Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Lenten Propers

The sacred music of lent as given by the Church herself is incredibly moving and inspiring.  I am sometimes quite amazed that for 40 years we thought we needed to write new hymns and poetry to accomplish what was already given to us by Mother Church.  It wasn't even that the 'old' stuff was kept and the 'new' stuff was placed alongside it.  It was more of a tossing out of anything that was there and replacing it with modern substitutes.

The problem is that the Catholic faith was contained in a tried and true manner in the Sacred Music Mother Church gave us.  The new stuff was often trite, sentimental, shallow and often dismissive of the direction the ancient texts of the mass were directing our worship.  To recover a sense of the sacred and of more God-centered worship I think it is time for us to begin exploring the Sacred Music as given to us by the Church.

http://www.chantcafe.com/2013/02/complete-english-propers-for-season-of.html

Linked above is one example of what I feel should have been done 50 years ago.  These propers are in the vernacular.  They use the texts of the liturgy as given by the Church.  They respect the modal character of Gregorian chant and have a penetential sound as appropriate to the season of lent.

I would love to hear these propers incorporated into a parish music program.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

me too......
Fl.Porter

Rood Screen said...

In my parish, the 9am cantor sings the three Propers, but sometimes adds a commercial hymn afterwards. He also adds a hymn at the end of Mass after singing the Marian antiphon.