So I went to the Extraordinary Form Mass today at this church, and you know what the funny thing was that I realized as I was pondering what to write in this post? There really isn't much to write about the different EF's all around town... they're all pretty much the same! The choir/cantor could be more or less nice; it could be a solemn mass, missa cantata, or low mass, and the people could sing/speak more or less as a tradition at that parish, but other than that... there's not much to write about! (And that's a GOOD thing!)
As for this liturgy, I did enjoy it a great deal. The church is quite lovely inside, and they have a fabulous, recently rebuilt organ. There was a wonderful male cantor with a beautiful tenor voice (and the priest also had quite a lovely voice!) but I did feel like the rest of the choir distracted from his execution of the propers, but they were fine for all the ordinary chants (the congregation sang heartily for the simple responses, but I suspect the ordinary was more foreign for them.) (My recommendation for the tenor, who sang the chants relatively high, would be to either not have the choir sing the propers with him, OR to have them only sing in his range, then their, um... "wanderings" wouldn't be quite as noticed as they were an octave higher...)
I was there for a baptism which followed Mass, also in the EF. (I think it was my 2nd or 3rd of those?) One neat thing to be mentioned from that was how the priest encouraged/taught us all the simple response for the part when everyone walks in procession to the front of the church. (Something like "let us go to the house of the Lord," I can't remember exactly.) So it was neat to be able to sing that response as a group after each verse.
