Where are the Books of Propers?

This article is recommended by Father Pisut and was posted at the New Liturgical Movement site on Thursday, January 21, 2010.

  

Where are the Books of Propers?

by Jeffrey Tucker And so the fun begins. Catholic music publishers are rolling out their new hymnals in preparation for the new translation of the Mass that is in the final stages. The word translation here is important because that is what it is, in contradistinction to what we use now, which is an often-loose paraphrase of the Latin. The very prospect of a real translation lifts the heart! Soon our liturgy programs can feature parallel Latin/English and it will make some sense to us.

Change is in the air! However, somehow, the hymnals that accompany the Mass will not be changing much. They will be stuffed from front to back with hymns - some old, some new, and the entire collection bearing the mark of the vaunted committee behind what is in and what is out. It is all a compromise of various cultural, economic, and intellectual interests, and this compromise will drive forward the sound and feel of Mass every week for years to come in parishes across America.

What's wrong with this picture? Well, if you look at the actual Mass and its music, you find very few examples of what we now call hymns. There are Sequences that are highly scripted with a fixed text and melody. There are a few other such hymn events sprinkled throughout the year. But there is nothing in the Roman Rite that calls for a hymn of your choice (randomize that iPod!) at the entrance, offertory, communion, and recession. You can look and look and find nothing like that in the structure of the Mass.

The hymn mania stems from an last option choice permitted in the GIRM's rubrics, but the Vatican has used the term "tragedy" describe the replacement of proper texts with hymns. The root of the problem has preconciliar origins, when the Vatican permitted Low Mass to use vernacular hymns, and here is where emerged the famed four-hymn sandwich that we know all too well.

The Second Vatican Council hoped to do something about the problem by insisting that the chants of the Mass be given first place at Mass. This means singing the propers of the Mass. Why should we sing the propers? Because they are integral to the Mass itself, as much as any of the prayers of the Mass. As Hungarian scholar Laszlo Dobszay has demonstrated through extensive study, the essential core of the arrangement of the proper texts and the music for them actually dates from the 7th century.

For the rest of the article click here: New Liturgical Movement