Our local liturgical committee has made a decision that we will use the revised Mass of Creation as one of our new settings for the parts of the Mass. This is for largely practical reasons. We have never done this Gloria before, so we don’t have to unlearn the old version. The Sanctus has only minor changes, as does the Lamb of God so it was thought it would be less of a challenge.
Refrain
Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to people of good will.
Verse 1
We praise you,
we bless you,
we adore you,
we glorify you,
we give you thanks for your great glory,
Lord God, heavenly King,
O God, almighty Father.
Refrain
Verse 2
Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son,
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,
you take away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us;
you take away the sins of the world,
receive our prayer;
you are seated at the right hand of the Father,
have mercy on us.
Refrain
Verse 3
For you alone are the Holy One,
you alone are the Lord,
you alone are the Most High,
Jesus Christ,
with the Holy Spirit,
in the glory of God the Father.
Amen. Amen.
Refrain
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I was just informed about the changes in the mass. Is it possible to have a copy of the music for the new mass emailed to me, if possible with chords for guitars?
Thanks,
Jennifer
I hate to be a spoilsport, Jennifer, but it will cost you or your church $10 to buy the revised version for guitar from GIA. Our parish got the keyboard/guitar version from As One Voice in Australia for less than $20. I’ve spoken to some composers of liturgical music in Australia, whose work is used widely and they get virtually nothng for their efforts. I suspect Marty Haugen does a bit better but still, it is his work. The people at As One Voice know what I’m up to on my blog, and haven’t asked me to shut down, but I don’t think they would be thrilled if we were exchanging sheet music.
We’ve been doing the revised Mass of Creation for a couple of months and I wish we hadn’t. The assembly is still singing the old version of the Holy Holy and it sounds grating to plough on with the new music as written over their singing. I hope doing new masses will be better once they are learnt.
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We used the old version of the Mass of Creation. We started using the Mass of Joy settings in an attempt to get the parishioners to become more familiar with the new wording. Now we will return to the Mass of Creation revised 2010. The update for our missals that we rec’d from GIA include ONLY the refrain for the parishioners!! What use is that? Our parish all sing the entire Gloria so now I have to find somewhere to purchase a license to download the Gloria with simple one line music that they can refer to. So far I have not been able to locate this. Does anyone know where I can get an assembly edition (easy one note) copy?? Thanks.
G’day Catherine
I’m not sure whether it is of use to you, but Willow have published a Mass book for the Assembly with all the responses and melody line versions of eleven masses, including Creation. You can order them at about eight dollars each here:
http://www.asonevoice.com.au/CatalogueRetrieve.aspx?ProductID=1032082&A=SearchResult&SearchID=2127197&ObjectID=1032082&ObjectType=27
I bought a copy to make guitar versions to save turning so many pages.
Thank you for the words – I needed them for a wedding in the morning & my copies were outdated.
I think the Powers – that – Be in the Catholic Church decided to make all these silly
‘changes’ & create this controversy about changing what was a well-known & well-received Order of the Mass for one simple reason: to try to draw attention & ire away from the ongoing pedophilia. scandal. I agree the service now sounds terrible being translated directly from Latin with no grammatical allowances. Most of the people recite the words they learned from childhood & seem (and say they’re) frustrated over the fact all the Vatican did was confuse things. Not only that, it seems many saw through the facade & left the Church for other denominations (or none at all) feeling totally left out of the process. It was done in a ‘like it or lump it’ manner, as are all decisions in the Church.
I know there wasn’t any more abuse percentage -wise than goes on outside the realm of the Church. What made the scandal truly outrageous was the enormous lengths bishops, cardinals & even Holy Fathers went to over more than 80 years to cover up & protect the predators. To use inviolate diplomatic pouches to ship incriminating parish documents & complaints to the Vatican to short-circuit US & other nations’ prosecutions will forever be a black spot on the Church. I think it will even be seen in future times as a worse sin than the Inquisitions. Those were done out of superstition & fear: the pedophile cover-up was done out of fear of discovery & having to pay out billions in reparations.
FYI: Cleveland, OH is celebrating our ‘win’ over one of the worst, most hated bishops in the nation. Bishop Lennon summarily closed over a dozen inner city churches (including the FIRST Catholic church built in the city & still in stunningly beautiful condition) 4 yrs ago, stripped them of magnificent art works (selling the peoples’ baptismal fonts, tabernacles, chalices, stained glass etc. on E-bay to other denominations) and walking roughshod over the tears and complaints of those who begged for their church not to close. Many elderly & poor were left with NO place to attend Mass or the Sacraments. Lennon said they could watch the Mass on TV! As a further in-your-face he even pushed his way w/his bodyguards into their closing Mass & personally ‘undedicated’ their beloved ethinic churches: not allowing them to grieve, but shoving his decision down their throats before he personally padlocked the buildings. The good news is the Vatican, after many appeals & church law scholars filing against Lennon got the Vatican to demand Lennon re-open a dozen parishes , put back their belongings & return their monies! [this isn’t the first diocese to fall prey to Bishop ‘Chainsaw’ Lennon. He did the same thing in Boston – closing only churches in inner city locations which served the poor & needy & sending their priests to wealthy suburbs.] One Cleveland suburban parish ended up with 5 (!) priests while thousands in our inner city had none. Imagine suddenly facing no access to Reconciliation, Annointing of the Sick, or Baptisms: no church for the very people Christ sent us to minister to.
Rejoice with us today! The first Church of the churches that won a reprieve will be reopened & re-dedicated this Sunday. Lennon, grim with anger, stated on the evening news if any of these parishes failed to make even a single payment or started running behind in finances he was set to shut them down again. They would not get a dime from any other Diocesan churches to help them with their ministries. I ask you all to pray for him. There is a campaign to ask the Vatican for a new Shepherd for the Cleveland Diocese since ours doesn’t understand our Mission.
The Catholic Church needs to wake up and start dealing with us, the members as Christ would have. We are not ignorant people, we are faithful but not as ‘sheeplike’ as our forefathers & mothers. We grew up loving our Mass, the music & our faith. The old men who run the Church like an ancient fiefdom need to read Christ’s Gospels where he cautioned the Pharisees about laying undue burdens on the people, or Corinthians where Paul states all we need is to be truly faithful to Christ & our neighbors.
No this is not true! There was never an attempt to change the words for reasons you stated. Americans had the wrong translation from the beginning. Everywhere else in the world the original Latin version was translated correctly. It was John Paul II who noticed how wrong it was to sing “.. and also with you” when what the Holy Scripture really says is “.. with your Spirit” so I’m glad it’s been finally reconciled. I know it’s hard to break away from what you got used to over the years but there is no need to mix politics with the liturgical cannon.
We all got rather heated over this all those years ago and we managed to sing the new words. There were several problems, but there was controversy about whether translation was conveying the sense of the original or the just straight from the Latin with no regard for English syntax.
There was already a better translation done that was abandoned for political reasons by the Vatican at the time.
Maybe there can be another look, more for priests who still have to get than tongues around the very poor English you get when you transliterate Latin thoughtlessly.
cheers
Geoff
The translation of the mass is a tough thing to discuss. There were many different versions over the years. Before Vatican 2, each pew missal producer had different translations of the mass, which was said in Latin. This system worked really well as the bishop of the area gave approval for local translations that basically said the same thing, with some lovely translations coming out.
After the second Vatican Council, when the use of the vernacular was used more widely in the mass, translations had to be localised. Australia translated ‘Et cum spiritu tuo’ to ‘And with you’ in the intermediate period of 1965 -1969. The ordinary was pretty much the same as what we have now, in fact, it is possible to adapt the 60s translation easily to the new translation.
The new order of mass originally had a more literal translation in Australia, (I don’t know if it was the same as what we had in the 60s), but as of 1970, the well known text was proposed and not yet approved.
The well known translation was very poetic, but it was a bad translation – If you compare it to various protestant translations, you will see more similarities. I believe that this translation was a result of ICET and their work at producing an interdenominational standard of texts to be commonly used. Unfortunately, this reflected badly as a translation of the original Latin texts of the mass.
The new and current translation is indeed imperfect, but it is better than what we had before, but it is not the ideal translation. The best translation of liturgical texts will reconcile a literal interpretation of the original language, while still being a poetically smooth work of art.
Church politics will be an ongoing problem, but in my opinion, the transition would be a lot better if congregations would know at least one setting of the Mass in Latin. The Gregorian setting De Angelis has been the most popular, and one of the nicest Latin settings out there.
Gio
If you have an assembly where the use of Latin promotes participation in the liturgy then you should be singing Latin settings. I have only ever been in parishes with suburban, “low church”, volunteer led music and never has any need for a Latin setting been perceived. If such is needed the Spirit will lead us there. (OK, we have done some Taize in Latin over the years.)
Without wanting to relive the Liturgy wars, I’m not sure the original English text mass that was in use could have be called poetic – it really was more prosaic and functional and a good first attempt in a bit of a rush, and with the principle that in translation you have to look for the best equivalent meaning rather than transliteration, which has to get the nuances wrong, because that just how language works.
The 1998 reviewed text was seen as an improvement and probably should have been used as it was apparently much better English than what was eventually approved. I never had time to look at the whole thing but if you have a spare lifetime the whole thing is still available on the internet – links here:
https://liturgy.co.nz/failed-1998-english-missal-translation
I remember being very worked up about this at the time, as Vatican politics is pretty ruthless and English speaking countries were treated very shabbily.
I think you are correct in seeing a move to ecumenism in the old translation, and there was a positive effect on many Protestant denominations who looked at the positives from Vatican 2 and incorporated more liturgy into their services.
Thank you for your perspectives and your enthusiasm for Catholic worship. I would do more chant on my blog but Band in a Box is a strictly metrical medium and does not like chant at all.
Geoff
Thanks Geoff for sharing your knowledge! I still have a lot to learn!
The whole politics of using Latin is very complicated, but some of the tunes are NICE.
Part of the attraction is the universal aspect of the Latin, when everyone can sing the same thing together at mass, especially when they come from different cultures and don’t understand English.
Maybe a happy medium would be to work the new translation into the old musical settings (Pretty straightforward except for that beastly Gloria). I’ve seen it done before, in an old Sarum Gradual.
The 1998 Sacramentary looks really interesting, and I’ve already added it to my stash of digital missals.
Chant is way too problematic to recreate digitally – medieval peasants were really musically talented.
Some of it goes over my head, but some is just absolutely gorgeous. The entire Mass VIII De Angelis is one, but the Kyrie and Sanctus from Mass XI Orbis Factor are some pretty strong contenders.
My admiration for the chant masses fights my enjoyment of hymns. Keep up the hymn work here!
We are just starting to learn this Mass. Can you e-mail me the music for the gloria so our choir has it. All we have right now is the accompniant. It would help for us to see the notes we are to sing.
Thank you for your help.
Sorry, Pat, but I’m in enough trouble over copyright as it is.
The music is available very cheaply at GIA in many different forms here:
http://www.giamusic.com/product_search.cfm?criteria=mass+of+creation&search_button.x=22&search_button.y=8&search_button=submit
There is a preview available here:
http://www.giamusic.com/searchPDFS/G7694.pdf
we started singing this last week- it is dreadful. To many highs that nobody can reach & it flows poorly. There have got to be many better versions of Gloria out there.
Commiserations. I’m fortunate this mass is not being used at my current parish.
Geoff