In many parishes it has been common for the cantor or choir to extend the Lamb of God by adding additional statements, known as tropes, to it.
The Holy See has been taking an increasingly firm line against this, and now they’ve issued a clear mandate that it stop.
Here’s the story . . .
What’s Supposed to Happen
According to the Order of Mass, after the sign of peace,
129. Then [the priest] takes the host, breaks it over the paten, and places a small piece in the chalice, saying quietly:
May this mingling of the Body and Blood
of our Lord Jesus Christ
bring eternal life to us who receive it.
130. Meanwhile the following is sung or said:
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,
grant us peace.
Or:
The invocation may even be repeated several times if the fraction is prolonged. Only the final time, however, is grant us peace said.
Got that?
If they need to extend the Lamb of God, they’re supposed to keep repeating “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us” until they’re ready to finish it with a “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.”
And extended versions of the Lamb of God have been more common because in many parishes Communion is being distributed to a large number of the faithful under both kinds, and it takes longer to divide it up for the different people who will be distributing it.
But they haven’t been extending the prayer in the way that’s indicated in the text.
What’s Been Happening Instead
In many parishes they’ve been using musical settings by Catholic publishers that have a bunch of different tropes beyond “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world.”
For example:
- Jesus, Bread of Life, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
- Jesus, Prince of Peace, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
- Jesus, Son of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
- Jesus, Word of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
- Jesus, Tree of Life, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
- Jesus, Fire of Love, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
- Jesus, Bread of Peace, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
- Jesus, Hope of All, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
I don’t comment over at the NCR, so I’ll just mention, here, that while The Holy See may do as they please in establishing the current rubrics for the Mass, nevertheless, the Agnus Dei, historically, in its Gregorian Chant form in the 11th and 12th centuries had variants ranging from the syllabic, to the highly florid melismatic and there are at least 100 different trooped forms known, so to say that there is no precedence in Church practice for troped Angus Dei forms is not supported by historical evidence. To my knowledge, few of these troped forms were ever suppressed for being inappropriate for Mass use. The use of tropes, in general, however, was banned by the Council of Trent and it is that ruling which the Holy See is upholding. So, it isn’t, strictly speaking, a ban on only troping in the Agnus Dei. In the orchestral versions for the TLM, a composer as recent as Gonaud had tropes in his Agnus Dei.
The Masked Chicken
Thanks for the info, Chicken!
I wasn’t sure if you were responding to me or an NCR commenter, but in case there was any confusion, I’m not claiming that the Agnus Dei has never had variants. I was simply addressing the currently approved version.
Jimmy,
I just wanted to make sure that no one thought that the modern accretions to the Agnus Dei currently being outlawed were a new invention that people started doing after Vatican II (as if to blame, unfairly, Vatican II for allowing yet another abuse). Troping has a long and venerable history, especially during the Medieval period and other Mass Ordinary parts were troped as well, such as the Kyrie. Other things, such as Parody Masses and polylingual motets began also to appear making the singing, sometimes, unintelligible. Things got so bad by the middle of the Renaissance, however, that the Council of Trent decided to outlaw the deviant practices, in toto. The prohibition, itself, is somewhat vague in the XXII Session:
“They shall also banish from churches all those kinds of music, in which, whether by the organ, or in the singing, there is mixed up any thing lascivious or impure; as also all secular actions; vain and therefore profane conversations, all walking about, noise, and clamour, that so the house of God may be seen to be, and may be called, truly a house of prayer.”
Trent did not actually outlaw either troping or polyphony (as is sometimes thought), but left the matter of what was appropriate music to regional synods. It was commonly believed among practicing musicians at the time that troping was dead, but there was nothing specific about it in the documents of Trent. Nevertheless, the practice, essentially, vanished after that point.
Vatican II, likewise, did not suppress troping. They, in fact, commented (SC 116):
116. The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.
But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, as laid down in Art. 30.
Art. 30 refers to active participation by the community:
30. To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence.
The historical music for the Ordinary, including polyphonic settings, form a part of the deposit of Sacred Music. There is always the possibility of abuse when tropes are used in the hands of secularized composers, leading to a loss of focus on the essential elements of the Mass, as has happened in history, and it seems that the current tropes to the Agnus Dei fall into that category and were suppressed. This is not, however, a matter of dogma, but discipline.
I just didn’t want people to make the same mistake that some have made in thinking that a disciplinary prohibition is the same as a dogmatic one. This sort of confusion has led some, for instance, to erroneously conclude that the Tridentine Mass could never be altered. Tropes are gone for the Agnus Dei, but the decree, for instance, only applies to future compositions. One reason being that if it were to be applied retroactively, it would contradiction some of the pronouncements of Vatican II which allows the deposit of previous sacred music (including a few troped works) to remain.
If there had been only one modern troped Agnus Dei in current use and introduced at a Papal Mass, it would probably have survived, but it is the excess of use that, I suspect, caused the Holy See to issue the suppression, as has happened in the past. So, this situation is similar to what happened during the Renaissnce, when liberties were being taken with Mass music and not a result of anything directly having to do with Vatican II, but rather, as in the Renaissance, it is the infusion of either secularized composers or people who don’t understand the Mass properly writing music unsuitable for Mas by its sheer number that has triggered the suppression. There is nothing wrong with troping, per se, when used in the hands of a Master composer who understands the Liturgy. There is a problem when twenty different troped Agnus Dei appear from a musical clearing house.
The Chicken
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