The Propers of the Mass, Then and Now

[Mary C. Weaver]

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The Propers of the Mass, Then and Now

 This is a lecture given yesterday by Fr. Mark Daniel Kirby, OSB, at the liturgical symposium "Council and Continuity", hosted by Bishop Thomas Olmsted in the Diocese of Phoenix. With thanks to Fr. Kirby we offer here the entire text.

The Propers of the Mass, Then and Now

Fr. Mark Daniel Kirby, OSB 

Introduction



Until the approval of The New Roman Missal by Pope Paul VI on 3 April 1969, there had existed for four hundred years a substantial unity between the texts of the Proper of the Mass contained in the Graduale Romanum and those given in the Roman Missal.  The Missal, in effect, reproduced the complete texts of those sung parts of the Mass that in the Graduale Romanum are fully notated.



The Missal takes the text of the Chants of the Proper of the Mass from the Graduale Romanum, and not the Graduale Romanum from the Missal.  The Missal, in fact, contains the very same texts found in the Graduale, but in the Missal they are printed without the musical notation that allows them to be brought to life in song and, in a certain sense, interprets them in the context of the liturgy.  The melodic vesture of the texts functions as a liturgical hermeneutic, allowing them to be sung, heard, and received in the light of the mysteries of Christ and of the Church.



Originally Mass was always sung.  Not until the eighth or ninth century did the so called Low Mass or missa privata come to be celebrated at the lateral altars and private chapels of abbatial and collegiate churches. The Chants of the Proper of the Mass were not omitted at these Low Masses; they were recited by the priest alone.  This fact, of itself, suggests that well before the eighth century, the Proper Chants were, in effect, considered to be constitutive elements of the Mass, deemed indispensable to the very shape of the liturgy.



What are the Propers?



Let us, then, review what the Proper Chants of the Mass are:



Introit



Were one to open the Roman Missal at the first page, finding there the Mass of the First Sunday of Advent, the very first element proper to that Mass, and to all others, is the Introit.



The Introit is composed of an antiphon; a verse taken from the psalm corresponding to the antiphon or, occasionally, from another; the Gloria Patri; and the repetition of the antiphon.



The Introit as presented in the Roman Missal appears in a somewhat truncated form, though all the essential elements -- antiphon, psalmody, and doxology -- are present.  Until about the eighth century the entire psalm would have been chanted, or at least the greater part of it, with the antiphon repeated after every verse, and this until the celebra...

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