Society of Saint Gregory

For me it doesn't jar to do Dan Schutte's Behold the Wood of the Cross in the same service as Christus Factus Est , or Veni Creator Spiritus closely followed by Spirit of the Living God . I was with you up to the last title. For me, the essence of good liturgical music is the balance between head a...

Regarding whether a digital instrument is acceptable for liturgical use or not, there's a quote from me in the very first post of this thread, reminding us that the Sacred Congregation of Rites was asked to approve electronic instruments for liturgical use as far back as 1938 and refused to do so. (...

mcb wrote:and never goes out of tune.

Beware: this was conclusively disproved a long time ago. Changes in humidity especially can affect the performance of the circuitry. Allen instruments, for example, are notorious for having different manuals out of tune with each other in very damp churches.

docmattc wrote:Surely you want Marty Haugen's "Springs of Water" for toilet blessing: "Praise, all you ponds and bogs"

...or Paul Inwood's "We shall flush water joyfully...."

What about the Becker version? We may sing this at the offertory, though we have only used it at the Easter Vigil so far. Beware: there are two Becker settings. One, by John D. Becker, is simply an uninspired Englishing of the Latin chant tone, available here: http://members.cox.net/oplater/Litanyo...

There's an interesting technical discussion here: http://www.pykett.org.uk/voicing_electronic_organs.htm Yes, very interesting indeed. Reading it, it becomes even clearer that, say, 9 notes played simultaneously on 21 stops through 3 loudspeakers cannot reproduce the same effect as 189 pipes. Indiv...

It's Damian being his usual fatuous self. When he can't find something to dig at, he invents something. Just ignore him and he'll soon go away. <lack of charity off>

Glad to see that at least one priest is taking seriously the risk that the simple faithful might think the Incarnation took the form of a large book with a red leather cover. In part, though, we are lead to this understanding by the way the book of the Gospels is reverenced - with incense and signi...

I think Contrabordun has put it in a nutshell. What arrives at the listener's ear can never be identical when the natures of the sound sources are so different. Thank you, cb ! At the risk of not yet agreeing to differ with mcb, I am also convinced that, while the digital folks have got the initial ...

I think I'm talking about the actual shape of the wave-forms, not their pitches or amplitudes. It is interesting that the most sensitive recording engineers have now returned from digital to analogue recording because their ears tell them that the sound just isn't the same - they use descriptions li...

At last someone has spotted that my initials are the same as those of the Latin title of the Liturgy Constitution! Well done, mcb . I think the answer is that the characteristics of sound waves emanating from ranks of pipes are in fact very different from those emanating from banks of loudspeakers ...

the non-directional quality of pipes Well, that will depend on whether they are mounted in a proper case or not. If they are, the sound will certainly be directed and focused in one principal direction. I still maintain that the essential difference between pipes and loudspeakers is that with pipes...

From what we can see on this clip, the girls singing at the papal Mass in Lourdes seemed to be in albs. - which is the traditional garb for choristers in France (cf, Les Petits Chanteurs de la Croix de Bois, etc). By the way, didn't you think the men's plainchant was terrible? (Quite apart from the...

I liked that you posted that quote Southern Comfort. I understood it to mean that all forms were valid and to be used...... it seemed so wise.... I don't interpret it that way at all. He says very clearly that the Tridentine Rite is a minority interest ("a small group") that should be res...

Southern Comfort wrote:

BXVI wrote:it is clear that the renewed liturgy is the ordinary [= normal] liturgy of our time.

This was the bit that really struck me, and the reason I posted the entire quote.