What did the Second Vatican Council intend as compared with its results? The answer to that question is enormously complex because, as with the so-called American founding, it is difficult to compress the intentions of hundreds and thousands of people, many unnamed, into a single body of “intention.”
In fact, there is no such thing as “intention” that somehow emerges from the back and forth of human agency to become a new and immaculate being. To claim a single clear intention from a Church Council is probably just as fallacious as to assert the existence of a Rousseauian single “social contract” to emerge from the give and take of the political process.
Nonetheless, with regard to music, it is easier to discern the main themes: 1) a strong emphasis on the restoration of Gregorian chant as the people’s music, 2) an emphasis on singing the Mass instead of just singing stuff, and 3) a push to see the liturgy as a prayerful and audible song that elicited the involvement of everyone instead of just a private prayer by the celebrant alone.
It became clear very early on following the close of the Council that other priorities, such as new permissions for the vernacular, were in tension with the musical aspects of the reform. There is a long history of liturgical reforms and their failure to fully appreciate the importance of working out the details of the musical component. And this was a case in point. The Council inspired a conflict between groups of musicians that began immediately and has pretty well continued to this day.
I’m thinking about this as I read through a wonderful compilation of documents from the watershed event called The Fifth International Church Music Congress, held in Chicago-Milwaukee, August 21-28, 1966. Here is a snapshot in time. What we find are many musicians in open protest about liturgical trends that were not appearing from on high; they were coming from within and threatening the very core of what most musicians believed would and should emerge from the Council.
Here are some statements culled from this volume. They represent a wide consensus that something must be done to stop the unraveling of all that has come before and a hope that the words of the Council would be heeded with regard to music. Keep in mind that this is all in 1966, long before the promulgation of what is now known as the ordinary form or reform ritual of Mass:
Statement from England and Wales: “The Church would suffer irreparable loss if the traditional Latin sung Mass, suitably modified to fulfil modern liturgical requirements, were to be allowed to fall into disuse. They earnestly hope that the Latin sung Mass will be actively encouraged in those places where it meets the needs of the people, and where it can be worthily performed, making proper provision both for the participation of the people and for the maintenance in use of the Church’s heritage of music. The English form of sung Mass should at the same time be developed on the lines indicated above. In this way it will be possible fully to implement in this country the teaching of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.”
Jacques Chailley, University of Paris, France: “The duty to preserve the imposing patrimony of sacred music, both Gregorian and polyphonic, is laid down in explicit terms by the Constitution (Article 114). This obligation must not be neglected, nor should it be presented in a negative way such as a sterile reticence towards the new and necessary things that are likewise ordered by the same Constitution. We must seek for a harmonious coexistence of the two types of expression that each correspond to a different need, without causing any contradictions unless they are introduced artificially, such as would happen if one were deliberately to reject one panel of a diptych in favor of the other. If one neglects the duty of preservation, one actually compromises the ultimate success of the renewal itself. Any exaggeration in one direction leads to an opposite reaction in the other, creating inevitable divisions that keep multiplying, until one finds that some whom the Church wanted so rightly to attract have finally been left outside. From all this it follows that it is impossible to conceive of the duty of preserving the treasury of sacred music without maintaining in the liturgical functions, in an habitual way and in reasonable proportions, at least some part of the Gregorian repertory… It is obvious that in order to encourage artistic religious composition, especially polyphonic choral works, there must be some assurance given that the choir will be used regularly in the liturgical functions, not just now and then, as has sometimes happened. In other words, there must be a policy for the renewal of choirs and encouragement of them; this is absolutely the opposite of the tendencies that we are witnessing at present. There must not be any brutally excessive elimination of Latin music, since this music will promote the vernacular language, which will inevitably come in due course, but the best way this can be realized is to follow a reasonable, progressively planned program.”
Committee on Musicology of the Allgemeiner Cacilien-Verband: “It is important for congregational liturgical singing that it can be the spiritual and musical possession of the people. At the same time it must be in accord with the laws of art, so that, for example, both the so-called religious ‘pop’ music and the pseudo-Gregorian piece are both excluded from sacred music. Furthermore, with the development of liturgical congregational singing, the characteristics of the various vernacular tongues and lands must always be considered, which means that in the question of forms one is not restricted merely to the responsorial form alone.”
Resolution on Profane Music in Mass: “The present-day, commercially oriented dance and entertainment music is inappropriate for divine services. Music which is directed predominantly toward the sensitive motor responsives of man is not worthy of the liturgy. This music makes its appeal to the performer as well as to the listener only on the level of the purely sensual, even to the possible exclusion of the spiritual faculties. Attempts made up to the present time to combine elements of jazz with the serious music of our Western culture and to use these in the Catholic liturgy have necessarily been doomed to failure, because the audible result offers only music that to all appearances only resembles jazz. The rhythm of this music with its primitive and uniform impulse generates in the listener a sensual, driving excitement. This monotonous, continually repeated rhythm dulls consciousness, but soon even this exciting feature loses its strength and dissipates into mere motor responses which serve to blot out all personal individuality. The prayer of a congregation, which ought to be vivified by the liturgy, is thus rendered impossible by music which evokes in men truly disorderly feelings and serves only to awaken essentially emotional drives. True liturgical community can be achieved only through the participation of the whole man. True liturgical community is accomplished only by impressing the seal of man’s spirituality upon it.”
Rt. Reverend Guilherme Schubert, Representative of Jaime Cardinal Barros de Camara, Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro: “We are shocked to witness, in church and even during liturgical services, performances of music which must be regarded as a profanation of the holy place and a heretofore unheard of degradation. This has happened under the guise of alleged implementation of the conciliar decrees, in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, which wished to reform and modernize. Obviously we are dealing here with a misunderstanding and an erroneous interpretation of the official documents. … there is a general and very often quite energetic opposition to exaggerations and abuses, especially when small groups, generally youth groups, attempt to bring music, rhythms, instruments and gestures into the Church which are borrowed directly from contemporary profane music. These protests have very serious consequences in scandal, separations from Church and cult, a diminishing respect for the Church, and increasing religious doubt and confusion…. It is a mistake to think that the faithful would show more interest in the Church if the Church were made to resemble their everyday milieu, their homes, their factories, their offices. It is above all the spirit of religion which must accompany the faithful into the arena of their daily lives. But when they come into the Church, God’s temple, they expect to find something else, something special, something which stands above the everyday, something which elevates them, encourages them, comforts and ennobles them.”
RESOLUTIONS FROM SPANISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES (Spain, Mexico, Ecuador): “1) Fully appreciating the pastoral character the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council attaches to sacred music and in order to stimulate the active participation of the faithful, the national and international commissions are asked to provide for the preservation of existing songs for the people and the creation of a new repertoire in keeping with the characteristics of each of our countries, since songs imported from other places do not always respond to the people’s needs. 2) As prescribed by the same Constitution, let the Church’s patrimony of Gregorian chant, polyphony and organ music be preserved in our countries with all care, and let scholae cantorum be duly promoted. 3) Taking into consideration the nature of Gregorian chant, and also some experiences with the vernacular which lead to a corruption of Gregorian chant, all adaptations of vernacular texts to ancient melodies are emphatically discouraged. 4 a) Since some Masses written after the Council are inspired by profane dances and tunes, and since they confuse the faithful in the Hispanic nations, and since they are radically contrary to the liturgical spirit and to the letter of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, such Masses should never be permitted in any way. b) The nature of liturgical music requires that composers do not use for liturgical compositions melodies which people associate with situations foreign to the liturgy, even though those melodies may have a religious character. 5) Greater diligence must be used in imparting a musical formation in seminaries and religious institutes, so that clerics active in pastoral work will be qualified cooperators and even leaders in the liturgical movement. 6) Taking into consideration the continuous increase of the number of tourists in many places and the pastoral sense of the Constitution, it is deemed necessary that the Mass in Latin be retained fully wherever required for the spiritual benefit of the faithful.”
PROPOSITIONS SUBMITTED BY THE STUDY GROUP OF THE CHURCH MUSIC COMMISSIONS OF ALL THE AUSTRIAN DIOCESES. 1. Austrian church musicians are filled with the greatest apprehension that with the impending innovations in the area of liturgical singing the polyphonic rendition of the entire Ordinary of the Mass is endangered. They are well aware that every restriction of the use of the polyphonic settings of the Ordinary makes illusory the preservation and fostering of the treasury of sacred music. They stress that the exclusion of the liturgical masterpieces of Austrian music which results thereon will not only harm the liturgical religious experiences of the Austrian people, but in a wider way it will be considered in the international sphere as cultural robbery.
Yah, well.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
"We must seek for a harmonious coexistence of the two types of expression that each correspond to a different need, without causing any contradictions unless they are introduced artificially, such as would happen if one were deliberately to reject one panel of a diptych in favor of the other."
A diptych… what a beautiful way to describe it. Seems to me as a sort of premonition of Pope Benedict XVI's paradigm of the two forms of the Mass being "mutually enriching."
Very good article and brings me back to my own experiences of the liturgical renewal as a child. In the pre-Vatican II Church, my parents brought us primarily to low Masses, but devotional hymns were sung of the four hymn style. Once in a while we attended a high mass, like at Christmas or when we slept in on a Sunday morning. After Vatican II, the "low" Mass in the vernacular was still the norm for us on Sunday but still with the pietistic four hymn music. Then somewhere around 1967 or 68 a nun and two guitar strumming companions, sat in the sanctuary directly in front of us on bar stools and introduced us to liturgical renewal, folk music. This we were told is what Vatican II wants. Again, it was folk music, not the Mass being sung.
It wasn't until I had been a priest for well over 20 years that in 2002 with the New Latin Missale Romano, that my parish in Augusta began a once a month Gregorian Mass, with everything chanted in Latin, including the official Introit, Offertory and Communion antiphons of the OF Mass.No metrical hymns were sung in English from a hymnal. For the first time, I realized what we had missed for the last 40 years. Only in the last eight years of my priesthood have I come to the awareness that we allowed metrical hymns and other types of music to hijack the liturgy and the General Instruction of the Roman Missal is in part culpable. Hymns could replace the official antiphons as an option, which then became the universal norm in this country. In the last three years for the first time celebrating the EF Mass as a priest, I realized that the Introit, offertory and Communion antiphons when not an option force the choir director to use them and sing them in addition to the Credo (which is never sung in the vast majority of parishes today) as well as the other parts of the Mass.
Pope Benedict's expanded permission to celebrate the "unreformed Mass" helps us who have never celebrated the EF Mass as priests and congregations to see from where our reformed Mass evolved and how we can recover much that was good that was discarded and sometimes for dubious reasons. Fr. Allan McDonald, Macon, GA
"General Instruction of the Roman Missal is in part culpable…"
If you can't trust Roman documents, then what can you trust? Oh the humanity!
As for the quotes, an amusing collection of 60's nostalgia about the terrors of rock music. How many of the comments are, again, criticisms, and how few are concerned for the overall spiritual welfare of the Church?
Nuns on barstools: what an image. But really: not every parish had folk Masses, and those that did usually had just one. Conservatory-trained musicians had multiple Masses to demonstrate the spiritual and musicological superiority of their way, so how come they were defeated by polyester-garbed sisters with guitars? Apparently, there was more devil's power in Ray Repp than even we liberals thought. Imagine if these nuns had plugged in like Dylan!
The resolution from Spain, Mexico, and Ecuador is interesting. My parish has missionary connections to western Honduras. In one friend's parish there are 50,000 Catholics with 45 local chapels served by two priests. When I asked about the state of affairs with instruments, my friend said the capital city and maybe two or three other places have churches with organs. Rural parishes never had them. Certainly none of the churches he works with have *ever* had an organ. Only the rich own pianos. Keep in mind that Honduras was a Spanish colony before Jamestown and that Honduras as been a nation about as long as Illinois has been a US state.
I'm cautious about accepting the Kool-Aid that something was lost after 1966. It couldn't have been all that great to begin with.
Todd, I loved the folk music groups of the late 60's and 70's and the very good one in my first assignment from 80 to 85. We baby boomers flocked to the Folk Masses of this period although even in the early 80's I tried successfully to get our folk group to change their name to the "Celebration Choir" yikes.
But it is us baby boomers especially the ones older than me who have a nostalgia in the positive sense for these good old days and because of our shear numbers we had a profound impact on the Church just as we did on the culture. Yes, the world and the church revolved around us baby boomers, as it should be of course. We baby boomers are at the center of God's love and we love our self enclosed circle, so don't disturb us! 🙂
Yes, Todd, we all agree that there were bigger forces at work than devious folk groups and wacky nuns. But for some reason Rembert Weakland felt the need to defend "hootananny masses" way back in 1965 even though they were practically non-existent.
"I'm cautious about accepting the Kool-Aid that something was lost after 1966."
It's possible that these musicians were simply imagining that there was some sort of tradition in church music, however tenuous, and that something big was happening when it really wasn't.
We all have our stories. Mine is about a dedicated and well-trained Catholic church musician in the 1960s who wanted to promote music in his diocese by helping to establish a commission for liturgical music (SC 44) but got a complete blank from his bishop. (The bishop was a prominent "progressive" – one of the first to renovate his cathedral according to the supposed dictates of the Council.) He also tried to start a boys choir school but also got almost zero support.
Of course in all this he had no real concern for the "overall spiritual welfare of the Church."
Then he went and worked for the Unitarians.
Since then he's been dutifully churning out the top 10 at funerals and weddings, negotiating and coaxing many pastors to "allow" better music at mass.
He's fully aware of the limitations of music before the Council, having been there himself (he talks about the endless Requiem masses during the week), and has no real desire to go back to that time. Still, he definitely sees that something was tossed out that's not easily replaced.
Todd,
Consider the manner in which the GIRM is said to be culpable: it gives options without consideration that when people are given options, they will often not choose the most desireable one. From a historical perspective, the options given are consistent, but they are in no way in accord with the liturgical vision seen in Sacrosanctum Concilium.
I would note that none of these quotations makes any statement about the appropriateness of modern, secular music in the secular realm. Rather, they judge its inappropriateness in accord with the principles passed down for ages and the decrees given in SC.
From what I understand–what you
say of these trained musicians is not true. If a parish did have a High Mass with good music, they usually had one, and depending on the parish, it may have been well or poorly attended. Low Mass is what people understood (again, what I have heard from various anecdotes). With increased motion of persons between parishes, the base needed to keep little islands of traditional music disintegrated.
Ah, but some did have organs. there, they were to be preserved. The statment applies not only to organ but also chant, which does not require organ. In any case, the statments do not make any claim on the prevelance of these things, in fact, I would not be surprised if at the time, most of the out-of-the-way chapels had only low Masses.
Again, in most places it was not that great, but it happened that in many places where it was good, it was lost.
Pres,
Offering options has always been the Roman way: present an ideal, then settle without offense, as St Augustine suggested, for the imperfect.
Options are given in the rites, as I've mentioned many times in my blog's analysis of the Roman rites, not for the whim of clergy or other leadership, but for the spiritual benefit of the faithful.
My contention is that where good music was lost it was more a function of clergy replacement than misreading the documents. The pastor who baptized me in 1970 promoted good music relentlessly. The seminary always sent him the "musical" seminarian of the class for a pastoral assignment. When he died suddenly, we got a guy who liked 25-minute Sunday Masses. With as little music as possible. Fortunately, he lasted 3 months–the attack sheep got really uppity on that one.
As for the faithfulness to the council's vision of liturgy, you have to read (as was done on my web site) the numerous follow-up documents on liturgy from 1964 onward. The vision of Vatican II was not, as some are happy to trumpet in other circumstances, a dogmatic blueprint. There are reasons why the vernacular quickly superceded Latin, and why the world's bishops, as well as Rome signed on to this.
So yes, reading the statements from a 1966 music conference is very interesting. But one also has to read the instructions on the implementation of SC, the pope's 1967 encyclical, and the liturgy documents of one's own country to get the full picture.
My parish had one folk Mass down in the undercroft, it's true. (Actually, one on Saturday night and one on Sunday. Before the numbers of Mass attendance dropped, that is.) But we also had Missalettes upstairs, and every month the music in them changed and changed. Then we got the Songprayers books upstairs. Then we got the new hymnals, which were full of Songprayers songs.
During the Seventies, even at the folk masses, there wasn't much in the way of shenanigans liturgical. During the Eighties, everything went to heck.
The documents you quoted, Jeffrey, were dead-on as prophesies AND as critiques.
But on this very thread is the proof of the saying 'none so blind as they who will not see.'
I do wish to remind people that chant advocates and organists were not entirely free from being part of the problem at the time. Not all were entirely victims, as it were.
People like Theodore Marier, who understood the need to not only cultivate liturgical chant in Latin but also liturgical chant in the vernacular and strong participation by the congregation, were often few on the ground compared to those who felt that approach might sully their beaux ideas. In other words, they played the game of Who Moved My Cheese, and many went home and sulked and pouted. They removed themselves from being part of the solution, because they were overly vested in their particular vision of the solution. In this they have peers among some progressives of late, of course….
There's no doubt about that, Liam. There was a 'Priesthood of Holy Choir,' so to speak, which was not about to give up its space on the stage.
That's one reason that Chant Ordinaries were very rare, indeed, at the "Choir Mass"–High Mass–of old.
If SC had been implemented in the 1950s instead of the 1960s we would have had a very different liturgical reform. I could pick a decade out of the hat and find a better one than the 1960s, the era of senseless, mindless, looney revolution which not only affected the Church in a deleterious manner but education,government, and society as well. Now that we are 40 years past that decade of foolishness we are finally beginning to get our bearings again. Deo Gratias