Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Rorate in English

Lately, I've been going on about the success of our English entrance antiphons in English for the OF. Our choice in this matter is dictated by limitations. The ideal would be to sing the Graduale introit in Latin as the entrance, and we have no skill limitation that would forbid that.

But there are other strictures every schola deals with in terms of parish practice. So our realistic option is to sing the introit as a prelude followed by a hymn for processional. And yet, the hymn is contrary to Catholic liturgical sensibilities, at least most of them that are available to us. They set the liturgy up in the wrong way and then you spend a good part of the opening rites trying to recovery the solemnity lost when everyone is singing some tuneful metric at the outset of Mass.

The option we've been trying for Advent has been a splendid success. This comes from the Anglican Use Gradual, with words adjusted here and there for the Catholic OF.

Thus I give you Drop down ye heavens...

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