Sunday, February 21, 2010

New Translations Already in Use

From a parish in the United States, we find the program for Mass includes music from the new Missal translation. I'm fairly happy with these chants mainly because they are based on Gregorian music, are dignified, require no accompaniment, are rooted in texts with a direct link to the Latin, and, unlike the current Missal, don't contain musical typos and other problems that make them nearly unusable. Perhaps they will inspire pastors across America to throw out all their existing music and have people actually sing the Mass with dignity.

[Added later: Fr. Ruff tells me that these melodies are not from the new Missal but rather local compositions using the new Sanctus text.]

I do think it is interesting that we see this being used already in parish life, even though they have not received recognitio from Rome and also the CMAA is being prohibited by ICEL from providing direct download links to additional chants settings for free. In fact, we have an entire Kyriale available - making it wholly unnecessary for any parish to spend a dime on new music. If we must use vernacular - and we do not - this is much closer to the spirit of Vatican II than most anything we've yet experienced.

I've removed data that would identify the source, since this is no time for witch hunts for copyright violators.

More recent articles:

For more articles, see the NLM archives: