Friday, December 01, 2006

Beyond Busy Noise

One of the biggest problems in modern Catholic liturgical practice is the absence of silence, the presence of way too many musical styles, and overall busyness that can amount to clutter and racket that get in the way of prayer.

Advent is a good time to reassess all this, and address the problem. Simplifying Mass settings to their essence, with no instruments, is a wonderful step in this direction. Nor is there necessarily a need to fight a parish battle over Latin. It can be done in English.

Here is are small settings taken from the sacramentary that our Schola will do this Advent. If you want to listen to them from our rehearsal last night, here is the Sanctus, and here is the Agnus Dei, sung in mixed voices the way the congregation will sing them.

There is a lot of talk about parish battles over music, but I'm personally unaware of any parish in which music like this would not be a unifying force--a reminder of why we are there. Also, it's free (download the pdf if you want).

This is what you will hear:

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