I’m a musician with our church’s music ministry. Oh that I had it to do over again, I would have learned to play the keyboard (piano and organ) too. But I was enamored with the flute and made up my mind at an early age that I was going to master and excel in that instrument as my mother had on the piano. But I digress…
The new changes in the GIRM as implemented in my parish have taken away some of my incentives to participate as an instrumentalist. I can’t abide the “Gather” book arrangements. In my opinion the arrangements are silly and instead of providing a rich full sound for different instruments (brass and woodwind) they just duplicated them. But at least we occasionally were allowed to play instrumental interludes before communion while the priest and the eucharistic ministers were performing the fractionation.
Now, we get to play the Agnus Dei over, and over, and over and over until you just want to lose your mind!! I can’t believe that this is really what the authorities who put the GIRM together really had in mind, but I checked it out- yep, that’s what it says although I gather there is some debate over whether or not pouring the wine still counts as part of the fractionation.
So I’m left with poor arrangements in the Gather Book with no chance to play interesting instrumental music – what’s a flutist to do? I might find all of this somewhat easier to swallow if we were to learn and sing some of the ancient chant that is recommended in the GIRM, but the most we really do is Ubi Caritas around Easter.
While I was pondering this, I came across this article by a mom who was planning her mom’s funeral mass.
Several years ago I represented my three brothers and sister when, after our dear mother’s death on Easter Tuesday, I met with the organist of her parish church in order to plan the funeral Mass. Having been immediately assured that the parish community was eager to assist my family in its “journey of bereavement,” I was confident of a respectfully sympathetic ear from the lady organist.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t do that,” she so sympathetically replied when I told her my family would like some simple chant piece to be included — anything. To my consternation, she went on to “guide” me to a realization as to why she could not do that. “We decided as a parish community to always look ahead, and never look behind, in our journey of faith. Using chant, of course, would be contrary to our mission.”
Thinking of my three crusty brothers, who had not darkened the doors of a Catholic church for two or three decades, and who had asked that we keep the funeral ceremony simple, I requested of the organist that there be no funeral “choir” (which I knew to be, not a trained choir, but just a group of nice people who liked to sing. Frankly, I also wanted to avoid the effeminate, soft-rock genre of church hymns I knew were in common use in most parishes.)
Well clearly that organist hadn’t seen the GIRM!! Chant is the first option!
I dunno, I think one of my resolutions for the new year is to practice my instrument more and find another outlet for performing. Another one is going to be study the masses on EWTN to learn more about chant. I found this article entitled,
Twelve Latin Chants Every Catholic Should Know, to be helpful and plan on starting there.