This article details the absolute glory of the St. Agnes music program, which featured Mozart’s Coronation Mass this Christmas. I’m so grateful for what this parish continues to do to uphold Msgr. Schuler’s great legacy. He was nearly the only practicing champion of serious sacred music in the 1970s and 1980s. As I’ve said many times, they called him a dinosaur and a reactionary; it turns out that he was a prophet of progress.
Periodically I do a youtube search for presentations of orchestral Masses at this parish. I’ve never found one. Perhaps I’m overlooking something. There should be hundreds available by now. Imagine the evangelistic opportunities here! Just imagine how wonderful it would be to have a full online archive of all the great music at this parish. It would not only help the parish recruit parishioners and choristers. It would promote the use of this music in a liturgical context – a Catholic liturgical context. We could watch and listen see the great legacy of Msgr. Schuler spread all over the world.
Well, what seems to be the problem? The short answer can be reduced to two words: union policies. Thanks to union policies, nothing can be recorded or distributed because they believe that if you do this, the demand for their live performances will go down and their standard of living would fall. That’s what the unions believe, based on their zero-sum, take-what-you-can-when-you-can attitudes.
It never seems to dawn on these people that demand for services is not somehow a fix part of nature but rather something that has to be cultivated, marketed, promoted, elicited from within the structure of society through inspiration and persuasion. Of course there is no scientific way to guarantee this (there are no controlled experiments in the social sciences) but a good entrepreneurial instinct would suggest that posting rather than withholding performances would actually help the musicians themselves by drawing attention to their work and the beautiful liturgy here.
Msgr. Schuler believed in paying musicians well. I completely agree. This is a wonderful policy. It should be adopted in every parish. Sadly, as a reflection of his times and his outlook, he tied his goal with a policy of deference to music unions and their demands for salary and terms. This is the core problem at the parish that may eventually harm his legacy, unless there is unlimited money in the budget, which I doubt, and an unlimited tolerance for keeping obscure what should be globally famous, which I also doubt.
It mainly makes me sad that the world is denied any access to the glorious music at St. Agnes and hence a wonderful evangelistic opportunity is lost. I also belief that it is a very short-sighted policy. It would be a terrible thing to see St. Agnes get caught up in some kind of labor struggle here but the parish should really consider recruiting musicians from outside union ranks and also explain to the unions that whether they like it or not, the performance at Mass will be posted online for universal distribution. If the unions boycott or harass any musicians who continue to perform, that might suggest something about their actual dedication to the cause of liturgical excellence and the Christian mission.
"Thanks to union policies, nothing can be recorded or distributed because they believe that if you do this, the demand for their live performances will go down and their standard of living would fall. That's what the unions believe, based on their zero-sum, take-what-you-can-when-you-can attitudes."
Interestingly enough, this was also the view of MLB owners regarding radio broadcasts of their games in the 20's. And the story has repeated itself countless times as television and the internet confronted dinosaur policies. It's not a problem with unions per se, but with a lack of trust and optimism.
What radio did for baseball from the 1920's on is no longer in doubt. Also no doubt that television has launched the success of the NFL, and to a lesser extent NASCAR and the NBA.
Good luck on this one, Jeffrey. I'm with you all the way, except for the use of concert Masses. The people should be singing the Sanctus, and the responses to the Kyrie and Agnus Dei.
The typical musical settings of the Sanctus, Kyrie and Agnus Dei used in most parishes are worthy of the trashbin. I guess you need to lecture His Holiness on the "inappropriateness" of concert Masses.
"The people should be singing the Sanctus, and the responses to the Kyrie and Agnus Dei."
I wonder whether one-size-fits-all statements—that all the people should "do exactly this, all the time"—are constructive or helpful (whether they appear in norms or in comment boxes). At any rate, I'm glad to see something other than all-folks-singalong "herd Masses" in St. Peter's Basilica now.
Todd, that is precisely right about "trust and optimism." That hits it exactly. Tragically for everyone, the music unions might eventually destroy what Schuler dedicated his life to creating and developing. It's also true that this is not just a union policy but without the union, there is no way that this policy could possibly be enforced. Christians are not normally disinclined to share the Gospel; the parish is being bullied into doing something completely against the Catholic instinct.
I have to say that this is one of the first stories which claims that the AFM has any influence in America (outside New Orleans) at all. Their policies are indeed rooted in a past world before mobile disk jockies roamed the land. Yes, musicians should be paid fairly, but at some point this runs up against the laws of the market. The result? Only a few spectacular musicians now benefit from union wage scales, while the rest ignore the union completely. In this case, I believe that Msr Schuler did not get waivers provide extra pay for distributing recorded versions of the services. I don't really see a problem with that. Every professional musician deserves to know if their performance is going to be distributed over radio or recording. It's only ethical.
Todd, I agree that in most cases the congregation should be given the opportunity to sing the Ordinary, but the GIRM allows for exceptions. I think only the most hidebound of "participation" advocates would object to professionals offering the Church's treasury at papal Masses and the big feasts. My goodness, the most depressing thing is when a Christmas Mass is just like every other Sunday…
Todd, tell us how often you follow the mandate of Sacrosanctum Concilium in YOUR parish which requires that the people sing IN LATIN the parts of the Ordinary proper to them. Otherwise, yawn, snore, etc., etc.,
We have been singing Mozart Masses for several years for Christmas and Easter and I notice that people are far more involved in the celebration of a Mass during a Mozart Mass than either modern English settings or even chant Masses. The glaze that comes over most of the congregation during English settings is somewhat frightening, but the Latin ordinary still does not focus people as much as Mozart or Faure or other settings. The music actually helps make evident the meaning of the text, and brings a new sense of reality to the experience of Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei. The sung propers also bring this intensity. I am astonished sometimes by the effect of chant propers sung in contrast with exuberant Mass settings and colorful organ fanfares.
I think we forget that we are human and that we need to experience great beauty to even get a glimpse of divine understanding. Why not accept the gifts of great art that our are heritage and show the way into a fuller experience of God?
By the way, I think that the organ is fine by itself and it is difficult to get hired musicians to really get what is going on at Mass. It takes quite a while to build this understanding.
As a musician, I like to be paid well. However, the unions have been notoriously ineffectual. They stay locked in past practices and don't look for ways to reconcile contemporary realities with musicians' finding ways to eat on a regular basis.
On the orchestral Masses question, my enthusiasm is curbed by the fact that they are rarely celebrated in the liturgical environment for which they were written. In the 18th century, the music could run virtually uninterrupted simultaneous with the liturgical action. When you combine this music with the Novus Ordo, or even the revised liturgical style of the Extraordinary Form, the result can be an endless liturgy that may make more enemies than friends for healing our musical woes.
Mary Jane is right. In the NO, everything stops for the orchestral Kyrie, while in the EF, the priest probably hasn't gotten there yet. I understand that the fathers of the Council wanted the Mass to be understandable to the congregation, but in some cases this just made things more tedious.
As a former Bass in the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale and Assistant Conductor for Monsignor Schuler for a year, your photo of Monsignor is how I remember him best. He was my mentor and friend and I have missed him dearly these many years.
I share in your disappointment that there seem to be no video postings of the orchestral Masses from St. Agnes on Youtube. Even the recordings of the Masses that were posted on the St. Agnes website appear to have now been removed.
Yes, members of the Minneapolis Symphony who played each Sunday were union and most (if not all) of the singers were not. Still, many of the recordings were posted for many years, available for free to all who visited the website. If union concerns are the reason they have been removed…why were they allowed to be available for so many years (even subsequent to Monsignor's passing) without problem?
Happily, one is still able to hear several orchestral Mass recordings made by Monsignor Schuler, the choir and orchestra. They are available on CD or cassette and can be obtained from Leaflet Missal in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can visit their website and, by typing Twin Cities Chorale into their search engine, the recordings will be displayed. Leaflet Missal can be contacted by phone at: 1.800.328.9582 or by e-mail at:
customer-service@leafletonline.com