Liturgy and Muse

The integration of liturgical action into culture is an irrevocable process, based on contemporary social developments. In this process an important role is reserved for music. Music is constantly challenged to give artistic shape to liturgical texts in an adequate way. Moreover, its expressive richness is being rediscovered presently, and music itself is increasingly being experienced as a liturgical sign. Therefore it is an essential characteristic of continually self-renewing liturgical action that within it the community consciously makes more and more use of the language of the muse. The symposium A"Liturgy and the language of the musesA", lectures which are collected in this book, was devoted to the design of the most important component of the celebration of the Eucharist, the eucharistic prayer. All the lectures touch in one way or another on the consequences for our liturgical action of today's desire for a more inspired design for Liturgy, and in particular for eucharistic prayer, in language and form. An effort is made to formulate a more precise answer to the question of how the essential elements of this prayer can be expressed optimally.