Apparently one of the speakers asked "When did you last hear an introit?" At most Liturgical music days you could expect a proportion of the audience to ask "What is an introit?" At the JHNILM day there was a less common response with several of the audience mouthing to each other "last Sunday." At Blackfen, I'm proud to say, you could hear two sung introits on any given Sunday, one at the English sung Mass and one at the usus antiquior. We start the Mass as we mean to go on.
Bara Brith has launched from this question into a heartfelt and strongly expressed article (I did not say rant) on the whole question of hymns and actually singing the texts of the Mass. Most enjoyable.
5 comments:
Father, perhaps you could clear something up for me. In the Introit, the text which comes before the psalm verse, is it also taken from Scripture, or was it "improvised" (under the influence of the Holy Spirit) by Holy Mother Church?
I think the mouthing of "last Sunday" was between your Julia and my Clare, your director of music and mine.
Thank God for wimmins ministry and for women who read the red and sing the black.
Mark - Generally the text is also taken from scripture. Interestingly the text is often from a version other than the Vulgate. Sometimes the text is something else composed by the Church but not part of the inspired scriptures.
The introit that I found interesting but odd is that of the Requiem Mass which has the citation in the Missal "4 Esdrae 2,3 4et3". In other words it was adopted into the Roman Missal before the Canon of the Scriptures was finally fixed!
The Requiem Mass has many vestiges of ancient practices that fell into disuse.
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