thoughts

ugh. the decisions!~
where to even begin? yesterday I sat down with my priest and had a big de-briefing session about the Colloquium particularly, and in general what direction we are going to go in. We need to get new hymnals, and we can't wait two or three years for a new translation of the Mass. Guess who that job is going to fall to? St. Michael's is a big possiblity, but kind of expensive. Adoremus is accused of not having much variety. What about a yearly paperback thing for a couple years? anything has to be better than Ritual Song... if you have EVER read this blog before, then you know my rants about the Communion options....
...but then, as my discussion with my boss continued, one thing that I really took away from the conference was an encouragement to begin using the propers. but HOW? I don't even know where to begin! The Communion will be easy to slip in in any form, everyone likes listenign to pretty music, and the Offertory won't be so hard either. Getting rid of the opening hymn will be the work of a couple years at least. and then the difficulty of getting translations into the hands of the people...and that's where a good misallette will come in handy. Doing the actual Gregorian chant (from the Gregorian Missal or wherever that is from originally) is the ideal I'm shooting for. and for something like the Offertory and Communion, I don't htink the people will care much, like I just mentinoed they like to listen to pretty music. Apparently they loved it when I (and the choir at that Mass) sang Vidi Aquam all Easter. But where on earth am I going to get a schola that can do this every week (ok, I have no idea why this is suddenly typing bold, that is not intentional. I'm trying to type really fast.) I have a couple ideas of girls who could sing with me, but I doubt any of them would be willing to learn the propers and sing them with me at just one Mass a weekend-even if I rotated the actual girls! One thing that was discussed at the Colloquium which I thought was quite cool that kind of answered the question of mine, "what about solo singing? I mean, I can learn the propers all by myself pretty easily, and just sing them, and people will like them?" well, it was discussed about how stuff like that is even MORE appreciated by the difficulty of it not just being sung, but being sung in perfect unison, without mistakes. like, any musician can just sing a pretty melody line, but to sing it together with someone else, with all of the same nuances etc, is just heavenly! so there's a bunch of the random big decisions I've got overwhelming and gushing around in my head.,..

oh...where to begin, where to begin...