Liturgical Sonic Order in the Catholic Mass: Music, Participation, and the German-Language Gotteslob
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Panorama Research Institute, Hong Kong, China
Panorama Research Institute, Hong Kong, China
Abstract
Musical participation in the postconciliar Roman Mass takes shape through publicly assigned tasks and their textual and temporal organization. This theoretical article develops liturgical sonic order as a procedure for reconstructing and comparing musical role relationships. It brings liturgical norms into relation with institutional commentaries and repertoire assignments for Gloria GL 166, Sanctus GL 200, and refrain GL 37,1 with Psalm 23 in the German-language Gotteslob. The comparison examines textual movement and temporal role organization. Task reopening is derived from the ordered text-role sequence and tracks the return of the same textual task after an intervening phase assigned to another public role. The Gloria commentary describes distributed singing and motivic continuity. The Sanctus comparison distinguishes internal repetition in collective enactment from the return of the congregational Hosanna task during its introduction. The psalm configuration organizes recurring response after verse recitation. Normative Gloria variants hold liturgical function constant; two thought experiments clarify whole-song and local relationships. The procedure identifies which source information changes a structural interpretation and specifies relational approaches to musicking through liturgical task assignments. Acoustics and personal interpretation provide horizons of realization and appropriation.
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This theoretical article draws on published liturgical documents, scholarly literature, and repertoire sources identified in the references. No new empirical dataset was generated. The thought experiments are explicitly identified as such in the text.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.