I was therefore intrigued to see the welcome sight of these books in the French section of the official shrine bookshop.
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Straws in the wind
Although it is always a delight to visit Lourdes, the liturgy is not exactly "classical" in style. The music can be particularly awful at times. This is not entirely the fault of the French. I heard some soupy crooning coming up from the Pius X Basilica this morning at Mass for a large English group. In the Pilgrimage booklet this year, there is special hymn to be sung at the International Mass in accordance with this year's theme. It is a jaunty song in 3/4 with the words "Penance, penance, holy penance for the Kingdom of God is close at hand!" It has been translated from the French without regard to the stress in the English sentence so that the last phrase goes "is close AT hand."
I was therefore intrigued to see the welcome sight of these books in the French section of the official shrine bookshop.
I was therefore intrigued to see the welcome sight of these books in the French section of the official shrine bookshop.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Am just back from Lourdes myself, where I was singing with a choir. The "Penance, Penance..." hymn (by Lecot, I think) is pretty unsingable in English, very awkward stresses. And as for the melody, well... So we just ignored it. But we sang all the old reliables. Amazing how many joined in. Some of the words may be a bit ott for modern sensibilities but I've often found people love them nonetheless. There was a Portugese group near us and their director, who was a musician, was totally entranced with the melody of "Bring flowers of the rarest..."! I met them in a pub later and wrote it out for him in tonic sol-fa. Or something approaching it. For some reason pints of Stella kept getting in the way ;)
Yes, I think we have a great tradition of English devotional hymns which need to be shared with other European Catholics.
Post a Comment