Singing at High Mass

[Gwyn]

At a celebration of High Mass, what are the musical Do's and Don't's?

At what point in the Celebration does each musical item begin?

Are the Sanctus and Benedictus sung seperately or does the Sanctus flow directly into the Benedictus without interuption?

When do we sing Agnus Dei?

[Gwyn]

Hi Nick, thanks for your response.

I was thinking of Solemn High Mass in its Tridentine manifestation. I've Googled "Latin Mass Streaming Video" and found some delightful recordings particularly one recorded in the 1940s at Our Lady of Sorrows, Chicago on Easter Sunday morning, with a commentary by the then Mgr. Fulton Sheen.

Code: Select all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6AOvStZS64

That's given me a few clues. I was 24 years of age when I converted to the Catholic faith, that was in 1978 so you'll appreciate that I have no experience of a Tridentine celebration, only the Bugnini effort we use currently.

Bestest,

Gwyn.

[presbyter]

one recorded in the 1940s at Our Lady of Sorrows, Chicago on Easter Sunday morning, with a commentary by the then Mgr. Fulton Sheen.

Divini Cultus doesn't seem to have had too much effect in Chicago in 1941

[Gwyn]

Nick wrote:

It's with the Proper that one can have most fun. As it's in Latin, one could sing a polyphonic arrangement of that lovely old parlour song about the 24 young ladies who visited from Inverness. And no one would have the foggiest idea what you were going on about.

Marvellous.

[nazard]

Are you preparing for Tridentine High Mass in Abergavenny? If so please keep the board informed. I would love to come.

You do need a Deacon and I think subdeacon for high mass, so it may be sung low mass you are actually thinking about.

Have you been to tridentine mass at Prinknash? They say it on feast days at 08:15 without music, every Saturday and one Sunday a month at times I don't know. I think they have music at weekends. The celebrant is Dom Damian and the Precentor Dom Mark, they are both great enthusiasts and very helpful.

Being vintage 1953 myself, we were into the 1965 missal before I became a chorister, so I can't give you great memories of the 1962 masses. The celebrants I remember waiting for the Sanctus/ Benedictus to finish before carrying on. I suspect the practice of bashing on regardless grew from the very long settings of Haydn and later. I have never heard the Benedictus left until after the elevation, but I have read about it. My Father can't remember it either, so it hasn't happened a lot in the last fifty years.

As for the priest getting on with it while the congregation pursued their private devotions, it certainly did happen, but not as much as the detractors like to suggest. I remember it as being a habit of the very elderly. They carried it on into the new mass, and it died with them. Most people followed mass from missals, the little CTS grey one for 6d was most popular.

[Gwyn]

Nazard spake,

Are you preparing for Tridentine High Mass in Abergavenny? If so please keep the board informed. I would love to come.

Sure will Nazard. I think you're right re. sung low mass.

This is all very exciting. I do love a prayerful learning curve.

[Anonymous]

You could try browsing this site for inspiration....

[url]http://www.sanctamissa.org/EN/index.html[/url]

It's a training site for priests wanting to say the Low Mass with very instructive video and parallel text. It should help you coordinate your music.

Good luck.

[Petrasancta]

In the Tridentine rite music was divorced from liturgy and musicians just had a good sing.

The priest would speak the words of the Sanctus inaudibly while the choir sang a polyphonic setting over him, ignoring the fact that he had now moved on to the following words in the missal. The music would continue, pausing for the the elevation, and finishing just in time to move straight into the Agnus Dei.

Cardinal Ratzinger explained this erroneous interpretation most eloquently:

"Perhaps it is helpful here to recall that the silent recitation of the Canon [Eucharistic Prayer] by the priest did not begin during the singing of the Sanctus in order to save time because it lasted so long. The real succession of events was the exact opposite. Certainly since the Carolingian epoch, but very probably also earlier, the celebrant entered the sanctuary of the Canon "silently." The Canon is the time of pure silence as "worthy preparation for God's approach."24 And then for a time an "office of accompanying petitionary prayers, akin to the eastern ektene ... (was laid) like an outer veil to cover the silent praying of the canon by the celebrant."25 And later on it was the singing of the choir which (as Jungmann put it) "continues to maintain the old dominant note of the Canon, thanksgiving and praise, and unfolds it musically to the ear of the participant over the entire canon."

[Gwyn]

Cantator directed us to

Code: Select all

http://www.sanctamissa.org/EN/index.html

That looks to be a good resource. Still under development from the musician's angle but it certainly is one to watch.

[Peter]

I have never heard the Benedictus left until after the elevation, but I have read about it. My Father can't remember it either, so it hasn't happened a lot in the last fifty years.

I've done it this way with the Reading Haydn Choir, which operated in the 1970s primarily for the purpose of singing classical Masses (mainly Haydn, hence the name) in mainly CofE Communion services. There was one Haydn Mass we sang where I gather the composer had specified exactly at what place in the orchestral introduction to the Benedictus the Consecration was to take place; in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis there is a similar point at which the music's character changes so dramatically that we may infer that he had the same idea in mind.

[Anonymous]

Ok Gwyn. Here's another link with a video of High Mass, complete with music (is there any other way?!)
High Mass
probably linked from other places but I happened to find it here.

It's the mass of the Sacred Heart with Ordinary XII (Pater Cuncta) and Credo II.

If you haven't already, get your 1961 Graduale from here...
Graduale 1961
watch out it's a hefty 62MB! p.324 for the Proper, p. *42 for the Ordinary

Actually you can use your Novus Ordo Gradual as I think it's the same in this instance.

Enjoy....

[mcb]

I have never heard the Benedictus left until after the elevation, but I have read about it. My Father can't remember it either, so it hasn't happened a lot in the last fifty years.

If I understand right this was the rule: a chanted Sanctus and Benedictus would follow immediately one after the other, and precede the consecration; with more musically elaborate settings there would be a pause after the Sanctus, until the elevation, after which the Benedictus would be sung. (My 1961 Liber Usualis says in the latter case the Benedictus may be sung.) Choral Masses in the, ahem, Extraordinary Form in which I've sung (look, I was young and impressionable, it was a long time ago, OK?) have had the Benedictus after the Consecration.

The practice seems to have varied over time and in different places. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1912 says:

At high Mass as soon as the celebrant has sung the last word of the Preface (dicentes) the choir begins the Sanctus, continuing his phrase. They should sing it straight through, including the Benedictus. The custom of waiting till after the Elevation and then adding the Benedictus, once common, is now abolished by the rubric ("De ritibus servandis in cantu missæ, VII) of the Vatican Gradual. It was a dramatic effect that never had any warrant. Sanctus and Benedictus are one text.

But, according to Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy (OUP, 1979, but first published in German in 1965):

Another questionable decision took place on 14 January 1921, when the Congregation of Rites decided that the final section of the 'Sanctus', i.e. the 'Benedictus', should not be sung at high mass until after the Consecration. In this case, too, the decision was probably based exclusively on the customs of the city of Rome. But a glance at the history of the liturgy will show once more to what extent the meaning of the 'Sanctus' was misunderstood.

From the earliest times the first part of the great eucharistic prayer (known today as the Preface) ended with a reference to the Angels praising God in heaven. At this point, the Roman bishop (presumably from the fifth century onwards) interrupted the eucharistic prayer in order to give the congregation a chance to sing the hymn of the angels, the 'Trishagion'. For this purpose the text of Isaiah 6:3, which is also found in the liturgy of morning prayer in the synagogue, was used. The bishop waited of course until the congregation had sung the hymn of the angels until its conclusion; then he carried on, aloud, as he had begun, with the recitation of the eucharistic prayer.

As time went on, people gradually lost the feeling that the two parts of the eucharistic prayer and the 'Sanctus' belonged together. For when the practice was begun of the celebrant saying the second part of the eucharistic prayer in a low voice (we have already described how this development came about), it must have seemed meaningless to make the celebrant wait until the 'Sanctus' was over before finishing the prayer. It finally transpired that the people found this wait more and more difficult to endure, since for some time now the singing of the 'Trishagion' had been performed by a choir and had grown into a time-consuming, artistic piece of choral music. Thus the 'Sanctus' became a hymn, which now, freed from its place in the eucharistic prayer, filled in the silence between the Preface and the Consecration. When, therefore, in the Baroque period the polyphonists strove to develop the music of the 'Sanctus' yet further without regard to the sacred action at the altar, it was proposed that the second part of this hymn, the 'Benedictus', should not be sung until after the Consecration, especially since the text seemed to justify such a division. The hymn, thus extended, could not [= now? mcb] fill in the silence between the Consecration and the Paternoster. These Roman practices, which after all were the result of the tyrannical behaviour of the polyphonists, were regarded by the rubricists of the Congregation of Rites as representing the normal and ideal state of the liturgy; hence they decreed that it was not permissible to sing the 'Benedictus' before the Consecration.

Both these examples reveal that the Congregation of Rites is in need of a reformation, and not merely an administrative reform...

[Gwyn]

Anonymous pointed out
http://www.unavoce.fr/content/view/526/175/

http://www.musicasacra.com/pdf/graduale1961.pdf

and

http://www.sanctamissa.org/EN/index.html

All good stuff. The Sanctamissa site is still under construction but nonetheless great resource.

Thanks Anonymous.

[John Ainslie]

Further info for the curious and/or fascinated:

Yes, the usage whereby the Sanctus and Benedictus were split whenever they were sung - in chant or in polyphony - lasted at least until the Congregation of Rites' Instruction De Musica Sacra dated 3 September 1958, where we find under art. 27:

d) If the Sanctus-Benedictus are sung in Gregorian chant, they should be put together without interruption; otherwise, the Benedictus should be sung after the Consecration.

e) During the Consecration, the singing must stop, and there should be no playing of instruments; if this has been the custom, it should be discontinued.

f) Between the Consecration and the Pater Noster a devout silence is recommended.

* * *

Don't forget that this was all when the Eucharistic Prayer was said by the priest in silence from the Sanctus to the end of the Doxology exclusive.

[mcb]

I had a new experience yesterday at a church in Manchester - hearing the Benedictus sung after the consecration in a Mass in the Ordinary form (i.e. using the post-1970 Missal). I've been to a good many Masses there over the years, but I think that was the first time I've noticed that way of doing things in the, ahem, usus novior. The Eucharistic Prayer was said ad orientem and mainly in silence underneath the music, except for the bit from 'bless and approve our offerings' to the words of institution, and then the doxology at the end.

Musically it was sublime - Victoria's Missa O Quam Gloriosum and Byrd's Justorum Animae, plus some hymns and chants for everyone. I don't think I have a good sense of how successfully it engaged the assembly in 'full, conscious and active participation', since my own ability to feel actively involved as a listener is compromised by not having done it (much) in thirty years.

The one thing I did find somewhat alienating was something I've mentioned in the forum before - with the choir and conductor high up behind us in the organ loft, the only cue for the assembly to join in was the organ suddenly blaring out very loud. The net effect was that you could only hear yourself singing (and only if you sang really loud) - even For all the saints didn't really rise above the organ trying to jolly us along. I don't know Credo I by heart, and nor, it seemed did anyone else; and since we were only given the words, it turned out more or less to be sung antiphonally between the choir and loud organ solo.

The nicest bit of congregational singing was the plainchant Pater Noster, which was sung unaccompanied and everyone knew it.

Overall it was a musical treat, and if liturgically it wasn't the way I'd do things on home turf, it's the way they do things at this church, and I'm happy with the idea that there's room for all of us.

Not sure about that Benedictus though.

M.