Agnus Dei
Even though the Catholic faith has deemed my lifestyle unacceptable and condemned me and my "kind" to hell...there is a part of me that can't let it go completely. I spent plenty of time going to Mass when I was younger, particularly when my grandmother had any say in it.
The second Vatican Counsel approved a reform of the Catholic Mass in the mid 1960s, which allowed Mass to be said in languages other than Latin. This was a radical change, meant to bring Mass "closer to the people." Some people lauded it, and others lamented it. The younger generation was generally pleased. Church was less of a hassle if you could actually understand what was going on, instead of some priest mumbling in a dead language. It inverted a power structure where the priest was the sole keeper of the knowledge and in charge of imparting it to his parish.
However, the older generation felt that a great tradition had been lost. For them, a Mass said in English, or French, or whatever, was just plain wrong. It demystified their faith in a bad way. It took away some of the sense of ritual and the solemnity of worship.
If a Latin Mass is incanted correctly, it can be a beautiful thing. And it doesn't matter if you understand the words fully or not. It's the intention behind them. It's the rituals being performed while they are being spoken or sung.
Today the entire assembly sings songs with easy tunes and familiar lyrics, and is even experimenting with folk music. The case for the new mass, then, comes down to this: it is making the faithful more at home in the house of God. So said Dietrich Von Hildebrand before launching into his case in favour of the Latin Mass. He argued about the concept of reverance, and was this being lost?
Remember that reverence is a constitutive element of the capacity to "wonder," which Plato and Aristotle claimed to be the indispensable condition for philosophy.
It varies in certain liturgies, but often the Agnus Dei is said as the priest prepares the Holy Communion, where the congregation is invited forward to share in the body and the blood of Christ. I've been singing the Agnus Dei (in a slightly shortened form) live for quite some time now. But I finally wanted to record it and have it be a permanent part of my musical canon. Some people thought it was musical suicide with me to open my record with a religious incantation sung in Latin that began with almost painfully scraping violin strings.
But I ask you this...did it make you wonder? Did it matter that you couldn't understand the words? Did you feel the power behind them?
Agnus Dei
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona nobis paccm.
What if it had been like this?
Lamb of God
Who takes away the sin of the world
Grant us peace.
I think something would have been lost in the translation. I think it would have invoked different feelings. I think there wouldn't have been the same sense of reverence in my delivery, particularly if I'd veered away from a traditional arrangement and tried to "modernize" it into an English folk tune or worse, a pop tune. Can you imagine? I feel the same way about opera. People need to learn to feel music. It's not always about the words.
The second Vatican Counsel approved a reform of the Catholic Mass in the mid 1960s, which allowed Mass to be said in languages other than Latin. This was a radical change, meant to bring Mass "closer to the people." Some people lauded it, and others lamented it. The younger generation was generally pleased. Church was less of a hassle if you could actually understand what was going on, instead of some priest mumbling in a dead language. It inverted a power structure where the priest was the sole keeper of the knowledge and in charge of imparting it to his parish.
However, the older generation felt that a great tradition had been lost. For them, a Mass said in English, or French, or whatever, was just plain wrong. It demystified their faith in a bad way. It took away some of the sense of ritual and the solemnity of worship.
If a Latin Mass is incanted correctly, it can be a beautiful thing. And it doesn't matter if you understand the words fully or not. It's the intention behind them. It's the rituals being performed while they are being spoken or sung.
Today the entire assembly sings songs with easy tunes and familiar lyrics, and is even experimenting with folk music. The case for the new mass, then, comes down to this: it is making the faithful more at home in the house of God. So said Dietrich Von Hildebrand before launching into his case in favour of the Latin Mass. He argued about the concept of reverance, and was this being lost?
Remember that reverence is a constitutive element of the capacity to "wonder," which Plato and Aristotle claimed to be the indispensable condition for philosophy.
It varies in certain liturgies, but often the Agnus Dei is said as the priest prepares the Holy Communion, where the congregation is invited forward to share in the body and the blood of Christ. I've been singing the Agnus Dei (in a slightly shortened form) live for quite some time now. But I finally wanted to record it and have it be a permanent part of my musical canon. Some people thought it was musical suicide with me to open my record with a religious incantation sung in Latin that began with almost painfully scraping violin strings.
But I ask you this...did it make you wonder? Did it matter that you couldn't understand the words? Did you feel the power behind them?
Agnus Dei
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona nobis paccm.
What if it had been like this?
Lamb of God
Who takes away the sin of the world
Grant us peace.
I think something would have been lost in the translation. I think it would have invoked different feelings. I think there wouldn't have been the same sense of reverence in my delivery, particularly if I'd veered away from a traditional arrangement and tried to "modernize" it into an English folk tune or worse, a pop tune. Can you imagine? I feel the same way about opera. People need to learn to feel music. It's not always about the words.