonderful version by Frank LaRocca
Are There Parts of the Mass that Women Are Not Permitted to Sing?
This is the kind of post that I’m embarrassed even to put online, but the question continues to come up: are women permitted to sing in the schola at Mass? I know some readers are immediately wondering why someone would ask such a question. But the truth is that among a small sector of the Church, the view that men are the only people permitted to sing is actually alarmingly common. I’ve heard reports of many small Catholic colleges that form only men’s scholas even when there are women students present who have a lifetime of experience in singing. I’ve known parishes where this is also the de facto practice without actually being a policy. I’ve personally known parishes where a men’s schola is struggling through the propers while women who can actually read and sing the chant with mastery are sitting in the pews.
Much of the view comes from an ahistorical reading of old documents, particularly Tra le Solicitudini , in which Pope Pius X says that women cannot “cannot be admitted to form part of the choir.” The ahistorical reading of this passage leaves out the context. The Pope was speaking of the choir in the oldest usage of that term: holders of a clerical office that would sing from the sanctuary itself. He was not referring to lay people singing from the loft. And this is why the promulgation of that document made no dent at all in the makeup of American choirs at the time – a fact that is proven by extensive historical records. Women sang the chant before and women sang the chant after, and this fact was readily and happily acknowledged by the Vatican at the time. This has only become an issue in our own times when we have been so cut off from preconciliar practice that people end up reading documents as roadmaps for the reinvention of what they imagine tradition to be.
So let me state this as plainly as possible. There are no parts of the Mass that women’s may not sing as part of the schola or the choir as we understand that term today.
The Vatican is right now preparing for the canonization of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), who was probably the first named composer of chant. Her compositions are still performed and loved today. She was a woman.
Looking at the 20th century, two people who probably made the biggest difference for sacred music were Justine Ward (1879-1975) in the US and Mary Berry (1917-2008) in the UK. They were both women.
I’m under no illusion that this post is going to make a bit of difference in the prevailing practices of those outposts where women are still silenced. And this is truly tragic, especially now that the cause of sacred music is so much in need of great practitioners. It seems perfectly ridiculous to shut out half the human race from singing but such is the way that deep biases work themselves out in this valley of tears.
A Bishop Who Really Gets It
This is a must read: Singing the Mass, by Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix:
St. Augustine recounts in his autobiography Confessions an experience he had during the singing of the Mass:
“How I wept, deeply moved by your hymns, songs, and the voices that echoed through your Church! What emotion I experienced in them! Those sounds flowed into my ears, distilling the truth in my heart. A feeling of devotion surged within me, and tears streamed down my face — tears that did me good.”
How can we explain this overwhelming and transforming experience that led one of our greatest saints to the Church? Clearly, this was much more than a man simply being moved by a well-performed song. His entire being was penetrated and transformed through music. How can this be?
At Mass, Christ sings to the Father
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1157) makes a direct reference to St. Augustine’s experience when it teaches that the music and song of the liturgy “participate in the purpose of the liturgical words and actions: the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful.”
The Mass itself is a song; it is meant to be sung. Recall that the Gospels only tell us of one time when Jesus sings: when he institutes the Holy Eucharist (Cf. Mt 26:30; Mk 14:26). We should not be surprised, then, that Christ sings when he institutes the sacramentum caritatis (the Sacrament of love), and that for the vast majority of the past 2,000 years, the various parts of the Mass have been sung by priests and lay faithful. In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council strongly encouraged a rediscovery of the ancient concept of singing the Mass: “[The musical tradition of the universal Church] forms a necessary or integral part of solemn liturgy” (Sacrosanctum Concilium,112). The Mass is most itself when it is sung.
This recent rediscovery of “singing the Mass” did not begin with the Second Vatican Council. READ FULL ARTICLE
Mass at the Cathedral of St. George
A note from Nick Gale:
Readers of Chant Café may be interested to hear that this year’s Midnight Mass will be broadcast live by the BBC from the Metropolitan Cathedral of St George, Southwark, London, UK at 23.45 GMT on 24th December 2011.
The Mass will be celebrated by His Grace Archbishop Peter Smith. The Mass setting (Gloria, Sanctus, Benedictus & Agnus Dei) will be Nicholas O’Neill’s Missa Sancti Nicolai (2008) – Latin SATB (div) & organ. The Gregorian propers will be sung (Introit, Alleluia and Communio – the Responsorial Psalm is sung in English), as will the Solemn Proclamation of Christmas (sung in English to the traditional, solemn Latin tone) and Credo III (sung in Latin). The Our Father will be sung to the setting by Rimsky-Korsakov.
The communion motet will be James MacMillan’s In splendoribus for SATB & trumpet. The Cathedral Girls Choir will also sing an anthem to Our Lady (Of one who is so fair arr. by Timothy Craig Harrison). There will be 4 Christmas hymns (Unto us is born a son, Silent night, Of the Father’s heart begotten & O come all ye faithful) and the Mass concludes with the Alma Redemptoris (simple tone sung by all).
The Mass will be transmitted live on BBC1, the UK’s most popular TV station, and on some of its worldwide services. It will also be available for a week on the BBC iPlayer. This is only available in UK territory but I am sure excerpts will be posted here in due course.
Veni Redemptor Gentium
| VENI, redemptor gentium, ostende partum Virginis; miretur omne saeculum: talis decet partus Deum. |
O COME, Redeemer of the earth, and manifest thy virgin-birth. Let every age in wonder fall: such birth befits the God of all. |
| Non ex virili semine, sed mystico spiramine Verbum Dei factum est caro fructusque ventris floruit. |
Begotten of no human will but of the Spirit, Thou art still the Word of God in flesh arrayed, the promised fruit to man displayed. |
| Alvus tumescit Virginis, claustrum pudoris permanet, vexilla virtutum micant, versatur in templo Deus. |
The Virgin’s womb that burden gained, its virgin honor still unstained. The banners there of virtue glow; God in his temple dwells below. |
| Procedat e thalamo suo, pudoris aula regia, geminae gigas substantiae alacris ut currat viam. |
Proceeding from His chamber free that royal home of purity a giant in twofold substance one, rejoicing now His course to run. |
| Aequalis aeterno Patri, carnis tropaeo cingere, infirma nostri corporis virtute firmans perpeti. |
O equal to the Father, Thou! gird on Thy fleshly mantle now; the weakness of our mortal state with deathless might invigorate. |
| Praesepe iam fulget tuum lumenque nox spirat novum, quod nulla nox interpolet fideque iugi luceat. |
Thy cradle here shall glitter bright, and darkness breathe a newer light where endless faith shall shine serene and twilight never intervene. |
| Sit, Christe, rex piissime, tibi Patrique gloria cum Spiritu Paraclito, in sempiterna saecula. Amen. |
All praise, eternal Son, to Thee, whose advent sets Thy people free, whom, with the Father, we adore, and Holy Ghost, for evermore. Amen. |
To Succeed
“To know that even one life has breathed easier because you lived; this is to have succeeded.”
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| Always looking up! |
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I’ve been haunting internet websites and fori concerned with Catholic liturgy and music for almost two decades now. How is that possible?
At one point about six years ago quite a bunch of us geeks held forth at RPInet’s boards sustained by a lovely man and Christian gentleman, Bill Burns. That forum at that time provided exposure to some truly great thinkers and practicioners of our profession, one of whom was one Jason Pennington, late of Our Lady of Fatima Parish, Lafayette, LA. Somewhere around the spring of 2005 JP was going on about something coined “Six days of musical heaven” and he sure as spit was going to DC to check out this thing known as the CMAA colloquium. When JP posted later that summer he extolled at length about the veracity of that “sales pitch” and of one of the event’s more notable personalities, one Jeffrey A. Tucker.
I had, up to that point, been skeptical about this CMAA “thing.” I’d long been out of NPM, was up to my eyeballs in having left public school for full time church employment, and typically had no clue about what the colloquium fuss was about. June of 2006 changed all of that, and fundamentally changed my whole attitude about why and how I went about my passion and my professional (in both senses) duties. And there were three persons in ’06 DC whose faces and smiles became permanently etched onto my heart. One of those named “Mahrt.” The second “Oost-Zinner,” and the third “Tucker.”
No one even minimally familiar with the Cafe, MSForm, the NLM or CRISIS periodical would not recognize Jeffrey Tucker. And anyone very familiar with contemporary pundit culture would readily concede that even the likes of George Will or Charles Osgood cannot sport the perfectly knotted, natty bow tie like Tucker.
I am going to make this brief. (You can thank me later, Ms. Pluth!) Jeffrey Tucker is simply an elemental force of nature! He seems to cavort about the worlds earthly and cyber with the momentum and vortex spin of the cartoon character “the Tazmanian Devil, or ‘Taz,’ ” but you can’t actually see that he’s moving, Jeffrey is so “smoov.” (Smooth, for those who don’t know hip hop colloquialisms.) But moreso, Jeffrey is a supreme gentleman, a man who will always answer the phone, text, and I suppose tweet as well. And he has always found time to help, to advise, to listen, to try again and harder to get the “good news” out about CMAA and our proper right to fit and beautiful worship.
Today is the anniversary of the date J.A. Tucker graced this planet with his presence.
And I thank God He saw fit to let my trifocaled, jaded eyes set upon his seersucker-suited presence my first CMAA summer.
I breathe much easier knowing that Jeffrey lives in my heart.
Happy Birthday, JT.
Cookie Recipe, New Translation
As appeared on Commonweal: