"Singing the Mass", not "singing at Mass" - 1
In an earlier post I observed that the first thing that tends to be thought about when preparing the music for a Sunday parish Mass is what hymns to sing. However, as the graphic below makes clear, they should not be the priority. There is a hierarchy of five levels and I guess that, rather like Piaget's stages of cognition, you shouldn't really start one level until you have fulfilled the preceding one. If there is to be singing at the Mass (and, frankly, there should be some singing at every Mass since we are, naturally, musical creatures) then the absolute priority, before anything else, are the Gospel Acclamation and the Eucharistic Acclamations (Sanctus; Memorial Acclamation; Great Amen). Even at a weekday Mass, with no accompaniment, this should present little problem; who doesn't know the triple Alleluia? (though not during Lent, of course.) And the music for the Eucharistic Acclamations can be found in our Missals. The (English) Sanctus is base...