Eleven hundred year old Gloria is "too hard" for you!

If the oldest known music for the Gloria is simply "too hard" for our modern, educated selves what on earth did they before the 900's since Guido Aretinus de Arezzo was born in 995. When this monk first devised a method of writing down music on lines and spaces, this Gloria, the first written down by him was already being sung!

But you, dear reader, dear Canadian Catholic are too dumbed down by the Ontario Liturgical Music Conference, the National Council of Liturgical Music, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, disgraced Bishop Lahey's CBWIII, OCP, GIA, Haughen-Hass, St. Louis Jesuits and others to sing something which was written so long ago we only know that it is 1,100 years old because that is when quill was put to parchment.

You dear reader, dear Canadian Catholic are just too, too dumb and will find it much, much "too haaaaarrrrrd" to sing something sung by your Catholic ancestors so long ago that the Chinese had not yet invented gun powder and movable type.

The Sung Mass for the corrected translation of the Third Typical Edition of the Roman Missal has been beautifully prepared by ICEL, the International Commission for English in the Liturgy; they've clearly made amends for their work over 40 years ago! This is all to be published in every Missal, altar and pew for priest and people, as appropriate!

This has been mandated for the English speaking countries in each Missal and it is to be available in each hymn book--the basic Chant Mass setting. They have brilliantly utilised the Gloria from what is now known as Mass XV, Missa Dominator Deus which is in both the Liber Usualis for the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite and the 1974 Graduale Romanum and its later, 2000 Gregorian Missal for the Sung Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

The "numbers" Mass VIII, Mass XV, etc. date from the post Trent period and these Masses were not necessarily composed as a unit. The names, except in the case of the 16th century Missa de Angelis, the beautiful but least, Gregorian, come from the Kyrie tropes that were eliminated with the liturgical discipline of the Council of Trent. Some of these include Mass I Lux et Origo, Mass IX Missa Cum Jubilo, Mass XI Orbis Factor, etc. The tropes were phrases of prose and poetry used to amplify or embellish a text. Interestingly, an example of a trope was returned in the Novus Ordo Penitential Rite, "LORD, you were sent to heal the contrite of heart, LORD, have mercy" the preface to LORD, have mercy, being the trope.

Well, back to the Gloria.

This Gloria, the oldest known in the whole repertoire of liturgy, the original sung Gloria, sung over 1100 years ago is "too hard" for you. Thus the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and their liturgical experts have not put this Gloria into Celebrate in Song but some other "anonymous" chant-like Gloria.

"The National Council for Liturgical Music suggested that the ICEL chant for the Gloria would not be easy to learn an therefore for the implementation resource they chose the setting you find in Celebrate in Song."

Will this mean that this beautiful Gloria will be relegated to the back burner when they finally publish it which they must?

Here is the Gloria in its original Latin and below in the corrected translation.

Do you think this is too hard?