Joyful noise

Yesterday was Laetare Sunday (the Sunday during Lent when the liturgical color changes from purple to pink), so I went to a parish I'll not name for reasons you'll soon see for their 5:30 Mass. The celebrant, incidentally, gave a good homily on the prodigal son, the cultural implications of the robe, ring, and fatted calf in Biblical Jewish society, and a logical application of that parable to us in modern society.

Now, I've heard that music has never been a big emphasis at this service at this parish. The organist/choirmaster does not play or direct this service. They have no keyboard player for either organ or piano to support the singing (and, thankfully, no guitar band), so they use solo instrumentalists to help out.

Then we get to yesterday. The instrumentalist was a young man playing the violin. They had a young cantoress who seemed a little inexperienced and nervous. I don't think they had ever practiced together. What's worse, I couldn't tell if the violinist was sightreading, lacked self-confidence, had terrible stage fright, or was a beginning level violinist. It was a disaster! The violinist played way, way, way too slowly on the hymns, and there were a lot of sour notes. The cantoress would try to sing at a normal tempo, but he not only didn't keep up, he plodded onward when it was obvious he was two or more measures behind! They ended up singing only one verse of each hymn, because two verses would have been too painful. She plowed through an entire communion hymn, but the violinist only played the antiphon for the congregation and she was on her own for the verses. Then, for the psalm, the cantoress attempted to sing a capella, and that didn't work out too well. She didn't even try to sing the Gospel acclamation, so from that point on, we had a low Mass.

Now, in the cantoress's defense, it is extremely hard to sing a capella, especially in a large reverberant space like the nave of this church when you've a congregation singing along in "group cluster," and especially when the music is weird and has odd intervals (remember how I'm always saying the Catholic contemporary music is unsingable?). I know that if I'd been cantoring this Mass a capella, I would definitely have changed some of the music, on the spot, if need be, to something I knew I could sing and maintain pitch and intervals. Then, when you've got bad accompaniment.....I just felt so sorry for the cantoress.

Obviously, there was no Mass setting and no offertory or communion motet. For the processional, they attempted Passion Chorale (Our Father, we have wandered); for the offertory, a particularly disastrous Duke Street (Take up your cross, the Savior said); for communion, "You satisfy the hungry heart," sung responsorially; and for the recessional, We nur den lieben Gott (If thou but trust in God to guide thee). Oh, for some reason I didn't understand (especially since the hymn had started late and the celebrant had already made it down the center aisle to the narthex), the musicians did the second verse of the recessional hymn, but for the first time in my life, I didn't stay to finish the final hymn, I bolted after the first verse! It was just too painful, and I had to get out of there. Ack!

Now do you see why I didn't identify the parish?