A Joyful Noise

Week by week the Darwin monkeys have been behaving better in mass. We realized this as our definition of being 'bad' shifted from shouting and kicking the pew to laying under the pew trying to pick off old bubble gum: not a well-advised activity, but much less distracting for the surrounding worshippers.

The last few weeks, both girls have begun to join in with the sung parts of the ordinary with particular will, and particular volume, but not particular tunefullness. This tends to attract glances and smiles from those around us, which of course encourages the little songbirds.

One doesn't want to quash this sort of thing, but one does wish to harness it a bit. And since the girls are (like all children) great mimics, I'm wondering if what is needed is a CD with mass parts for them to learn. We have, of course, some CDs of truly great liturgical music, but since our parish won't be attempting Palestrina, Montraverdi and the like any time soon, something rather more down to earth is doubtless required.

I seem to recall my parents having some tapes of common hymns and mass parts which we listed to when we were kids. Does anyone know of any CDs currently out there that do this? Although I'm nothing to talk about, MrsDarwin actually sings quite servicably, and I'm thinking one of the advantages to working on mass parts with the girls (and just having them listen to them and soak them up a bit) would be that the modern settings to tend to be very simple -- and thus might be a better place to learn the basics of hitting a note then when the monkeys are shouting along with the in-law's CDs of Irish drinking songs.