on my leave of absence. The "overhaul" of the Liturgy which took place on Sunday has consumed an inordinate amount of my time here.
May I note, all ye pedagogically-minded people of the world, that everything came and went as any other normal Sunday Mass. The months of preparation, not to mention, thousands of dollars, wasted on the "educational" aspect of this endeavor, in my humble opinion, were excessive to say the least. Honestly, Sunday afternoon, after all was said and done, I could not help but think, "that's it?" THAT'S IT? HOURS of my time (and BUDGET) blown on some four new sentences? As an aside, if you wonder if graduate music study is for you (Mary), please note: you may work hard for a degree naively assuming you will use it! Instead, plan on putting your years of theory and performance to use making bulletin boards, putting 1000s of cards in the pews each week, making trivial purchase orders, and typing up "announcements."
As for being underwhelmed with the outcome this weekend, I suppose it helps that we have been learning the new *gag* musical setting (dictated to us by the diocese) since September. (A note regarding the aforementioned musical setting: my theory is that this "Mass," chock-full of syncopation, parallel octaves in the left hand, and VII --> I cadences, was chosen by the diocese's Cathedral organist - who has a terminal degree in "jazz organ." That exists? Until now, I thought that was just a facebook major.)
Oh Anna....I'm sorry for your pain, really. The hubbub leading up to the 1st Sunday of Advent was ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI listened to the diocesan-dictated "Mass" setting a while ago. Well, that's not exactly true; I listened to about 15 seconds of it before I couldn't take it anymore. I can't imagine putting up with it, and I know you have no choice. It amazes me that many of these "composers" seem to not know the basics of composition. The great thing about all those years of music theory and composition is that now we can articulate exactly WHY those settings suck!
Jazz organ? The cathedral organist? Things are worse than I thought.
And tucked here in the comments is my "Small Church Review" from the 1st Sunday of Advent. Sorry for hogging up your comment space, but I really didn't want to make this its own post.
ReplyDeleteThe fam and I were returning home from an extended Thanksgiving visit with family. We had driven through some very rural parts of the state and decided that we'd attend Vigil Mass on the way home. I intended to find the highway and drive north, out of our way, to a reliable church.
As it was, I felt exhaustion coming on and lo! There was a Catholic church right here and Mass was starting in 10 minutes. Perfect. We walked into the church and saw the priest in his clergy clothes, shirt sloppily hanging out, but...whatever. Then we saw the priest that would be celebrating Mass--a priest from our town that had recently retired. Oookay. Fast forward because I'm getting dizzy recounting it all. The priest seemed as though he'd never read any of this before, and in fact, couldn't find the Gospel and had to grab a missalette (to be fair, he may be dyslexic). This meant he was overly cautious and it took a while for him to "say the black." Happily, he left out only one new part. About half of the very small congregation refused to pick up the pew cards, and just said what they were used to. The "music minister" (hate that term) pressed a button to play MIDI recordings and then sang along. The psalm was a paraphrase set to a jazz gospel accompaniment. The resident priest stayed in the back of church and sang LOUDLY.
When all was said and done, we felt that we should attend again somewhere else the next morning.
Attend this church again? Never.