AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Eventually went to Mass at the Franciscan monastery chapel at Jonsered where for the first time for many years I got the opportunity to join in the singing of Mass I (Lux et Origo), the Ordinary for the Easter season. All of the Proper was sung by the cantor to the full setting as in the Liber Usualis, exactly as should be, including the sequence Victimae Paschalae Laudes. If only this could happen in our own parish. It isn't asking a great deal and takes just a little bit of practice for a choir, but what could once be taken for granted has become a rarity.

I have been singing in Catholic choirs since 1976. We always sang at the main festivals such as Midnight Mass, Christmas Day, the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday, and spent many weeks preparing the music. This consisted mostly of Gregorian chant and some of the easier polyphonic pieces. Apart from a bleak period during the 1990s when the parish priest was an out-and-out philistine, this has been the pattern for over three decades. Assuming the same would be required this year, I set the time aside and did not take the opportunity I had to go away. But on Good Friday our new choir director, who, since taking over at the start of the year, has never bothered to find out what music the choir are familiar with - they have about 300 years' experience between them - told us that we would not be required for the most important church feast of the year and that the liturgy would consist of congregational singing ie mostly protestant hymns. Had I attended the liturgy I would have been co...

There has been a surprising amount of criticism of the Pope since he was elected less than a month ago. As Catholics were are supposed to believe that the election was the work of the Holy Spirit. Since it is impossible to assess the performance of someone in the situation of a Pope for at least fifty years after they have died, how about relaxing, keeping quiet, watching and getting on with the business that we can actually attend to on our own doorsteps? Obviously what happens in Rome is important but it does no harm to take our eyes off what is happening there for a while.

We have spent about five hours over the past couple of weeks trying to learn this piece for the Good Friday liturgy and eventually got it right. But for a couple of minutes of music? It is a fine piece, but there is no shortage of opportunities to hear it, as it forms part of the St Matthew Passion. It is an adaptation of part of a Latin poem, Salve mundi salutare, a long meditation on the sufferings of Christ on the cross. The music was written by Hans Leo Hassler, around 1600, for a secular love song. The tune was adopted and simplified for a German translation of the poem by Johann Crüger in 1656. Whether it belongs in a Catholic liturgy is a moot point. There seems, unfortunately, to be no original setting for the music. The music itself has a distinct Lutheran flavour, both by association and in spirit. A parish church choir is not going to match King's College, Cambridge (above), and to sing it is to invite the comparison. Given the difficulty of the music, there must be be...

We have a new choir director, which has got me thinking about what the position entails. Some of the essential requirements are so basic and practical that they get taken for granted. The director should know what pieces of music each of the choir members has learned and can sing reliably. The director should have a good idea of the capabilities of the choir and select music which is just within the members' comfort zone, so that they are challenged without being unduly stressed or becoming demoralised due to over-reaching. If it is apparent that a piece of music is close to the limits of a choir's capability, the director should recognise this promptly and not waste endless amounts of time trying to get the choir to master it. The choir should be supplied with clear and legible music to sing from. A lot of musical scores leave much to be desired; singing from them can be like trying to find a path through an overgrown wood. A particular difficulty can be when the music is...

RT8 top deck interior 03/08/10 , originally uploaded by Ledlon89 . Why have things gone so wrong since?

St Peter's, Portland Road, Hove , a photo by Elmar Eye on Flickr. At the end of 1976 I moved to Hove where my parish church was St Peter's, Portland Road. The Parish Priest was Fr Dickerson, a big man with a severe limp, possibly a war wound. He was of fearsome aspect and in his sixties. There were two curates, Fr Chris Benyon, and a big amiable Dutchman, Fr van der Most, both in their early thirties. Fr Dickerson was clearly not enthused by the changes of Vatican Two. The altar remained in its original position and Mass was celebrated facing the liturgical east, which was also true east. The building was a basilica in the classical style with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, built in 1915, when the neighbourhood had been developed and the congregation had grown out of its smaller church which then became a church hall. The main Sunday 11 am Mass was in the Novus Ordo, entirely in Latin apart from the readings and sermon, and there was also a folk mass at 12 o'clock, with a ...