23 Replies to “Mass at Westminster with the Pope”

  1. How wonderful is this alleluia? Westminster definitely has a unique style, but I find it very nice.

    On the other hand, can anyone comment on the "epic film score" piece after the Gospel? Snare drums, cymbals, gongs and bells? I don't have much to say about this other than it was completely shocking to me.

  4. That "epic film score" is special fill music, something which seems to be quite common in British Masses including Anglo-catholic ones at this moment in the Mass. The Gospel is read/sung from the middle of the church where the people are. While the Gospel book is brought back to the sanctuary, usually to the celebrant standing at the altar for him to kiss, you often have the organist improvising, and I have heard some pretty "dramatic" improvisations at this moment that would knock your socks off. For some reason the musical "drama" is important here. At least this one seems to have been composed for the occasion.

  6. I admire MacMillan greatly and found his Blessed John Newman Mass to be an admirably balanced work for the liturgy. I think he cannot be blamed (not that anyone seems to be doing that) if an otherwise wonderful instrumental work is excerpted in a way that was glaringly inappropriate.

  7. Well said, Frank. I also am a big fan of MacMillan. I thought that the orchestral piece was fantastic, but very out of place with the character of the rest of the liturgy. I think that my greatest resistance is toward the percussion. Would make for a great film score!

  8. Adam –

    As you say, it would have made a for wonderful film score. And we are probably in agreement that the kind of associations and images evoked by that music are of a very different sort than the visuals (processing with the Word of God) it actually accompanied. This is the source of the sense of "shock" it provoked.

    Of course this line of thinking has much broader ramifications for liturgical music generally, as Benedict XVI so insightfully outlines in "The Spirit of the Liturgy" (and which was painfully in evidence in some of the music for the Mass in Bellahouston Park).

  9. Yes, the "film score" quality of the music at that point was quite inappropriate – and unintentionally humorous. Especially at 6:05 the music made me almost expect the Pope to smack someone over the head with the Book of Gospels, start a fist fight, and then jump into his Popemobile and make his escape down the main aisle while firing some shots from a special papal gun at his pursuers.

    Otherwise, the music was fine.

  10. Not to pile on here, but it really did seem like we were watching the dramatic climax of a sword-and-sandals movie! Very interesting music indeed, but how strange in a Mass!

  11. The music after the Gospel was an instrumental version of MacMillan's Tu es Petrus, sung as the Pope entered at the start of Mass (and leading into the Introit, Dignus est Agnus.) Without having heard this, it's perhaps not surprising that the gospel processional seems a little disorientating to internet commentators.

  12. Yes, that makes sense. I also have a friend whose opinion I value who says that the music after the Gospel was fantastic and perfect and that he loved it. So this opinion makes me wonder whether I'm not seeing the full picture.

  13. So I read all the comments before I watched it, and I was thinking "those people- always finding something to complain about, always declaring this music or that music to be inappropriate for Mass. Sheesh!"
    Then I watched.
    And about fell out of my seat giggling when the Star Wars music started up after the Gospel.
    Goodness gracious!

    I don't think I would have been able to keep a straight face if I had been there.

  14. I found the end, where the Pope just stood there waiting for the bizarre movie music to stop, and then sat down in silence… as if he was worried that the ninjas from the movies were about ready to show up and hearing the music stop he was reassured about being seated.

  15. I should say that I have both a Masters and a Doctorate in Composition, so I do have respect for a fellow composer such as James MacMillan. I also had to learn to write in some very dissonant, atonal styles – far more so than the MacMillan composition. However, one of the things I learned is that music does have a social context which cannot be ignored. Especially when you are writing something that the general public will hear, you have to take this "social context" into account.

    While it is true that some people can be immature and inexperienced and laugh at anything that is different from their own limited experience, the MacMillan piece was very full of cliches from the movie realm. True, he handled them deftly. He might even have been thinking of them as originating in some classical piece (like Holst's The Planets Suite), but for 95% of the general public this was "Star Wars music."

    As an experiment, I played the music for two different sets of college students at the rather elite liberal arts institution where I teach. The reaction was the same – some shock, then laughter, then comments like "Bow down and worship me, O you minions," "Let us get into the Papal Death Star, "Use the force, (St.) Luke."

    Anyway, the music signified something very different than "a procession at a papal mass" to most people.

  16. I thought the music at this music was fantastic. Recall the Scottish elements used by MacMillan and also the musical language of a given place. This processional was not out of character with much of what has gone on at Westminster Cathedral before. For an example, see the video of the enthronement of Archbishop Vincent Nichols.

  17. I was generally pleased. As a native New Yorker formerly resident of London, I felt bad that the papal mass at St. Patrick's did not come up to the standards we saw at this London mass. The Macmillan piece was it is true, quite shocking. But the originally posted procession was "Crown Him with Many Crowns." Less shocking it is true, but recalling the gathering hymn tradition which many of us have learned to despise. The antiphon seemed to be me a better choice. It's drama also drew attention to a sub-theme of the papal visit: "I am a successor of St. Peter." The Pope had voiced this in the former papal peculiar the Abbey Church of St. Peter, the Minster (monstery) in the West. All of this was in line with the attempt to remind the British of their roots which go deep in Christianity.In this light, MacMillan's antiphon Tu es Petrus as well as the interlude after the gospel leading to the Pope's homily and celebrating the Gospel just read is arguably appropriate. It is not my taste, exactly. But considering the alternatives possible as I witnessed at St. Patrick's when the Pope came to New York, I am hardly in the mood to complain. I began attending mass at Westminster in the seventies. So I can also say that, considering the changes in liturgy and music that have gone on there, since then, Saturday's papal mass was a great achievement and not to be taken for granted. We must never forget that the Saxons, when leaving Germany left behind "die Musik" and in their new land found a substitute for it, namely, "glee." They have, it is true in history attained to the former, most famously by importing Handel. Yet the national trend tends towards the latter. So every move towards "die Musik" is to be applauded. Does anyone have anything to say about Bruckner being sung by boys?

  18. Dear Anonymous,

    I fully concur with your entry. I don't want to give the impression that I was picking on the entire papal Mass at Westminster because of that one piece. I agree, overall, the music and ceremonial were superb. Truly an example for the whole Church to learn from!

  19. Among the lessons to be learned here:

    (1) When a piece of music of style markedly different than chant issuing out of ritual cantillation or extended into vocal polyphony, some replication of this style is needed to bring unity to the musical dimension of celebration.

    (2) The liturgy has both "logogenic" and "pathogenic" dimensions (I credit Abbot Marcel Rooney, OSB, with this insight), and that it can bear robust expressions of both. A regular practice of cantillated liturgy will suggest the amplitude to which the pathogenic can be expressed. Based on the reactions above, the sung and instrumental versions of the MacMillan "Tu es Petrus" may or may not have pushed this amplituted to the limits of plausibility. It is difficult to judge this without being present in the space, and being only a "drop-in" on what is presumably liturgical-musical practice of very high discipline.

    It would be interesting to compare and contrast this particular instance of high-amplitude pathogenic expression with the practice in Parisian churches such as Notre-Dame de Paris, in which the organ often is improvised upon at the Introit and Sortie…and also as a "resonance" of the Word of God…in musical styles incorporating a highly dramatic musical vocabulary (octatonic scales and other "modes of limited transposition).

  20. There are glimpses here which prove the veracity of some conversations I had with the English Oratorians who noted that up until the Council, priests and prelates from Rome would visit Westminster Cathedral to learn how pontifical liturgies were done. Westminster in its day, I'm told executed the liturgy with great precisions, so much that it was even emulated by Rome.

  22. I would suggest the the social context that applies here is that of the Anglocatholic use, where a post-Gospel fanfare is the norm. I once sang at a Christmas mass is San Francisco where the Eminent English Guest Organist launched into a terrifying improvisation with crunchy octatonic staccato chords in both hands on full organ. Catching the eye of the squirming music director, he smiled sweetly and brought in Silent Night on a soft 4' pedal without interrupting the faux-Messiaen…

  23. I attend an Anglo-Catholic parish (St. Mary the Virgin, Times Square) in New York. The music after the gospel almost always an improvisation for solo organ in the French tradition of organist/composers like Duruflé. It's often based on plainsong associated with a particular mass, like the introit or the offertory, or sometimes one of the hymns of the day. Similar to Tournemire's improvisation on "Victimae paschali laudes." I have never heard brass incorporated (even when brass is used elsewhere in the service) and the music is usually more sophisticated than Mr. MacMillan's offering, which did sound like a Hollywood score. A truly great improvisor (who can make up fugues on the fly) is wonderful to hear.

    It's meant to be a meditation, not a distraction or entertainment.

    All improvisation is suspended during Lent. It makes the Lenten service really stand out in their starkness and simplicity.

Comments are closed.