If you have been curious about what’s going on at the NPM. This is very much worth watching if you want to what’s going on in the great shift we are living through. Obviously these are not chant partisans but they have some fascinating insights.
14 Replies to “Meet Fr. Anthony Ruff and the NPM”
Comments are closed.
It was good to hear how all of the panelists are chant practitioners, to varying degrees.
Some comments I was happy to hear:
07:39: Some props to CMAA for sharing chant resources on the net, and for 'open-source' sharing (bravo, Jeffrey!)
09:06: The influence of Pope Benedict's writings on the liturgy is reaching parish musicians;
14:40: Joe's observation about the strong presence of young people at the CMAA Sacred Music Colloquium; Fr. Ruff seemed to confirm it by his mention of NLM's image as "old";
31:30: Fr. Funk on the 'hermeneutic of continuity'
From the guy with the "degree in music" – "the First Viennese School would have been the Baroque music… The Second Viennese School said 'no,' they were breaking with the past and were going to start from scratch."
Please excuse my ignorance, what is the NPM?
National Association of Pastoral Musicians.
real "pastoral". Shoving drivel down our throats for years.
I loved Joe's analogy about the Viennese Schools – the overarching theme of breaking with the past and leaving the past behind, literally, seems so relevant to Catholic music since Vatican II. My grandmother would have said "they threw the baby out with the bath water" with the attitude of this total break with tradition, even to the point of shunning, ignoring and trying to blot out what the facilitator so snark-ily referred to as "old European rich white guy" music. Comments like that seem to say that some people cling fast to the post-conciliar rupture-with-the-past attitude.
Sorry if my first post here seemed a little obtuse. I just thought it ironic that the guy with the "degree in music" thinks the First Viennese School was Baroque (it was Classical, of course) and that the Second Viennese School saw itself breaking with the past (when, in fact, it saw itself recovering the past – especially Late Medieval and Renaissance practices – while also moving forward).
Speaking extemporaneously does not always lend itself to precision. I think his point was about the bigger picture. And there are many musicologists who would disagree with the "recovering the past" take – Schoenberg was all about renouncing the traditional concept of tonality. I immediately understood his analogy. Most of the "liturgists" I know of the after-the-council ilk are all about renouncing tradition.
Funk the monk?
Gotcha. And not to get too far down the response-counter response road, I can't help but reply that Schoenberg et al were certainly about more than renouncing tonality. Retrograde, inversion, retrograde inversion were all techniques recovered from the Renaissance polyphonists. In his role as a teacher, Schoenberg was widely acknowledged to be an arch traditionalist. Berg wrote his thesis on Heinrich Isaac (besides being a composer of Catholic liturgical music himself). I could go on.
Gotcha, too. It was Anton Webern who wrote his dissertation on Heinrich Isaac, although Berg was at least nominally Catholic, as was Webern. Minor point, I know!!!!!! : ^ ) Props to you for knowing who Schoeberg, Berg and Webern were! And I agree that they all thought that they were not, in their minds, rejecting the past, but taking the next evolutionary step forward like good Hegelians. Good point!
True. They likely did think they were moving forward. But it made me chuckle because it does draw out the analogy. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'm sure many post Vatican II liturgists (I hate that term) and musicians thought they were doing the best thing by moving forward and "evolving" – but it must be acknowledged that they (again, like some serialists and twelve tone advocates) did, in the process, push aside a greater portion of their past than they may have intended.
Podatus and Matthew, Mea culpa. After posting my last message and leaving for the day, I wondered to myself, did I actually say Berg and not Webern? Drat if I did. I suppose that's what I get for being a smart___. A lesson well taken.
to the gentleman from OCP: right on! It is about prayer. Whether it's Gregorian chant, or charismatic chant; it's about prayer.