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« A Living Gregorian Chant - thoughts on the article by Laszlo Dobszay | Return to the Gregorian Chant and Sacred Music Blog | Gregorian Chant Wedding Rehearsal »

Sacred Wedding Music

Sanctus - VII Missa de angelis 

 

This Saturday I will be singing for the wedding of one of my former youth group kids, now all grown up and working as a reporter for our diocesan newspaper.  He has put together a little schola of singers, and many of the propers and all the ordinary of the Mass will be Gregorian chant.  The only others are a responsorial psalm which is actual set to a Gregorian mode, as is the Alleluia I believe. 

Because of being a former seminarian and working for the diocese, the groom knows his stuff and he has connections.  Fr. D. Joseph Redfern, an Australian native who was ordained for the Diocese of La Crosse, WI in June 2006 is the director of the schola.  (This priest narrowly avoided trouble with immigration authorities, though all that has been sorted out now and he's in the U.S. with visa issues resolved.) I do not know the other members of the schola except for one, who helped out with my youth group as a college student back when and has in the past couple of years helped fill out the soprano voices when our schola did special a cappella polyphonic pieces on occasion.  There are actually men in this schola, and it will be an experience I have not had since the colloquium, chanting with guys who are solid in reading their neumes (at least I assume these guys will be).

If you want to have truly Catholic wedding music, this is how you do it.  Once you have your schola put together, you can send them PDFs of the music and MP3 recordings such as the following

Gloria
http://www.adoremus.org/hymns/29%20Gloria.mp3
 
Santus
http://www.christusrex.org/www2/cantgreg/cantus/sanctus_8.mp3
 
Mortem tuam
http://www.adoremus.org/hymns/08%20Mysterium%20%20Fidei%20(1st%20version),%20Mortem%20tuam....mp3
 
Pater noster
http://www.adoremus.org/hymns/09%20Pater%20Noster,%20with%20introduction%20and%20embolism.mp3
 
Agnus Dei
http://www.christusrex.org/www2/cantgreg/cantus/agnus_8.mp3
 
Salve Regina
http://www.adoremus.org/hymns/79%20Salve%20Regina.mp3

You ask all your singers to show up early the night of the wedding rehearsal, then let them rehearse one more time an hour and a half before the wedding. 

By the way, in addition to the above music, you use the introit Deus Israel which is based on the book of Tobit, and the Communion chant Ecce sic benedicetur which prays with the psalmist that you "may see your children's children."  Beautiful, perfectly appropriate texts, it does not get more fitting than this. 

Needless to say I am looking forward to this completely new wedding experience.  I plan to have the video camera running during the Mass, so if things work out the way I'm hoping, I will post videos or sound files sometime afterwards (I know better than to make any promises on when that will occur).   

Previous: A Living Gregorian Chant - thoughts on the article by Laszlo Dobszay
Next: Gregorian Chant Wedding Rehearsal

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