Category: Article by Jeffrey Tucker

It probably doesn’t seem that way in your parish, not yet. But the times are changing. The ground has shifted. Scholas are starting everywhere today, parish by parish. They are using music that is both free online and sold in beautiful editions. These editions are most published just in the last two or three years. They are mostly published by institutions that have virtually no funding at all, and have either few employees or none. But the power of the idea (sing the liturgy) and the beauty of the liturgical song they embody is making converts by the day.

All these thoughts are prompted by spending a week at the Sacred Music Colloquium in Salt Lake City. This is where you will find the Cathedral of the Madeleine, which, to everyone’s shock, turns out to be the home to the best Catholic choir in America. Salt Lake City is probably the last place you would expect to find such a thing but such is the way the reform is turning out: there are delightful surprises around every corner.

When the conference director (Arlene Oost-Zinner) of the Church Music Association of America suggested shifting the annual event from the East Coast to the West, one could detect some degree of skepticism. Nothing like this had ever been tried before. It was a highly risky step for an organizing that is always one small step away from bankruptcy. But look what happened: the conference filled up to capacity (270) weeks ahead and we ended up having to turn people away.

And this was certainly the happiest group of campers I’ve ever seen at the Colloquium. They came from all regions. All ages were represented. There was a nice balance of new singers and professional musicians. They practically floated through the week. The faculty was varied and massive, as never before. More priests were in attendance than ever. The liturgical program was more spectacular than ever.

And the breakouts were amazing. We had sessions on English chant, hymnody, sight singing, vocal production, organ repertoire, chant typesetting, parish administration, and so much more. People left each session with high praise for the teacher and the learning environment. Also, the book that we brought all sold, with an English psalm book (again by Oost-Zinner) and a book for chant for kids (Words with Wings) topping the bestseller charts. Also, of course, all the official music books of the Roman Rite sold well.

We tried a new method for dividing up the chant choirs. We used to do beginning, intermediate, and advanced, but this approach didn’t quite achieve the goal. This year we had two beginning classes, two refresher classes, and two performance scholas that prepared nearly all the music for Mass. In addition, we had two master classes that delved very deeply into the scholarship of the oldest manuscripts, all in an effort to bring more sophistication to chant performance.

I gave a four-part lecture series on the history of sacred music in the United States, based on all my reading and research over the years. I set out to debunk two main myths that are in the air: 1) that all our problems began after the close of Vatican II, and 2) all the problems we face are due to liberal hippies who hate the classics. Once dispensing with those two ideas, we can begin to confront the complex realities of how we ended up in the awful state that we’ve seen for decades, and then, as a result, see that there is a way out of the mess.

The pathway forward is not as foggy as it once was. We finally have liturgical books that we can sing from, primarily the third edition of the Roman Missal, plus books of chanted propers that have recently become available. We are finally seeing hymnals come to print that are actually related to the liturgy itself and not just providing pop music that is external to the rite. Each year the number of people who are interested in making a change grows, and they are learning from other people who have traveled the same path.

In my sessions and many others, there was frank talk about the difficulties of making the transition at the parish level. There are few singers. There is no money. Pastors are afraid of change. Every change inspires some level of resistance from a small pocket of people. We spoke about all of these problems, and offers solutions from our own experiences. Also, this kind of exchange and learning continues daily at the musicasacra.com forums, where members offer each other helpful advise and guidance.

There are too many people who were involved in making this event a great success to name them all. But certainly the Cathedral staff and Gregory Glenn deserve high mention here. What they have done in this city is just spectacular, and they supported the Colloquium in every way. There is a movie soon to come out about their efforts. It’s called “The Choir.” We saw an early screening of it. It was so excellent that it will surely inspired the creation of other choir schools around the country.

I should also mention the contribution of Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth, who has provided so much guidance, the brilliant leadership of William Mahrt, and the inspiration provided by Fr. Guy Nicholls of the Birmingham Oratory. Again, it’s dangerous to name names because so many people were involved, not the least of whom were the many attendees who scrimped and saved to raise the money to attend.

So here we have it, a movement with energy, enthusiasm, deep knowledge, true love for the beautiful, and all rooted in a genuine desire to do what the Church intends. There is just nothing else like it out there. This is truly the future, and that future could arrive much sooner than you think.

Gregory Glenn, the amazing director of the Choir School of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, Utah, made a point in a lecture that really struck a nerve. He was discussing the merits of having not just a choir in the parish but of establishing a full school with daily liturgical performances and constant year-round teaching.

Speaking at the Sacred Music Colloquium, He said that the Catholic world is too much caught up in an event-based culture. We need to be focused more on building excellence within an institutional structure, one that reflects constant commitment and dedication over the long term.

And he speaks with some serious authority here. Everyone who attended the concert of the Choir School kids agreed that this is surely the greatest Catholic choir in the country. This is a judgement made by people who would know. I heard that phrase again and again all week at the Sacred Music Colloquium.

His comments were balanced and beautiful and inspiring. What follows is really my takeaway and not his words. He is right. We hold a conference on catechesis and expect everyone to learn how to teach Catholic doctrine in a one-day seminar. We hold seminars on particular topics and expect the attendees to absorb all truth in a few sessions and then teach the world.

In the world of music, we slap together so-called “children’s choirs” and put them on stage for Christmas. Everyone cheers no matter how bad it sounds, and no matter that the kids know nothing of singing or music. Parish musicians show up a few minutes before Mass and just try to get through the next hour without obvious embarrassment. They call it a music program.

The Church Music Association of American holds several events. We do our best to provide a full immersion in the world of Gregorian chant for a full week. Three hundred attended this year. It was an experience beyond description. Such a thing on this scale hasn’t existed in more than half a century. It is glorious.

And yet, there is a difference between an event and institution. There is a serious shortage of institutions that can train musicians on the level they should be trained. You cannot accomplish what is needed in one week. We are also lacking in parishes and cathedrals that are willing to back with full commitment a sacred music programs.

Even the CMAA itself is not yet an institution as such but more like a backer of events and publications and blogs — and that’s great for now but it is not enough. The CMAA stepped up and did the right thing when no one else was willing and now it attracts intense interest and remains the only reliable training ground for average Catholic musicians. But it is not the end point, not the ideal.

What makes a real difference in people’s lives and in the culture are programs that are ongoing, stable, relentless, and embedded in the daily schedules and lives of both the students and teachers. This is what gives rise to full fluency in the language of whatever is being taught.

To observe the working of the choir school at the Salt Lake Cathedral is to make the point. I’ve never heard such a confidence and power in children’s voices. Really it amounts to what might be called mastery, the sound of which we rarely encounter in today’s world. It is a reflection of countless hours of work and unfathomable amounts of dedication.

As Gregory would say, 99% of the real work of the choir school is off the radar screen. It makes no headlines, gets no applause, flatters no egos, and praises no performers or directors. It is the deep rehearsal every day, starting with music instruction at the earliest ages and continuing on through maturity. It means sacrifice, discipline, and non-stop commitment — without pep rallies, banners, and adulation.

His point especially struck home in light of what we see here in Salt Lake. Every parish and Cathedral would absolutely love to have such a choir. Imagine a daily sung Mass and weekly sung Vespers using the best music ever written sung with seemingly impossible precision and power. Who wouldn’t want that?

It doesn’t come easy. It requires someone like Gregory Glenn who is willing to work at low pay for many years, constantly on call and never taking a vacation and doing so with absolutely no assurance that anything would ever come of it. It really serious donors willing to commit serious financial resources with no assurance that the thing would work out in the end. It requires parents who are completely on board with the idea and willing to back all their kids’ efforts.

In short, excellence on this level requires true heroism, which has nothing to do with flags and parades and everything to do with quiet determination in the face of every obstacle. It means pursuing a dream because it is right and true, not because it offers power and prestige. Heroism consists of a million small commitments kept that no one notices, not a few big actions that everyone praises.

Glenn is right about this. The Cathedral of the Madeleine Choir School is leaving its mark on history in a quiet but lasting way.

Let me close with a final plea. I’m forever trying to raise money for the Church Music Association of America, but I would like to suggest another if additional path. If you are looking for an institution to add to your Will, please consider this amazing school. They are pushing a capital campaign for improved facilities right now. They need funds now and in the future. I can’t imagine a better investment in the future of Catholic music than this institution now and in the future.

These are the top things that people need to know.

1. Church music is vocal music. This reality is nearly lost on people today. People think that music is not possible without instruments, whether organ or guitar or piano. One would have no idea that for 1000 years, the voice was the basis of the whole of Christian song. The voice was the only instrument that created Gregorian chant, which retains first place at Mass. Instruments can and often do interfere with the proclamation of the word through song.

2. The text is the Word of God. For a very long time the proper of the Mass has been displaced by newly composed hymns. This has led musicians to believe that they are free to use any text they want as the basis of their music. The whole thing went nuts in the 1960s, when actual pop music became common but the problem really dates back to the preconciliar times when Low Mass became a vessel for any and all kind of sentimentalism.

3. The music of the Mass is given, not invented. Even now, most musicians in the Catholic Church have no idea that this is true. They have never been told that the text and music of the Mass has been largely stable since the 7th and 8th centuries, that there is a different piece of music assigned to every chant of every Mass during the Church year.

4. It is not a debate over style. I get so weary of these debates, such as that inspired by the hymn wars. We’ll never agree on what kind of music we like. Every person is different. The issue of Church music has nothing to do with this dispute about style. Chant is an ideal vessel for the Word, and the Word is primary. Chant then becomes a third option between those who want 1950s music vs. those who want 1970s music.

5. There is an embedded musical structure to the Roman rite. Most musicians show up week after week thinking that their only job is to pick four hymns, plus sing the Psalm from a major publisher. This is completely missing the boat. It’s actually rather difficult to explain this to people because picking four hymns is pretty much the sum total of what nearly all Catholic musicians have done for half a century.

All of these are important points. People are not used to using their voices alone to make music. People have a hard time realizing that the music of the ritual is a given and not something made up by GIA or OCP. And people love their endless and largely pointless debates about which hymn to sing and which style to use. All this has to be dealt with.

However, it’s this last point that I spend the time on, and this is for mostly practical reasons. If the musician has no idea what he is she is singing and how it fits with the liturgical structure, there can never really be much integration between the loft and the sanctuary. They will seem like they are running separate shows rather than praying as part of the same ritual.

This musical structure is what I hope people will take away from my lectures and seminars. Of course the idea is not mine. This is the main purpose of William Mahrt’s amazing book The Musical Shape of the Liturgy.

For years, I’ve had people come up to me and say, I need a book that explains what Catholic music is and how it relates to the liturgy. I’ve not really had a satisfactory answer until this book came out. Now, it is just a matter of citing one book. I can’t even describe to you how satisfying that is.

One major question keeps coming back to me at these events. People say to me: but isn’t the goal of the Catholic musician to get people to sing?

This is a fascinating statement. It reflects decades of malformation. This is what musicians have been told for so long, in conference after conference, essay after essay. And yet, look at the results. Stumble into the average parish on Sunday morning and you will likely discover a congregation that is largely silent except for the major dialogue chants and perhaps some of the ordinary. Otherwise, most people are happy to stand there and not sing.

What are the results? The musician feels like a failure. And the musician also blames the people. There develops a strange antagonistic relationship and the positions grow ever more entrenched.

Good congregational singing is not something you can force. It must emerge organically, as people come to appreciate and love the role of music in the ritual. Yelling and hectoring and waving your arms do not improve singing. It only causes people to become defiant.

What’s remarkable is that you can read every official document concerning music and not find a single statement anywhere that says: the goal of the music director is to get the people to sing. Not one statement anywhere. And yet this is the prevailing goal of most music directors.

Once it is explained to the musicians that this is not the goal, not the sole purpose of music leading, one can see the sense of relief come over the faces of the musicians. They realize that they have been focusing on the wrong goal the entire time. They need not feel despair! If they change their orientation toward using their talents to ennoble the liturgy, they also become happier people and more successful musicians. Ironically, one of the results is that people might begin to sing again!

We are starting to see very important voices and authorities in the Church today placing a new priority on chant and the sung liturgy. This is why we are seeing more and more events take place that are designed for total parish retraining. Whole diocseses are being re-catechized. The goal is to restore the fundamentals, to re-root our sensibilities in the core music of the Roman Rite.

What has been the response? The first is shock and alarm. People have been told something else for so long. It is hard to change. It’s always hard to change, especially when it means coming to terms with the reality that what has been done in the past is not really suitable. That’s a not message for people to deal with.

But part of all these seminars are Masses that actually use the music we are learning, mostly in the form of English chant. My general observation is that half the people are convinced following the first liturgy and the other half are convinced by the second liturgy. I’ve rarely found anyone, no matter their style preferences or theological views, who is not convinced of the stunning beauty, holiness, and universal voice of the plainchant that is an embedded feature of the Roman Rite.

The longer I spend within the world of Catholic sacred music, the more a serious problem presents itself. The musicians in the parish or cathedral are too often isolated on their own. Their issues and problems are considered unique and not shared by other sectors of Catholic life. They have their own organizations, their own publishing venues, their own special skills not shared by others, and their own internal cultures that other find impenetrable, even scary.

For example, I’m thinking of the Sacred Music Colloquium this year in Salt Lake City. This is an ideal place for training anyone interested in Catholic liturgy, anyone who desires improvement in parish music, anyone interested in the Pope’s hopes for the future of Catholic liturgy. And yet, just because the program has the word “music” in it, people who don’t have a background in musical training are nervous to look into coming.

Catholics have a sense that they have no more business intervening in the world of music than they have in telling the plumber how to fix the pipes or the roofer how to deal with the leaks. They believe it’s not their place, and many musicians are happy to have people think this way too.

Some of this is inevitable and normal given just how specialized music really is. But broaden the perspective out a bit, you can see that this creates a great deal of tension and difficulty. The music of the liturgy affects the work of everyone else in a profound way. It colors everything that goes on at the altar. It helps or hinders the prayer life of the people in the pews. It either contradicts or reinforces what goes on in the religious education classes.

Everyone has a stake in the music program of the parish, and yet hardly anyone other than musicians themselves sense that they have any control over the program itself. People have a sense that they have to take whatever the musicians dish out, whether good or bad. This creates a certain detachment and even resentment toward the musicians. The musicians respond with a culture of defensiveness, resenting anyone who dares comment on what they are doing much less introduce fundamental change.

As a result, the musicians development a kind of separatist mentality that completely contradicts the right ordering of the place of music in the life of Catholics. And this separatist outlet can make the musicians themselves ridiculously unwilling to be flexible when faced with the obvious need to adapt toward changing conditions.

The promulgation of the new Missal was a case in point. The musicians were utterly panicked over the changing of a few phrases of the text they would sing, and their primary interest in adapting to the new Missal was to find music that is as much as possible just like what they’ve sung for the past thirty years!

As for priests and pastors, there is no sector of parish life that terrifies them more than the music sector. They have a sense that they might want improvement, especially more integration between what goes on in the loft and what goes on in the sanctuary. But they wouldn’t know where to begin to explain this the musicians. They also worry about alienating them for fear that they won’t come back — since the musicians are rarely there just for the money, of which there is usually very little.

As a result, a vast number of musicians in Catholic parishes wallow around for year after year in a self-satisfied ignorance about the musical structure of the Roman Rite and their obligations to it. This terrible judgement obviously does not describe all musicians. Many of the best are learning chant and integrating their art into the liturgy and working to expand their mission into other sectors of the parish. My estimate is that this “good musician” description applies to about 15%. The rest grow hardened and indifferent over time, unteachable and uninterested and even cynical.

What is to be done? Well, look back a century ago. There was a sector in Church life called the musicians but they were part of a larger liturgical movement that also concerned itself with church furnishings, the texts and rubrics of the Mass, the content of the educational programs, and the theology of the liturgy generally.

On the most practical level, the substantial difference between then and now comes down to this salient fact: music education was not isolated and sequestered off from the rest of parish life. It was part of the teaching mission of the church. Music was part of the Catholic school program. The CCD classes had everyone involved in singing. These same students sang in liturgy. In fact, people of all ages sang in liturgy.

Priests themselves were trained in music, not only how to sing but how to teach singing. The musicians were able to look to the priests for an understanding of the relationship between the rubrics and the musical art. Musical knowledge was not the exclusive purview of specialists but rather involved the whole community. It would have been unthinkable that the head of religious education anywhere, for example, had no say over and no knowledge of the musical dimension of the faith.

Today? I don’t need to rehearse what has happened. There is no more singing in classes. Priests have not been trained in music. Many parishes even have liturgy committees that have no musicians on them at all. Perhaps there will be a cautious request for this or that hymn coming from some other sector but, for the most part, the musicians are completely on their own.

My colleague Arlene Oost-Zinner is the one who drew my attention to this problem, which seems incredibly obvious to me now. There needs to be some way to begin breaking down the walls here. For example, it has usually always been assumed that the musical reform of the Roman Rite must begin with the retraining of the musicians themselves. That’s not a bad idea but what if the musicians don’t have any interest in learning something new or becoming part of a larger concern over liturgy and the sacramental life of the Church?

Her idea is extremely intriguing. She is working on a program that will begin the musical education not with the musicians but with the religious education sector of parish. What if the teachers in the classrooms where the children are become the main music teachers for the parish? This is exactly how things worked a century ago. That system slipped away over the last forty or fifty years. Maybe we can take some steps toward putting that system back together again, but with a modern and updated pedogogical method?

I find this idea extremely intriguing, even a breakthrough. I can happen. It also provides a way for the pastor to launch a musical reform in his parish without have to fight with recalcitrant musicians or harden liturgists. The people who teach the classes are some of the most dedication and selfless people in any parish. They might take to simple chants better than any group out there. If they could be trained in a one-day workshop, and then turned loose to teach the children, we might begin to see a reform that parents would accept and even by thrilled by.

In any case, regardless of how it happens, something has to give here. There can be no lasting progress in music without breaking down the walls the separate the music team from everyone else. Perhaps the musical energy of the parish can begin to grow from a place where people least expect it, so that way the chants of the Catholic faith can again be part of the lives of Catholics again, and music can cease to be reduced to a soundtrack that is heard only in the background for one hour per week.

There is something brilliant about this idea. I think it has a future.

Most of the time, I’m pretty calm about this issue, realizing that it is just part of life and that there’s nothing that can be done about. But then something happens that strikes me as absolutely outrageous, and I get angry all over again.

And so here is my sample outrage of today. I have a full book of notated sung Gospels in my digital briefcase. I would be thrilled to put it online right now. You could print out what you need and sing this Sunday. Then you could buy the book if you liked it.

It’s not going to happen. This treasure cannot be shared lest the full weight of the law and its enforcement arm come down hard on me and the domain on which it appears.

I’m thinking it’s been a long time since you heard anyone sing the Gospel from the pulpit. Maybe that is because the book of sung Gospels is not widely accessible or maybe that doesn’t make a difference at all. We never never know, will we? The copyright holder to the Catholic version of the scriptures (yes, you read that right) refuses to allow it to be posted online.

In other words, the copyright holder is actively working to stop the spread of the Gospels by means of the state. True. Ironic. Horrible.

Let’s just say that I wanted to defy the authorities because I believe in sharing the good news and all that. Let’s say that I didn’t believe in using government to prevent access to holy scripture. What would happen? It would be a dangerous thing to do. If I did it and persisted in doing it despite warning, the entire domain and the organization it represented could be instantly body bagged by the US Department of Homeland Security.

How might this situation change? Well, the copyright holder, which is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on behalf the NAB which is administered by the CCD and yada yada, could put this book (the Bible) into the commons. It could do this on its own authority. It could do that right now, today, this minute. No one and nothing is preventing that.

Why won’t they? Well, they say they need the money. They have to deny access to the word of God so that they can extract money from you and me and everyone else. Otherwise, they say, they wouldn’t get any money from selling God’s word, and that would be very bad.

My response: any business model that relies on immorality needs to be changed. That’s especially true if the model is being used by the Catholic faith. Simony might be lucrative but it is still not morally advisable.

My other response: putting a work into the commons does not mean that you cannot sell it. There are way to make a commercial profit that are also consistent with generosity, good will, and human service. Given that the texts themselves are an infinitely reproduceable good, I’m pretty sure that posting sung Gospels online is not going to lead to a drastic fall in the sale of Bibles.

No, what’s going on here is pure folly.

It does not have to be this way.

Look at the example that ICEL has shown over the last few years. ICEL was once incredibly strict about the distributions of its texts. They never missed an opportunity to extract a dime or less.

But that has completely changed. In the preparations for the new Missal, ICEL posted its most valuable commodity, the completely body of Missal music, online for free download. It actually encouraged people to print them and sing them. This was a brilliant approach. It didn’t cause some kind of terrible corruption but rather exactly the opposite. It fostered a beautiful creativity and encouraged the widespread use of the chant.

As for the texts otherwise, it has been very liberal with permissions. It has also been open about the rationale for charging a fee for long scale printings. This approach has led to vast good will be spread about ICEL’s work and the new Missal. All this change required was a small step: let it go and let it grow.

Now let’s talk about music publishers like GIA and OCP. They both own a warchest of copyrights. They sell the right to sing their stuff to other publishers and to you and me. Every time you start to sing, coins in their coffers go ka-ching.

In order to keep this business model alive, they must marginalize public domain music as much as possible. This means the need to change traditional hymns. There must be new texts, new arrangements, new instrumental tricks added and the like.

You might think it would be good to sing a song the way it might have sounded in, say, the 1920s. That’s not going to happen if GIA and OCP have anything to do with it. They must twist, distort, contort, and mangle notes and chords, not because they are actually improving anything; no, no, that’s has nothing to do with it. It is all about re-copyrighting the thing. This would not be possible without access to the copyright law invented and universalized in the 19th century.

Catholic institutions have a choice. They can embrace this nonsense or they can do the right thing and eschew completely. For the sake of the faith and art, Catholics need to find a new way to do business that is consistent with the basic tenants of the Gospel.

Then, someday, perhaps we will be even permitted to sing that Gospel.