Ah, I ain't no liturgist but I'm frankly getting a little tired of the cracks about the 4 hymn sandwich.
We have our High Mass at 11:00, where our music director does all the chant quite beautifully. But what are we supposed to do for the Low Mass at 8:30? Not sing? We do three hymns because otherwise there would be nothing. And yes, I know I know, silence in the old Mass and all that, but during the Processional, Recessional, and Communion too?
Second of all, there seems to be this idea that hymns can't be liturgical. The sequences, like the Dies Irae, were hymns prescribed by the liturgy...and there were lots of them in the Middle Ages.
There are plenty of places (and this article as much as acknowledges it) that to get a trained schola to learn and sing the official Roman propers was proving quite onerous. The Indian missions, case in point. So what did they sing instead? Hymns.
So yes, bring back the chant by all means, but don't knock the hymns either.
How 'bout the hymns songs mindless ditties of Schutte, Haugen, and Haas?
Can I knock them?
Please?
Well, Claud, you could begin by reading the 1958 Instruction on the Mass from Cong/Worship.
They advise that the laity SHOULD make all the responses to the priest (Amen, Et Cum Spiritu Tuo, etc.) including the prayers at the foot of the altar; also the Kyrie responses, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus/Benedictus, Agnus, and the Pater Noster.
And it MAY be spoken OR sung.
That, my man, is “participatio actuosa, Part 2.”
We do nothing at our indult. A handful of high masses in which a tepid schola chants. Otherwise, it is a year of silence, not that I mind terribly, especially after being subjected to a “hymn” at a N.O. mass yesterday that would have been more suitable on a Dave Brubeck album. Yes, 5/4 time. All it lacked was Paul Desmond on soprano sax.
The article describes our schola exactly. One master chanter, with the others following behind, reluctantly it would seem.
I agree, the four hymn sandwich, if they are all good traditional hymns would be good. A little Panis Angelicus never hurt nobody.
Claud,
I have to agree with the author about the 4-hymn sandwich bit. What we do at Mater Ecclesiae is fine, but there is a huge difference between hymns (such as a recessional) and hymns such as the Dies Irae. The latter is actually part of the text of the Mass itself (Requiem Masses), while the former is, strictly speaking, a non-liturgical addition to the Mass. What the author aludes to with singing hymns at Low Mass a la Mater Ecclesiae is the fact that instead of the people singing the actual parts of the liturgy itself, they sing extra-liturgical hymns while relegating the actual Mass texts to be spoken or silent only. So yes, the High Mass is the ideal, because by its very nature, the liturgy itself is sung. The 4-hymn sandwich was all too common before V2 and the same pattern has become the standard NO format. Sacrosanctum Concilium truly fell on deaf ears as did Mediator Dei 15 years prior to it.