well, the bishop was installed today. I am pretty excited, although I am trying to not be TOO excited since I've heard about so many bishops who people thought were going to be so great and...weren't.
Since I was in the choir, we were in the back of the church, and when he knocked on the door at the beginning of the service and came in, I just felt kind of this rush of emotion, like kind of like how I feel about the pope. like, yes, this man is going to be my shepherd/father. and a good one. hopefully. My first glimpse of him, just a few feet away, he just seemed so...energetic, happy, excited, almost radiant.
My only additional thoughts on the music have to do with the proper prayers.
(the Opening Prayer, Prayer after Communion, etc.)
He sang all of them! I definitely have to point that out to Fr. G, since he's been doing that a bit more recently. (speaking of which, when he gets back from retreat I am going to look more seriously into finding someone he can take a few voice lessons from...yeah...)
But the strangest thing was that MD found it necessary to conduct the choir for the "It is right to give Him thanks and praise..." etc. parts. I mean, all the way down to the "Amen's" after the bishop prayed the prayers. (the one-pitch "Amen.") Is it that the congregation has never had to sing those parts with our previous bishop? I just want to point out to him that by its very nature no directing is required for congregational chant. Like it was strange how for the "Amen's" he found it necessary to cut off the choir, which sounded particularly odd since the congregation obviously wasnt watching for the cut-off, and so they were still singing after the abrupt choral cut-off!
and a final thought.
I'm going to set aside (for a few sentences) any humility I might have ever had and say how I think I single-handedly prevented a musical disaster.
I was looking through the program before Mass and noticed that All Creatures of Our God and King only had 6 verses, and of course as I wrote yesterday I knew that the choir was planning on singing 7! Rather than bother MD, as he was pretty busy and I wasn't sure if like a ton of people had told him or something, I pointed it out to his wife, an alto, and I'm sure she told him, and then he told us a few minutes later that we wouldn't be singing verse 6 (of our music.)
So basically, the congregation would have been singing verse 7 while we were singing verse 6. that would have been interesting.
(pat on back)
1 comment:
I sometimes conduct the choir on congregational parts. The Preface dialog can really get too fast if you don't MAKE people take the time.
I asked my boss for rumors about the new bishop. He didn't know much about him aside from his love of the old Mass. He DID however say that he is the most cultured bishop out there. According to him, Bp. B is huge into good music and art, so that's a plus!
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