The Sung Propers of the Mass - Heaven on Earth

St. Gregory the Great, miniature from British Library, Harley MS 3011, fol. 69v.

Kantor Jonathan Wessler of First Lutheran in Boston has been writing a marvelous series on the sung propers of the mass, and it is well worth the time of every church musician and pastor. The first installment can be found here, and I’ll provide you with a few words from the second installment to pique your interest.

In our contemporary minds, the music and the texts of the Propers are separate things. They are like a hymn text that may be sung to any of dozens of hymn tunes. But historically, the Proper texts and melodies were intrinsically linked—they were one single unit. Western musical notation was literally invented in order to notate the Propers, which had been sung from their inception.

Dr. Wessler goes on to give an overview of the history of the western chant tradition, the challenges and great joys to be found in singing the Church’s most ancient music in the modern era, and the distinctive character of the melodies of each proper genre of chant within the mass. These chants, it should be noted, have been the foundation of Lutheran music, preceding the chorales and continuing alongside them for centuries following the reformation, serving as the backbone of the first generations of Lutheran schools that existed, in part, for the promotion and continuation of Latin ecclesiastical chant.

The two installments so far are quite illuminating, and the remaining installments also promise to be a breath of fresh air in the too often stagnant air of the LCMS liturgical movement, one that encourages us toward a nobler and more beautiful practice of church music and liturgy, and which aspires to give to the people of God once again what the pagan Rus experienced in the great church of Hagia Sophia in 1000 A.D.: “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth.”