Society of Saint Gregory

I love it when parishes publish their music lists, and wish many more would do so. It helps to give a flavour of what music to expect, and in my particular case would help me ascertain what parish and which particular mass to gravitate to both locally and when I am travelling. A real irritation for ...

Nick Baty wrote:Music list is interesting: http://www.sjrcc.org.uk/page3/choirandmusic.html
Nothing for the assembly?

Just a recessional hymn at 10.30am Solemn Mass. The Saturday night mass has 2 hymns (which nobody sings of course) but the Ordinary of the mass is said. This pattern seems quite common at parishes with professional choirs.

I suspect that "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" has tied itself to Epiphany because gold and incense get a mention. If makes a snorting good hymn at the Offertory and at any time of the year too. I have just looked it up. It was written by J Monsell (an Anglican) as an Epiph...

In my own parish I suppose one irritation I have with regards to hymn singing is the reluctance to try out 'new hymns' or hymns that "no one will have heard of". Admittedly as we currently don't have a choir, albeit an excellent organist in charge of a very capable 2-manual Makin, you can...

I have been to four more churches - I won't mention the three silent parishes - but instead report happily that congregational singing is alive and well in Holy Apostles, Pimlico. The hymn lyrics were all set out on a specially printed sheet. It was a joy to experiece the congregation singing out an...

Cardinal Heenan had clearly forgotten that Fr Wilfrid Trotman's People's English Mass had appeared in 1966, the same year as the original edition of the hymn book Praise the Lord , and had been selling like hot cakes ever since. Of course you're right, and I had forgotten too. I seem to remember re...

This suggests to me that my assertion that most Catholic congregations came to singing mainly through hymnody does have something going for it. You could though, counter by pointing out that most modern Catholic Hymnals also incorporate Mass settings and some have many Responsorial Psalm and Gospel...

My experience in London is almost always that it is given in both kinds.

As for Q's question about why bother at all, it is a good one. Given that ecumenism has led to prayer, but not communion, in common, which is the more hospitable act towards separated brethren/sistren - to invite them to a blessing which emphasises separation, or not to draw attention to it at all?...

The sequences are hymns, and definitely have their place. If my memory is correct, Pope Pius XII decided to allow vernacular hymns at mass, and that presumably still stands. As does Pius X's request that we sing the Mass. More than a century on, that's one that's still seen as a tad strange and new...

This looks like a great resource, but am I right in thinking that the full EF with music is quite rare as most of the Latin masses with music are actually the OF, but in Latin with the sung propers etc. I have seen EF's advertised but these are usually said masses with no music, apart from Maiden La...

I'm afraid London Churchman's comments make me very fearful about the state of music generally in London churches. Is it time for them to hire professional musicians and choirs and where would the money come from? What I don't understand is that most of the Churches I have visited do seem to have D...

I just feel that "giving" them one line smacks of being patronising and suggests that that's all they can handle. I have heard antiphonal singing of a psalm with the congregation and cantor singing alternative lines to a simple setting at congregational Vespers at Westminster Cathedral an...

You may not think the repetition of the response adds anything, but the Church does. This particular form flourished for about a hundred years in the 5th and 6th centuries and then disappeared. The reason it disappeared is because the musicians got hold of it ! What had been a simple form became mo...

[There's no tradition of hymns in the Roman tradition of the Eucharist, only in the Divine Office. If you detest responsorial psalms, you clearly haven't heard any good ones! But just because there is no tradition of not doing something, is not a reason to not use hymns. If everything were based on...