Special thanks to the NCReg and Trent Beattie who seems to have put all this together, but I’m pretty pleased with the interview that appears in this paper this week and also online: Singing the Mass.
I’m talking up the Simple English Propers and chant generally here, and discussing the new Missal among other things. They had lots of biographical questions too. I’ve emailed the editor to make sure they change my title from editor of Sacred Music to managing editor. The editor is William Mahrt and is responsible for its consistent high quality and excellence.
In any case, an excerpt:
Of course my fascination with it began as purely artistic, but when I realized that there was a reason for its structure and sound, my appreciation grew. I realized that it is all a form of prayer, and the musical structure amounts to an attempt by mortals to touch a realm of immortality. It was all an attempt to somehow capture and characterize what the ancients called the “music of the spheres,” which is something like a heavenly sound that might be worthy to be presented by angels at the throne of God. The composers and the tradition heard something true and beautiful and the liturgy absorbed it as its own.
It goes without saying that secular music doesn’t attempt this at all. It is designed to flatter the performers, indulge the composers, entertain the audience, or whatever. There is a place for this approach in the culture at large, but sacred music has a different purpose. To me, to begin to understand liturgical music is to realize this central point that appears in Christian writings from the earliest age: There is a difference between sacred and profane. Many people deny this today, which just amazes me. I consider it so axiomatic that it is not worth debating, only explaining.
Why do people deny it? It has something to do with an embedded agnosticism born of deconstructionist thinking. There is no intrinsic meaning in anything, this view says, so how can we really make such distinctions between what is sacred and what is not?
Excellent synopsis of "Sing Like a Catholic," Jeffrey.
I particularly appreciate how you can correspond an unwieldy question such as the one about artistic freedoms being curtailed by presenting a scenario such as four folks in a car with only one radio station option. Simple.
It should give everyone pause that, using that example, we are being sold the notion of personal space, privacy and privilege is a paramount right in the 21st century (sorry for alliteration.) Whether in a minivan or at the dinner table at home, this decadent notion is dehumanizing culture and society rapidly.
Geez, imagine catholic families given access to the keys that unlock both the art and act of chanting together. Imagine them enjoying dinners nightly together every day possible. Imagine them singing "Past time with good company" or another madrigal together after dessert….
Can we please avoid another dark, medieval period and get straight away to the renaissance?
Thanks, Jeffrey. Well done.
Jeffrey,
There are many Catholic music directors like me who would like to bring chant, polyphony and the sacred treasury of Church music to our parishes. However, we are thwarted in our efforts by priests and parishioners who refuse to cooperate in the mission.
I was told outright by my boss several years ago that if I did not the play contemporary music that people wanted, he would fire me. When I responded that our people do want traditional music, he said – point blank – "nobody likes that c**p anymore". Now how in the world are we supposed to have good music in our parishes if pastors have that kind of philosophy? (Note: pastors have absolute power in parishes – they always get what they want.)
sorry you work for a brain dead pastor, and a fascist one at that.
"a brain dead pastor, and a fascist one at that".
Hmmm, sounds like most of our clergy here in New Jersey.
Sadly true. I had thought that when the clergy understand the significance of Christ and just Who He Is and Whom they are holding in their hands, then maybe things would change? As the Pastors go, so do the sheep. If somehow we could call on the Mother of God as 'Queen of Sacred Music', maybe the great work that is going on with Mr. Tucker and so many others will rise to the surface. If the public could but be given a chance to at least hear one Mass on Sunday with chant and polyphony, I think there would be a lot of heads turning and hearts weeping. It is inherent in all of us to cry at a moving moment of beauty, not clap our hands. Hand clapping is for the Musical or concert hall; gasping for breath and goose-bumps of internal awe should be the response when Sacred Music is heard.
You're the editorial vice president of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, Jeffrey? I didn't realize I could be even more in agreement with you on everything than I already was.
Not that you have any idea who I am… I just lurk.
An interesting confluence of ideas here.
Fr. J. Schall reviewed a book written by Mgr. Sokolowski (CUA). In the review, Schall notes that Sokolowski reviewed every major heresy in Church history and then observed that each one began with a denial, in whole or part, of the economy of salvation: the Nativity, Passion/Death, and Resurrection.
It's not hard to make the case that 'lack of the sacred' fits into that 'denial' schema. After all, who needs 'sacred' (art, music, time, language, space) if it's just another meal or just another one-big-happy-family gathering?
So: do we have the Heresy of Music in play?
If a Catholic wants to step into a time machine and be taken back to some of the worst of the 1970s in liturgical music, just watch the "Telecare" daily mass from Saint Agnes' cathedral in Rockville Center, Long Island.
Some excellent voices, e.g. the lady cantor and a choir with real possibilities, but God Almighty, what a boring repertoire for daily and most Sunday masses. You just know the staff of clergy there control what goes out and what goes in. Most can't carry a tune in a bucket themselves, but that's another story altogether.
The Christmas programs were a marked improvement, but most of the time it is just music to push zzzzzs through.
i echo the sentiments of what "anonymous 1" said … Both, a former priest and a guitar-only-playing music director of mine told me that if the Vatican started forcing parishes to do Gregorian chant, that they'll move across the street and make up their own religion.
I think their statement speaks for itself.
Later on, I discover the organ is pushed against the wall out of the way. So, if anyone wanted or even needed to play it, they couldn't. It's a "folk group only" church.
Jeff — Thanks for sharing the article in the NCR. Do you know of any documents or texts that explore the connection between Music of the Spheres and the intent of early music writers?
In Christ and Saint Dominic,
Benjamin
Anonymous, all the early composers were schooled in Boethius's De institutione musica, which was considered so essential that it was among the first things off the brand-new Venetian printing presses in the late 15th century. Whether they thought any audible music really connected to the metaphysics of music is unknown, though. It's primary influence was in the area of consonance and tuning.
Anonymous:
Two books immediately come to mind on this subject of the spheres and early music:
Joscelyn Godwin's "Harmonies of Heaven and Earth", and the more accessible book by Jamie James "The Music of the Spheres". There is another one which at the moment I cannot think of, and which gives a comparison for the different times in history of the association of the notes of the scale with the heavenly bodies.
But as Mr O'Connor intimated the practical influence of this Pythagorean thinking was mostly limited to the intervallic structure of a scale in so far as it corresponded to a simple mathematical proportion, and is not unique to this idea of musical spheres. The idea gained more importance in the very late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Your interest is commendable, but, if I may say, what had much more practical influence in Gregorian Chant was topological allegory and its practical application in what many call word painting in chant. Amalarius of Metz who lived at the time Old Roman chant was being transformed into what we know today as the Gregorian started this allegorical way of thinking about the Mass and its Propers in a systematic fashion, a manner of thinking about the liturgy that was to last for centuries. The Introit, for instance, symbolizes the Old Testament prophets who foretold the coming of Christ, the Kyrie represents St John the Baptist's proclaiming the coming of Christ, the Gloria that proclamation of the angels, and so forth.
For those interested in this allegorical approach at least to interpreting the Mass,I found this (incomplete) article the other day that summarises well Aquinas' views on this which are quite remarkable:
http://www.secondspring.co.uk/magazine/saward.htm