Society of Saint Gregory

PS - don't forget that hymns during the celebration of the Eucharist have usurped the place of the proper chants - so why not look at the proper chants to determine roughly what genre of hymn we might sing If I'm not mistaken - is it not the case in the Roman Gradual that the Introit, Gradual and C...

I don't know which cathedral you're at and what your practice is but, as a Cathedral musician, can you explain why so many of our cathedrals get away with not providing "leadership in liturgical and musical matters"? When the choir sings what ought to be sung by the whole assembly does the bishop o...

As a FT musical employee of one of our nations Cathedral, I must disagree that many of our Cathedral Musicians are not Catholic, or do not have some element of of Roman Catholicism in their background. Many of the RC Cathedral musicians that I am in contact with around the country aree indeed Cathol...

any positioning of the choir that suggests that it is not part of the assembly is to be avoided, as is any location which either impedes the exercise of its ministry or prevents its full participation in the liturgy. Seems clear enough to me. If the Northern Cathedral refered to is indeed Liverpool...

Is there a musical Agnus in the world which is short enough to accompany the fractio – when I go to Mass during week and we say "Lamb of God" it seems to accompany the breaking of bread perfectly. A verse-and-a-half of Inwood's Comm Song 3 seems to be too much. (I am prepared to be shot down.) Lo...

A few years ago I transcribed the original Latin chants to the English Missal texts of the sequences for Easter, Pentecost and Corpus Christi. Each one has a congregational response, with the verses sung by cantor/ choir. On Easter Sunday I have done it with a segue (aka an exuberent fanfare!) strai...

Whilst there should be no hard and fast rule about announcing hymns, lets not go as far as US parishes, where the anouncing and introducing the hymn/ song can take longer than the hymn takes to sing!!!

Am I right in believing that apart form Gloria in Excelsis hymns are a relatively new addition to the mass music repertoir? I know they were sung at devotions but I seem to recall reading/hearing somewhere that mertical hymns were not usual at Mass. Can someone clue me up? Yes, hymns in the Roman r...

Yes, but the council of Trent only codified the mass, it had been in use for hundred of years before that. Well, yes and no. The Council ordered the creation of a standard missal for use by all Roman Catholics under the bull Qui primum of Pope Pius V. Unless a diocese or religious order could prove...

). The general point, which I have finally (sorry) reached, is that Evensong / Evening Prayer offers its attendees something different than the Mass, and can accommodate a much greater variety of form and content, whether that be Farrell, Cramner Taizé or silence. Anyway, seems worth canvassing to...

I'm afraid I'm guilty of writing a Reposonsorial Gloria but the whole of it is sung heartily by all those in our Congregation who wish to. One problem of responsorial settings of the Gloria (and to some extent this is true of through composed settings also) is how to respect the structure of the te...

Perhaps saddest of all is that someone trained in the liturgy has to go outside the Catholic church to find a suitable paid post. Whilst I did managed to remain in the RC church, i did have to travel 3000 miles across a rather large pond to find such a suitable post! It is indeed a shame that so fe...