Q: Thank you again for your expertise on a wide variety of liturgical questions. Here’s one more.
In the Ceremonial of Bishops for All Souls Day, this instruction is found (397): “On All Souls there are no flowers on the altar, and the use of the organ and other instruments is permitted only to sustain the singing.” As far as I can tell, nothing similar is given in the Roman Missal. Does this instruction still have force, and if so, should it be applied to masses other than ones over which a bishop presides?
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A: CB 397 has not changed in the revised edition. It cites the 1967 document Musicam sacram, no. 66, which restricts instrumental music from Advent, Lent, the Triduum, and Offices and Masses for the Dead. That document predates the Roman Missal of Paul VI. There, GIRM 313 applies the restriction only to Lent, and less so for Advent. Not at all to Masses for the Dead.
It looks as if CB 397 was applying MS 66 to All Souls Day because the Masses on that day are for the Dead. As the same restriction does not appear in the Missal, which carries it over only for Lent, I’d say it does not universally apply.
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