Friday 10 August 2012

But Latin Is So Hard To Learn...

More proof that Latin isn't just for intellectual types. I have it on good authority that altar servers of 8 years old were able to make the responses for the Preparatory Prayers at the foot of the altar (the Introibo ad altare Dei - ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam bit) and here is a clip of one young chap belting out the Marian anthem after his elder sister's First Holy Communion.

Yes, you read that correctly... his elder sister's First Holy Communion.

His Hermeneuticalness (leading the chant from in front of the Lady Altar) is hidden by a pillar. The little chap singing the chant with such gusto is the one sitting down - the lighting was a bit difficult for my little mobile phone camera, and I don't have any video-editing software, but you can just see him. His elder brother (I think it's his elder brother) seems to be a little under the weather and is leaning on the front of the pew, but I've heard him singing the anthems on other occasions...



If he can do it, so can the rest of us. Check out the Our Lady of the Rosary Church Choir blog to get details of the chants coming up and to hear recordings of the music so that you can get practising...

7 comments:

Richard Collins said...

Mac, in my parish we were taught to say the responses and tested at the age of seven.
If you could not go through the Mass (at the knee of the curate)word perfect you were relegated to being one of the gang of altar servers. If you passed you were allowed to serve Low Mass on your own, during the week.

Supertradmum said...

Learned the whole Mass at 8, as I had to do the priest part for my brothers who were learning to be altar boys...and we sang Gregorian Chant. Why people think kids are dumb is beyond me...

Society of St. Bede said...

The child in the Video is 3 years old...

Supertradmum,
It is not the children who are dumb...

Supertradmum said...

Ah, yes...and parents forget that they have a duty to pass on the Faith; what better way than taking them to the TLM

Mulier Fortis said...

Society of St Bede - thanks for reminding me how old the singer is... though I didn't say that *he* was 8 years old, just that servers were able to say the responses by the age of 8 years... (just to clarify that! I knew he wasn't 8 already!!!)
;-p

Gatepost productions said...

I was an altar boy from 1946 - 1958. I don't remember being taught Latin, yet we all took it for granted. The responses were read from a small pamphlet type book, which got used less and less as time went on.

Our small school provide the choir for Nuptial and Requiem masses (average age 12). There seemed nothing clever or mysterious about it, it was simply how things were.

I was a boy soprano, and belted it out when near my class teacher - it made her cry! Revenge for homework!

Lady Catcliffe said...

I wish my son could have sung like that at age three. He's nine and has just started to get through the Salve Regina. I should use this video to encourage him to start learning the responses for Low Mass.

Nevertheless, he knew the chant Ave Maria well enough from the sung Angelus after weekly EF Mass to sing it in his audition for the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School: he begins studies there in three weeks : )

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