Veni Creator from Stift Heiligenkreutz

Here are the monks of Stift Heiligenkreutz Abbey chanting the Veni Creator Spiritus on Pentecost during Vespers. This is from the modern form of the Divine Office - the Liturgia Horarum. Its nice to see monks doing their thing. I have often thought of getting a group of layfolk together to sing parts of the Office.

h/t NLM

Merry Christmas!

h/t Chant Cafe.

Our choir sings this at Christmas as well. Though we are much smaller. :-)

Inclusive Language Dust Up

I have a few "inclusive language" things around...my copy of the documents of Vatican II, the NRSV Bible, and the NAB Bible. But rarely have I ever heard a woman talk about inclusive language, let alone six of them.

A few days before Christmas my new choir had a practice for the upcoming Mass. I selected "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" for the Offertory hymn. They didn't know "Lo' How a Rose E'er Blooming" and we figured the congregation wouldn't either.

In many cases the version I have at the organ differs slightly from the missalettes. At times I have multiple texts for the same tune. I flipped to the version labeled "Standard" figuring it was safe. But when I looked in the missalette it was slightly different.

Meanwhile the choir was chatting and flipping to the hymn. They knew what I was trying to figure out and someone mentioned "sometimes his text is different". When I heard that I realized it did differ. The two were slightly different, only by one word as far as I could tell.

I began, "OK, I see what they did here. Take a look a the second line and you'll see why my version is different...Peace on the Earth good will to all."

They howled. This group of women to my surprise began to curl their lips up in disgust at being treated like a bunch of oversensitive feminists. I was a little taken aback. After all, this is a Novus Ordo parish and aren't they supposed to appreciate this type of thing?

"I am SO SICK OF BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT", one said. The others were all murmuring the same type of thing. These women were insulted. Why would publishers treat them like this? We agreed that no matter what the missalettes had we were all going to sing "good will to men" and the congregation would just have to go along with it.

The thing is, most of us hear inclusive language all day long and our society uses it nowadays even to a fault. Sometimes at the Novus Ordo you will hear the annoying "My dear Sisters and Brothers" at the beginning of Mass. It is so obvious what is going on there, isn't it?

I guess there are two lessons we can get from the experience. The first is that not all women appreciate the politically correct inclusive language. The second is that they will tolerate it to a degree, but don't you dare mess with Christmas carols.

Big Night for a New Choir

Tomorrow night is the "Big Night" for my new choir. I could not be more proud of the work and effort they have put in. Indeed we have had 6 weeks of rehearsals and I know they have also been practicing their parts individually...even making cheat sheets for Latin pronunciation. They are really into it. One woman will be sneaking out of her son's Christmas party in order to come sing the Mass with us after she has already been to another one.

We will be singing some traditional Christmas hymns, a special Responsorial Psalm from the Chabanel Psalms project, a special Gloria picked out by the pastor, Puer Nobis Nascitur from the Secunda book (that is a traditional 3 part treble choir book) for the Offertory, the Communion Antiphon In Splendoribus from the Graduale Romanum (modern notation...for now), and a rendition of Silent Night for Communion.

Last Saturday (vigil mass) I had them sing for Communion as a trial run. They sang Creator Alme Siderum, which is the "traditional" Vespers hymn for the Advent season. They did great!

On top of everything else they presented me with a Christmas gift last night as an appreciation, which I did not expect. The Priest's new album Harmony is importing into my Mac as I type this.