Today's Workshop on the New Translation

This morning (Saturday March 12th, 2011) we held the first of a series of workshops for the musicians of the Diocese of Venice on the musical component of the new translation. Sessions included "Changes in the People's Parts", "The Role of the Cantor" and a reading session in which we sang through the ICEL chant settings of the Ordinary. The session was attended by perhaps 60 Directors and Cantors from the Southern Deanery (Lee and Collier Counties).

There was a lot of discussion about the new translation, and as was expected, a great deal of misinformation expressed. There were a lot of questions that people wanted answered. What I found most interesting was that there was actually very little negativity about the new translation, and what negativity there was mostly concerned rumors or "facts" that they had been told which turned out to be wrong. Once we began singing the settings, any negativity disappeared.

One interesting moment occurred when we put the Gloria setting up on the screen and without any introduction began singing it. It only took about one line of the notation for everybody to "get the hang" of the ICEL setting and the remainder of it was sung with no problems (Okay, the typical Mode III "Amen" caused some problems for those who are not familiar with such figures from Gregorian Chant, so we had to go over it a few times).

Here's the real kicker though... when we finished, one of the cantors raised her hand and asked "So what will the setting of the new Gloria text look like?"

We pointed out that this WAS the new text,

"Ohhh... your right it is!". Several others in the audience also sounded surprised, not noticing as they were singing that this was the new translation.

The key to introducing the new translation is found in the music folks....use it!