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August 7, 2005
Mass of a Joyful Heart
I am a professor at a small liberal arts college in the diocese of Rochester, NY. We are lucky to have Mass on campus each week that school is in session; this is truly an act of charity by the two priests of the Roman Catholic Community of Geneva, who offer 4 scheduled Masses in English and one in Spanish every Sunday -- our Mass makes a 5th English-language Mass 9 months of the year. I usually attend that Mass. I dress relatively simply (no jacket and tie); my first year I wore jacket and tie until some students told me that I made them feel uncomfortable and underdressed. Heaven forfend! I want to maximize mass-going, so dress down a bit.
This makes me the only person in the world who systematically dresses better for summer Sunday Masses than during the rest of the year. Of course, this schema also means that I get to get some use out of my seersucker and poplin suits (all things work together for the good, you know). That's because I get to attend Mass in a lovely 1910 Arts and Crafts Meets Gothic Revival church -- St. Stephen's (the link goes to my flickr photostream -- there are 4 pictures of St. Stephen's).
The music is usually pretty bad even during the school year. The organist is alright, but the selection is the typical round of St. Louis Jesuits and their ilk -- and I can't think about the Easter Vigil right now. Someone had the bright idea this summer of having us use the same mass setting all summer, printing it in fliers, and putting them in the pews -- so far, so good. The missa de angelis? Oh, puh-leeze! We're trying to sing the Mass of a Joyful Heart, by Steve Angrisano and Tom Tomaszek, copyright 1999, Oregon Catholic Press.
My grasp of music is analagous to those people who tell me, a professor of art history, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like." I think that's a reasonably good starting point. I don't know much about music, but I know what sets my teeth on edge. A congregation attempting to sing the "Holy" in the Angrisano/Tomaszek setting sets my teeth on edge. After May, June, and July we're no closer to being able to sing it than we were at the beginning.
The music makes no sense -- every single "holy" is a different number of notes and the notes are not even (they use what I think are triplets at one point -- I don't think congregations sing triplets very well). The rest of it is banal. B-A-N-A-L. It doesn't sound much like 1999 -- it sounds much more like background music of about 1985. Does it make a difference that both of the authors are specialists in music for "youth"? I think so. Why, then, are we singing it at the Masses of an aging, small-town parish? I have no systematic objection to contemporary music (though in execution I have heard precious little that moves me), but can't we sing something written for adults?
In the end, I can say is that it has made seersucker and summer Mass less of a thrill than in previous summers. Only the combination of banal music and horrific interior at St. Francis de Sales' church (click, scroll down and look to the left) has kept me going to St. Stephen's this year.
Steve Angrisano's site.
Tom Tomaszek's site
further - the horrid triplets are in the "Lamb of God," not the "Holy." Today we had not only that mass setting, but TWO Bob Dufford, SJ, hymns. When I was a Protestant we never sang two hymns by Charles Wesley, say, on a single Sunday. Maybe I won't be so sorry to be going back to Mass at 4 p.m. and an open shirt collar after all.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at August 7, 2005 6:55 AM