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Views from the Choir Loft

Ordo Missæ from “People’s Mass Book” (1964)

Jeff Ostrowski · August 14, 2017

4673 PEOPLES MASS BOOK 1964 OU WILL WANT to download these pages from the famous “People’s Mass Book” (1964), which was based on Omer Westendorf’s “People’s Hymnal” (1955). Our readers will remember the article dealing with the Elvis Presley Mass—something extremely relevant to the following document.

Notice how this 1964 book carefully 1 refers to the Low Mass. And notice what it says about “Masses without music” and “recited Masses”—were those prayers inserted by WLP, or am I missing something?

    * *  PDF Download • PEOPLE’S MASS BOOK

The translation of Eucharistic Prayer No. 1 is interesting. So is the part instructing the people to recite the ORATIO FIDELIUM (“Prayer of the Faithful”) while the priest is saying the Offertory prayers—which could not be said in English, if memory serves. 2 So much for entering more deeply into the Mass!

I could list more peculiar items, but instead I will let the reader discover them without my comments. Several aspects of this document strike me as inexplicable and bizarre. However, it certainly bolsters what we wrote about the Elvis Mass.

The book contains a bunch of interesting Mass settings at the end. Here’s the first page of something that will seem familiar to those who have looked at MR3. The book also contains a Mass based on the theme from “Dragnet,” a popular radio (and later television) program in those days. You can read more about that here.



NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   Cf. the final two pages of the PDF file.

2   Fr. Valentine, a priest in those years, said they never bothered to allow them to be translated into English because they planned on eliminating them—which is precisely what they did.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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Jeff Ostrowski

About Jeff Ostrowski

Jeff Ostrowski holds his B.M. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas (2004). He resides with his wife and children in Los Angeles.—(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

Quick Thoughts

Surprising Popularity!

One of our most popular downloads has proven to be the organ accompaniment to “The Monastery Hymnal” (131 pages). This book was compiled, arranged, and edited by Achille P. Bragers, who studied at the Lemmensinstituut (Belgium) about thirty years before that school produced the NOH. Bragers might be considered an example of Belgium “Stile Antico” whereas Flor Peeters and Jules Van Nuffel represented Belgium “Prima Pratica.” You can download the hymnal by Bragers at this link.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • To Capitalize…?

In the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, there is a question regarding whether to capitalize the word “christi.” The Vulgata does not, because Psalm 27 is not specifically referring to Our Lord, but rather to God’s “anointed one.” However, Missals tend to capitalize it, such as the official 1962 Missal and also a book from 1777 called Missel de Paris. Something tells me Monsignor Knox would not capitalize it.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • “Sung vs. Spoken”

We have spoken quite a bit about “sung vs. spoken” antiphons. We have also noted that the texts of the Graduale Romanum sometimes don’t match the Missal texts (in the Extraordinary Form) because the Mass Propers are older than Saint Jerome’s Vulgate, and sometimes came from the ITALA versions of Sacred Scripture. On occasion, the Missal itself doesn’t match the Vulgate—cf. the Introit “Esto Mihi.” The Vulgate has: “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in domum refúgii…” but the Missal and Graduale Romanum use “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in locum refúgii…” The 1970s “spoken propers” use the traditional version, as you can see.

—Jeff Ostrowski

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