c is for...

Playing catchup with liturgical compositions and YouTube

: Cacophony :: Catholicism :: Cinema :

I should’ve posted these ages ago, but busy blah blah blah procrastinating yadda yadda yadda lazy etc. etc. etc.

Psalm 34: Taste and See

Mass for a Risen Church: Eucharistic Acclamations

Posted by c2 at 08:40 AM • Permalink • Print this entry • Comments (0) • Trackbacks (0)

Guitar Praise: Solid Rock

: Cacophony :: Catholicism :: Controller Freak :

I’m just going to let this one speak for itself:

Guitar Praise: Solid Rock

Posted by c2 at 08:30 AM • Permalink • Print this entry • Comments (0) • Trackbacks (0)

In the beginning was the Word, and it was confusing

: Cacophony :: Catholicism :

At a retreat I attended a decade ago, a priest was delivering a talk on the liturgy. He was firing off an explanation and said, “The Lord be with you.” Almost immediately, in a nearly involuntary reflex that would make Pavlov proud, everybody interrupted and chimed in with the response, “And also with you.” He paused, and then quipped: “Wow. If I rang a bell, would you all start salivating?”

Two days ago, the bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship finally released the new translation of the Order of Mass (800kb PDF). It’s not for use in worship yet—Rocco Palmo says the earliest it’ll be rolled out is 2011—but it’s being provided for study and formation.

So, start unlearning 35 years of ingrained congregational responses like “And also with you,” and get used to “And with your spirit.” Other responses, as quoted from Whispers in the Loggia:

The more significant changes of the people’s parts are:

• et cum spiritu tuo is rendered as “And with your spirit”
• In the Confiteor, the text “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault” has been added
• The Gloria has been translated differently and the structure is different from the present text
• In the Preface dialogue the translation of “Dignum et justum est” is “It is right and just”
• The first line of the Sanctus now reads “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts”
• The response of the people at the Ecce Agnus Dei is “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

A few years ago, John Wilkins wrote an excellent article for Commonweal chronicling the painstaking and painful history of ICEL’s translating process. It’s a fascinating and disturbing history of clashing interests and church politics, of literalist translation versus dynamic equivalence, and of authority over collegiality.

I’m not happy with the text, but that’s not for me to decide. I will finally be able to work on either creating or updating the Mass settings I’ve composed, and hopefully prepare them for publication.

Posted by c2 at 01:58 PM • Permalink • Print this entry • Comments (5) • Trackbacks (0)

Lenten Concert 2007 alert!

: Cacophony :: Catholicism :

To feature a new setting of Psalm 34 written by yours truly, and the first time we’ve tackled Mozart.

Posted by c2 at 05:24 PM • Permalink • Print this entry • Comments (2) • Trackbacks (0)

How to use Zapfino correctly

: Catholicism :

A few graphic designer friends and I have been lamenting the overuse of Zapfino lately. Ever since it was included with Mac OS X, I’ve seen it everywhere, from church catalogs to wedding magazines, and even Bed Bath & Beyond wall decor. It’s kind of cool to see a typeface that elegant reach the populist status of a Helvetica (or Arial, for you Microsoft knockoffs) or even a Times/Times New Roman. Still, few designers have truly taken full advantage of Zapfino’s features—there are tons of alternate glyphs they’re just not using, or might not even be aware of.

This is a treatment of the words spoken during the imposition of ashes that I designed for my Mass worship programs today. In it, I use quite a few nonstandard Zapfino glyphs. They’re all built in there, designers: stretch that font to its limits!

Posted by c2 at 04:42 PM • Permalink • Print this entry • Comments (2) • Trackbacks (0)

Christmastime is always… interesting around here

: Catholicism :

Rehearsal tonight (last night it went 'til 10:15). Wedding Friday night. The Advent Novena has been every night since Sunday and continues through Saturday. And, since Christmas falls on a Monday this year, Christmas Eve falls on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, which means I'm playing for eight Masses this weekend.

At least I didn't have to get up for the one this morning.

Posted by c2 at 09:10 AM • Permalink • Print this entry • Comments (5) • Trackbacks (0)

“O brighter than the rising morn”

: Cacophony :: Catholicism :

People often ask me, “When you write a song, which comes first: the lyrics or the tune?” Almost always, the lyrics come first. Even when I’m adapting a previously existing text like a psalm, I take the words and try to twist a catchy melody out of them. Very rarely, if ever, will I start with a tune and then try to squeeze lyrics out of it.

Back in October, a musical idea actually came to me, sans lyrical inspiration. The sound of the melody was very Advent-y and Christmas-y, which, in theory, gave me two months to write words for the thing.

By the first week of Advent, I still had nothing.

Posted by c2 at 12:38 AM • Permalink • Print this entry • Comments (4) • Trackbacks (0)

The death of liberal Catholicism?

: Catholicism :

Took a long, looooong sabbatical from blogging. Let’s get back into it nice and easy by throwing a hot-button topic out there, shall we? 

A few weeks ago, Beliefnet posted a debate between Commonweal contributors J. Peter Nixon and Grant Gallicho concerning the death of liberal Catholicism. Fascinating stuff. Here’s an excerpt from one of Nixon’s pieces:

Whether one wants to use the term “liberal,” “modernist,” or some other term, the “reform party” in Catholicism had quite a run in the 20th century. That movement manifested itself in many ways: historical criticism in biblical studies, the emphasis on participation in the liturgy, the “anthropological turn” in theology, and the acceptance of liberal democracy in the political sphere.

Vatican II was partially the fruit of these movements. But even in the decades prior to the council, there was an enormous amount of intellectual energy. Journals—like Commonweal—were being founded. There were experiments in liturgical reform. Lay movements were gaining adherents. Reform fired the imagination of the broader Church before it fired the imagination of the bishops gathered in council.

But as we enter the 21st century, the intellectual energy seems to have shifted to the other side of the spectrum. Journals are still being founded. Lay movements are still gaining adherents. But in many cases these things are critical of some of the reforms of previous decades.

And from Gallicho’s conclusion:

I can’t say I conceive of the Church’s intellectual energy as a zero-sum game—that conservatism gains only if liberalism loses, or vice versa. A new set of questions among the faithful is inevitable, and a very good thing. It is in fact the surface on which the Church gains traction as history unfolds.

Maybe we’re in for a whole lot of both/and: Catholics who are staunchly pro-life and deeply committed to serving the poor, who attend Eucharistic adoration and Taize services, who receive the pope’s teachings with prayerfulness and respect and who at times disagree with his analysis. I honestly don’t know. But this much is certain: liberal Catholicism will play a significant role in shaping those experiences.

Discuss. Play nice. And I have more entries on the horizon which are many weeks or months late. 

Posted by c2 at 10:01 PM • Permalink • Print this entry • Comments (6) • Trackbacks (0)