A chanted liturgy in the Latin Church ... now, that is exciting! This has been the traditional practice in the East and it is quite beautiful.
I hope this means that we will see some serious draining of the Catholic Sappy Liturgical Music Swamp.
This is seriously encouraging news. Our parish uses the "Classic" OCP missalette, which is marginally better than the standard one, but still has a heavy proportion of trash to decent music.
In addition to getting rid of the hideous pop music (including anything by Haugen or Haas) and putting in ALL the old Catholic standards, they need to ditch the tacky 1970s woodcuts at the head of each Sunday. They look like hippy cartoons produced by a 10 year old with limited artistic talent.
Of course, "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme" or "Sleepers Wake" (one of its English names - "awake" doesn't fit the metre) is not really a Catholic hymn. It was written by Philip Nikolai, a Lutheran pastor and famously set in a cantata by J.S. Bach. But it's sound theologically and should be stolen. We should steal all the good Anglican hymns too.
**If you are shocked to hear these things, it is understandable. This is not part of OCP’s reputation. This is because its bread and butter is the distribution of pop music to parish in fly-away resources.**
So true. What a shock to me that OCP has even ventured into chant.
Hmmmm .... yes indeed.
Perhaps some mean no insult ... but I do.
The 'past contribution' of OCP, and of entirely too many 'church musicians' has been of negative value. It has not been merely useless, but has actively detracted from the Liturgy, replacing the sacred with the banal, replacing the Catholic with the heretical, and serving only to puff up the already over inflated egos of the self anointed "ministers of music". We would be better off without them at all. Silence, or the spoken word, would be preferable to their 'past contributions'.
And, NYer, do you know any links where I could hear some of your Maronite liturgical music examples? (On my path to the Catholic faith, I attended some American "Orthodox Church" services, and found their "Divine Liturgy" music/chanting to be very beautiful.)
If anyone can provide those kinds of links, thanks in advance.
Slightly amused at the notion that someone who might temper the most egregious cases of modernism in Church music would happen to be named “Sample.”