Has Anyone Actually Been To A Clown Mass?

[Vincent Vega]

I just find it interesting. Coming from studying sacred music (or a very close field, anyway) at a secular institution, it would appear that I have a much broader definition than some here.
If there is a technical definition that somehow does separate the two, I'd be very interested to know it.

[missionseeker]

Honestly? I forgot. I remember that there are three categories: liturgical music (aka sacred music) because it is only for the liturgy and only uses liturgical texts - propers, sequences, ordinaries, etc. so really it's mostly just chant. Then there's ... Music for the liturgy which is hymns like those by Thomas Aquinas and other music based on biblical texts that are not used in the liturgy. And then I *think* it's music at the liturgy but I'm not sure that's right to be honest. It distinguishes it subtlety yet distinctly because it includes those songs that just don't fit under hymn or liturgical text. Most of today's music would fall under the third and second categories. I suppose that one could argue that Mass settings fall under the first but I have a hard time with that because many of the change the phrasing (repeating certain words and such) and there are specific rubrics for how that's supposed to be done/allowed to be done and I'm not certain that they follow them.