Category: Article by Jeffrey Tucker

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

The Entrance to Mass

Laetare, Gaudete, Requiem: even now, these words exist as part of the Catholic lexicon. We hear them but most Catholics have no idea where they come from. They are the first words of the entrance chants for, in order, the fourth Sunday in Lent, the third Sunday in Advent, and the funeral Mass. But there’s no particular reason why we should focus on these days instead of others throughout the year. Every Mass has an appointed entrance chant – and these chants have been largely stable since the end of the first millennium.

The new book by Jason McFarland, Announcing the Feast (Liturgical Press, 2011) makes the case that by dropping the text and music, replacing it with something else, we are removing an integral part of the Roman Rite. The entrance chant is not there merely to foreshadow the readings of the day; it is there to build a theological and aesthetic foundation for the entire liturgical experience of the particular Mass that is being celebrated.

The book is hugely significant in many ways. It comes to what might be called “traditionalist” conclusions but does so within the contemporary liturgical context. He points out repeatedly that the Missal is not the only liturgical book for Mass; there is also the Graduale Romanum, which is the musical framework for the Mass. It cannot be neglected. It is not up to us to make up the music we use. The music is given to us in an official book. We need to rediscover it.

The McFarland book covers vast history and offers detailed and subtle arguments for the entrance (or introit). For many people, especially Catholic musicians, this will be the first they have heard of this issue. It will be a surprise. And certainly its use would amount to a dramatic departure from the existing practice of most parishes.

How practical is it to use the entrance? For a parish with a schola (trained or in training), and a community that has already warmed to the depth and meaning of the Latin, it is extremely practical. From my own experience in using it, I can say that it really does prepare the space for the mysteries that follow, and that nothing else quite achieves that precise result as fully and effectively. But how many parishes have the proper groundwork laid to make this possible? I would say: not that many. Perhaps 5%, maybe 10%. Most have no schola. Most congregrations are nowhere near prepared to be hit with a big Latin text upon arriving at Mass.

McFarland is aware of this. But he cautions: anytime you change the Latin to English, or you departure from the given melody in favor of something else, you are losing something important. He understands that singing the Gregorian introit is not really an option for most parishes right away. It is not merely a matter of turning a switch or pushing a button. There is much work to be done. So a large part of the book also involves the exploration of viable alternatives. He does a fine but incomplete job here. Even since his work was completed, several wonderful collections of alternatives to the Gregorian have been published, and right now many people are working on more. Some of the names involved: Adam Bartlett, Richard Rice, Adam Wood, Kathy Pluth, Samuel Weber. There are many others. The time of the introit may have finally arrived.

But what of the pastoral considerations? Can it really be so easy to replace the familiar “gathering hymn” with a real piece of liturgical music, even it is in English, even if it has a modern feel to it, even if the people are welcomed to join in the singing? The truth is that many pastors are very afraid to do this. They fear a kind of uprising. They worry that it will put people in a bad mood for the remainder of Mass. Just the prospect introduces anxiety for them and so they decide against it. This is very common.

The other day, I was visiting with a priest who has a very serious music problem in his parish – and I’ll spare you the details because you can probably guess. Hint: it’s the usual problem. In any case, he is ready for a change. He told me that he wants to be begin with introducing an English chant at communion, then move to offertory.

We would never discourage any progress and these are fine ideas. But there is a real problem here. Why are we waiting until the end or the middle of Mass to actually introduce music that is genuinely liturgical?

After a popular and bouncy entrance about some other topic (one or another version of “we are a happy people”), a popular and bouncy Gloria (“here is our happy song”), and probably a nice performance piece stuck into the intermission between the homily and the Eucharistic prayer, it can be jarring and strange to suddenly introduce something serious and meaningful. In fact, I can imagine that this is potentially dangerous from a strategic point of view. You put the chant at risk when you try to sneak it in as if you are adding medicine to soup you are serving a child.

Consider that the entrance might be the best way to begin the reform process. For the most part, people do not arrive at Mass prepared to reflect, pray, and experience the mysterious touch of time becoming eternity. They arrive carrying a gigantic satchel of emotional and mental baggage from the affairs of the week. They are carrying secular concerns in their head, secular tunes in their head, secular thoughts and ideas.

A poorly chosen “gathering song” only says to the congregation: hey, don’t worry about it. Nothing here is really different. This is pretty much the same kind of thing that has happened to you all week. This is more of the same: just another meeting, just another thing to do, just another place to be as you carry out your tedious obligations in life. You are doing this for the kids or maybe to reinforce some religious identity that your parents attached to you from birth. Otherwise, nothing is expected of you and nor should you expect anything to happen to you. It is all going to be over in an hour and you can go about your business.

These are the messages send by the very first piece of music that is heard at Mass. If this is so, how can you expect the homily to penetrate? How can you expect people to really listen to the prayers of the priest? How can you expect people to take the sacrifice on the altar seriously? How can you expect people to get serious about receiving the body of Christ?

It seems that there is wisdom in the Church’s idea to the introit. From the very outset, we hear the words of Christ in the Psalms proclaimed to us. From the Sunday forthcoming: “Let all the earth worship you and praise you, O God. May it sing in praise of your name, Oh Most High.” Then the Psalm verses follow. “Cry out with joy to God, all the earth; O sing to the glory of his name. O render him glorious praise. Say to God, ‘How awesome your deeds!’ “Because of the greatness of your strength, your enemies fawn upon you. Before you all the earth shall bow down, shall sing to you, sing to your name!”

Now imagine this text set to chant so that the text is very clear, proclaimed with confidence. No mixed messages, no yadayada about the community, no dance beats, no forced rhymns. Now, that’s an entrance. Does it produce some degree of discomfort? Probably it does. Thinking about God and eternity tends to do that. But it works as a kind of stimulus to the spiritual mind and to the soul. It gets us on the right track. It prepares us to understand and be changed by what follows. Why would we ever decline to open Mass with this goal in mind?

There is the issue of whether people will sing along or whether this is a schola chant only. I happen to believe that this whole issue is overwrought. Most people do not arrive at Mass with an itch to belt out a pop tune or sing much of anything immediately. This is why the opening hymn is notoriously undersung by people. There is nothing wrong and much right about letting people just stand and watch the procession without having to fiddle with a book.

But even if this is an issue, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having the people join in to sing the chant, even the Gregorian chant. There is nothing forbidden about that. But neither is there anything wrong with not making it a religious obligation.

The entrance might be the perfect way to begin the reform process. The beginning is sometimes the very best place to start.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Top Ten Things I’ve Learned about Sacred Music

Ten years ago, I knew next to nothing about Catholic music. I knew that something was not right in the parish music program. I had some sense that the fix for the problem was somewhere in our history and tradition, somewhere in some dusty books somewhere, and the answer surely had something to do with preconciliar practice. I intuited this just because the Second Vatican Council represented something like a gigantic shift, and older people reinforced this to me with harrowing stories of living through the turbulent times.

Beyond that, I knew very little.

What follows are the top ten things I’ve learned in the course of ten years of reading, singing, listening, and exploring. I offer them in roughly the order in which I discovered them for myself and in conjunction with working with others who pointed me in the right direction The point here is not only to share the lesson with readers but to admit to the existence of deep ignorance out there as regards Catholic music – and I know this because it was not long ago when I could be counted among the deeply ignorant. There is no shame in that. Admitting it is the first step toward shaping up.

In a lifetime of study, we could never know what we need to know, and relative to knowledge embedded in tradition itself, we are all hopelessly ignorant. This is also what makes Catholic music so exciting. There is always more to discover, always more to do. If you find a “know it all,” you can be pretty sure that he or she is a faker. We are all in the process of discovery. Here is my brief accounting of the high points I’ve gained from ten years in this process.

1. The Roman Rite comes with its own built-in music. This discovery came for me when I took at a look at the Gregorian Missal, which is a reduce and English-language version of the Sunday and feast day chants from the Graduale Romanum, which is the music book of the Roman Rite. I further discover that this book was not just old, though it is old; it is also new, with the latest edition having been produced in 1974 specifically for what is known at the ordinary form of the Roman Rite. This was an amazing revelation. It turns out that the Church does provide. The burden to cobble together music each week does not actually fall to us. In the same way that the books of the Bible are given to us, as is stable doctrine and moral teaching, the music is provided already in a perfect form for every single liturgical task. Our main task is to defer and master the ability to render it properly.

2. What we call hymns cannot be the main ritual music of the Roman Rite. Hymns play an integral role in the sung version of the Divine Office, but they are not part of the Mass. When they are used in Mass, they are more like medieval tropes, texts with music that elaborate on a theme. There is room for hymnody at Mass in particular places, but not as replacements for the real music of the Mass, except in extremely unusual situations. In general, all else equal, the chants proper to the ritual are to be sung. This is a great relief because I never liked the “hymn wars.” They are unnecessarily divisive and extremely subjective. It is best to bypass this problem altogether and sing the Mass itself.

3. The musical structure of the Roman Rite is both clear and stable. The main parts for the congregation are chants of the Mass ordinary: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus Agnus. The congregation and schola are to sing the dialogues with the priest: greeting, memorial acclamation, and the like. The main job of the schola is to lead or sing alone the propers of the Mass: introit, Psalm and Alleluia, offertory, and communion. Beyond that, there are sequences. Until we can get this framework pounded in our heads, we will be lost and confused.

4. Nostalgia only gets you so far. The preconciliar past does not offer much in the way of a model to restore. A close looks shows that the propers at high Mass were sung to Psalm tones only but mostly people experienced low Mass with four hymns — just as we experience today. Hence many of the core problems we have today are inherited from the preconciliar practice. They had their “praise music” and we have ours; the main difference is the style of the times.

5. There was nothing wrong with the goals of Vatican II. A careful reading of the history shows that the fathers of this Council sought to fix the problem of the ubiquity of vernacular hymnody of Mass and sought to change some aspects of the liturgy in the hope of inspiring a fully sung Mass with Gregorian chant taking its proper place. Mistakes were made that unleashed the problem in way that no one even imagined before the Council.

6. It doesn’t take a big choir to do the music right. Motets and big polyphonic Mass settings are wonderful but they are not essential. The Church has given us 18 chanted Mass settings to chose from and they can all be led by a few singers or even one cantor. A big choir is a great thing but it is not necessary for a quality music program at a parish. Moreover, you are more likely to find yourself in the position of recruiting singers if the structure is already in place and there is some security and certainly over the task ahead.

7. Accompaniment is not required. Singing is music in the Roman Rite. Organ, piano, and guitar might not support singing; they might actually crowd it out.

8. A good default structure is more important than a huge repertoire. Every parish needs a reliable musical framework to fall back on for every Mass, so that it is not so dependent on a particular organist or choir leader or the presence of a large number of singers with a huge library of music. If this is done well, simple chants from the beginning to the end, combined with the beauty of silence, accomplishes the goal. And here is an especially good time to say thanks for the new Missal translation, which has all the music already given to us for the main parts of Mass.

9. You can’t blame the musicians for junky music at Mass. The Missal change quickly and hardly anyone was prepared. There were no books of English propers available until very recently. Musicians were using what they had and that was not much, and what has been available has been produced with very little understanding of the musical structure of the ritual. This problem has persisted until very recently.

10. Change does not come from edict. As much as we might dream of a pope or a priest who cracks down and demands appropriate music from everyone, this is not actually how change occurs. Change comes from patience, learning and teaching, inspiration and prayer, and hard work undertaken in the right spirit.

Those are my ten lessons. I have no doubt that the next ten years will continue to be fruitful no only in getting better at singing but in learning ever more about theory and practice of music in the Roman Rite.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

The Liturgy Sings Itself

A few days ago, a composer sent a set of Mass propers that struck me as absolutely beautiful. They had thick choral writing in the antiphon, and beautiful set Psalms in parts too, using a fresh-sounding Psalm tone on top. It is a great example of what the new consciousness about Mass propers has done for liturgical composition. Fulfilling a hope first expressed in modern times by Aristotle Esguerra, we are now seeing some of the best artistic and compositional talents turned to service of the Roman Rite.

At the same time, I’ve been thinking about this model and its parish viability. This is a concern that has been central to my thinking for some time and increasingly important to strategizing going forward. The stunning success of the Simple English Propers demonstrates just how crucial it is to think about the resources available in the average parish and to have music made available to work within this framework.

Here is the reality we are dealing with. Most parishes, by which I mean probably 4 out of 5, do not have a single choir available that can consistently sing in four parts. This fact shocks musicians when they first hear it. It seems pathetic in some way. There is plenty of blame to go around to account for this. But I’m not sure there is much point is continuing to express horror at this.

We must work with the resources we have, and at this late date in the postconciliar church – after a time when children’s choirs were disbanded, music education in parish schools was defunded, and the very existence of serious choirs was questioned and put down, and when knowledge of the musical framework of the Roman rite has fallen to new lows – we just do not have them.

Nor are organists plentiful. Many are just pianists who are doing the best they can for $50 per week, at best. They bear a huge burden to somehow make the music happen in parish after parish. But even in the lucky parish that has enough singers for four-part writing or even complex polyphonic composition, it can’t usually happen at every Mass. It appears perhaps once on Sunday, but there are two, three, or four additional Masses to be covered, not to speak of feast days during the week where there is a desire for music.

What it comes down to is this. Given the liturgical demands of the Roman rite, most Catholic music must be prepared with the expectation that it can be handled by a single cantor. That is the reality and the usual experience of liturgy. Music that is most marketable, viable, and appropriate at this point in history has to be rendered by a single voice.

There is where we are right now. Perhaps in another ten years, matters could be different. But we must remember that right now, we are really in a rebuilding stage. The foundation has to be laid on what is really something of a wasteland. From there, wonderful things can happen, and even already I can think of many examples where fabulous and well-developed programs are already emerging. But the process will be slow, and we need a good beginning.

The question is whether it is possible for a parish to have beautiful liturgy with cantor-led Masses without support singers or even instruments. I believe the answer is: absolutely yes. It is completely possible that every Mass in a parish feature a single voice and nothing else. If you choose the music well and adhere closely to the demands of the Roman Rite as it is given to us – without being distracted by all the whiz bang being dished out by the big publishers – you can have a thoroughly Catholic program that does everything that Catholic music is supposed to do.

The starting point here are the chants of the new Roman Missal. They are simple but elegant in just how fitting they are for liturgy. When you sing them off the page and out of context, you wonder if they are really suitable. But once you sing them in Mass, even without any accompaniment, you are struck by how seamlessly they integrate into the overall fabric of the rite. The words and music flow into each other so that the entire Mass becomes one prayer.

The new language of the Missal helps to make the music seem better than it otherwise would be because here you find a similar simple elegance. It is not chatty and popular but heightened and solemn. One suspects that this is made possible by the overarching theory of the composers who chose these particular settings of the text. For them, it was clearly the case that they believed in the primacy of the word. The word is the driving force behind the melody and not the reverse. If the word is already musical in its cadence, the additional of notes brings about an elevation of the overall structure. This is what happens with the Missal chants.

Don’t judge them harshly until you have tried them in a live liturgical setting! The dialogues from the Missal are truly inspired. They should be used in ever Mass, even if you are using a more complex setting of the ordinary chants of the Mass. They do not need accompaniment. They should be standard practice everywhere.

That leaves only the sung propers of the Mass: entrance, Psalm, Alleluia, offertory, and communion. These can all be sung by a cantor alone. Even an inexperience cantor can sing the Simple English Propers. More experienced singers can move to more complex chants in English, and gradually introduce the authentic Gregorian chant from the Roman Gradual. It is true that Gregorian chant is intended to be sung by a group, but again let’s think about current resources and what is possible. A lone cantor can in fact sing all the music that is assigned to the ritual within its official books.

That leaves additional hymns if you are using them. They are not necessary. A silent recessional can be a beautiful thing to observe. The only music becomes the footsteps. This can be great drama and leave people with a profound sense of prayer. Even if you don’t do this everywhere at Sunday Mass, it is certainly something to consider on Advent or Lent or other special occasions. A Marian antiphon in Latin is also a great choice. Or you can do an English hymn led by a cantor alone and without instruments, so that the people’s voices really do become the only source of sound.

It is sometimes said that instruments are necessary to support the singing. I don’t believe this actually. Voices alone can support hymns. Try it out sometime and see.

Pastors, do not despair. There is no reason to panic about your lack of resources. A few cantors alone, assigned to different Mass times, are actually enough to be the foundation of an excellent music program. If you choose the right music, you can even have a better program than the well-funded parish across town that dozens involved in making all the wrong choices.

In the end, it really is all about letting the Roman ritual speak for itself – without fuss, without artificial attempts to inflate things, without the attempt to turn the Mass into something that it really does not want to be. Let the mystery and majesty speak for itself. The liturgy sings itself.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

The Spectacular Success of the New Missal Translation

As much time as I had spent reading the new translation of the Missal, looking over the differences with the old translation, even saying the new prayers aloud and writing extensively about them, nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced today. The experience was beyond anything I believed would come in my lifetime. I found myself nearly overcome with a kind of controlled glee from the beginning of the Mass until the end.

The changes are few compared with the overall effect. There was a new decorum, a new seriousness. The words are said to be more opaque but the real-life experience in the opposite. The new text peels back the cloudiness that has shrouded the Catholic Mass under the old translation and its attempt to make the incredible so commonplace. At last we have a real match between the language we use and the things we believe. Both are now serious and robust. There is no more of that disunity we had become used to after all these decades.

As I’ve thought about this throughout the day, I’ve realized something I had not fully understood before. And perhaps this explains why the tiny opposition to this Missal is so vociferous and noisy. Here is the thing: the new translation has given the Mass a cultural transplant. I hadn’t known that this would happen ahead of time. But these small changes, the more complex language, the longer sentences, the heightened formality – all of these have a cumulative effect in eliciting a certain kind of intensified belief structure and comportment.

Our choir sings from the front of the nave so I was able to watch people today. For the first time that I can ever remember, I looked up and saw the eyes of 100% of everyone there looking up at the altar. Truly, this was a first. At the Incarnatus Est at the creed, 100% of the people there bowed their heads. At the end of communion, 100% of the people there were kneeling with heads bowed in prayer. I cannot remember ever seeing this kind of unity of purpose.

For whatever reason, the responses were louder than I’ve ever heard them from this congregation. More people attempted to sing. And clearly everyone was paying close attention to the words. The readers, even without instruction, seemed to have a new dignity in approaching the sanctuary, and a better cadence about how they read. In general, there was a sense that what we were all doing was important, significant, and serious – and this sense was not something imposed on top of the Mass but rather flowed from its essence.

You could say that this is because it is all new. Perhaps this explains part of it. But there is more to do than that. The language of the new translation is a different form of English than you would ever hear someone use in conversation. It cannot be mistaken for the usual blather we hear from television, radio, store clerks, and coworkers all day. It is the language of liturgy and that causes us to sit up and take notice. it causes us all to behave.

I can tell you, it is much better in real life than it is on the flat page. I would say that this is even true of the chants, which are much better in use than in practice. The Kyrie was effective. The Memorial Acclamation was very good. The Sanctus, which I had previously not been disposed toward, was remarkably good and nicely balanced with the style and approach of the rest of the Mass. The Agnus worked too. I think I can be happy with these Missal chants for a long time, and whereas I used to grant certain criticisms of the opponents of these chants, I’m now a believe that these are exactly what we need.

I suspect that many people who had doubts coming into this project have changed their minds already. In the New York Times today, Fr. Anthony Ruff is quoted with extremely critical remarks to the journalist: “The syntax is too Latinate, it’s not good English that will help people pray,” But on this blog today, he writes: “It all went quite well at the abbey, and I was struck by the beauty of the liturgy…. Overall, I liked it much more than I expected.”

Excellent. I’m sure many people felt the same way. Actually, so far as i could tell, most people seemed very excited about the whole thing. Most Catholics attend Mass in something approaching what a friend of mine calls “a vegetative state.” It’s true enough. It’s been true for years. To put matters bluntly, most Catholics have been bored out of their minds at Mass, and I think this might have something to do with the plainness and mundane quality of the language. With that stripped away, the boredom factor seemed vanquished.

An older gentlemen after Mass opined that he felt a strong sense of relief, like a bad chapter in the history of Catholicism had been closed and a bright new one had opened. “Well, we went full circle, didn’t we, and we are back to where we were in 1965.” There is a certain sense in which this is really true. It is a fresh start for the reformed liturgy, a fresh start for the postconcilar English-speaking Church, and a fresh start in our lives as Catholics. I’m so grateful that I’ve lived to see it.

The people who were involved at all levels in the production of this Missal are required as a matter of a vow to remain anonymous because they were working for the Church and not for themselves. Still, I would like to congratulate each one of them. What they did took courage. It took daring and guts. It requires something truly heroic to stand against the winds and prevail in this way. It takes special people to embrace something so profoundly counterculture and push it all the way to reality. They did it and we are all grateful to them for it.

If anyone is reading this who stopped going to Mass long ago, please consider coming back. You will find something wonderful, something completely out of this world.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Stage One, Check; What’s Stage Two?

We’ve sailed through the most substantial change in the Catholic Mass in 40 years, and finally corrected a very flawed problem at the core of the experience of Mass goers, one that destabilized several generations of the faithful and created a massive disconnect between our practice and our tradition. At last we have a translation that is faithful to the Latin original, theologically serious, and aesthetically liturgical.

To those who have despaired that nothing will ever improve, those who have believed decline is somehow written into the fabric of our times, take notice: a dramatic improvement has in fact happened, seemingly against all odds. Authentic progress is possible with work and prayer!

With the basic structure in place – what can you do so long as the language of the liturgy is not right? – the question arises concerning the next step. What is stage two of the reform? The music issue is most certainly next on the list. Aside from the text, this is the issue that deals most substantially with the core of what we experience at liturgy. The core question is whether the music at liturgy is there to provide popular entertainment and inspiration or whether it is there to honor God by giving a beautiful and solemn voice to the liturgical texts themselves.

The Vatican seems to be alert to this issue. Early in the fall of 2011, Pope Benedict issued a motu propri that reorganized the Congregation for Divine Worship. To what end, no one knew for sure. Now it has been reported that the Congregation will establish a new “Liturgical Art and Sacred Music Commission” that will begin to take up the music question. Adam Bartlett has linked the two events and speculated that this was the reason for the shakeup, to finally do something about the problem that everyone knows exists but few have the willingness to confront in any kind of legislative way.

We can hope for much more than the usual generalized declarations that Gregorian chant should have first place at Mass, that not all music is appropriate at Mass, and that the style of music should be an extension and development of the chant genre. Those points are excellent ones, to be sure, but they have been made again and again for decades, even centuries, but nothing really changes. They are on the verge of becoming platitudes, slogans without real operative meaning. There are several reasons for this: they are too vague and subject to interpretation, people do not really know what it means to give chant pride of place, and it is impossible to develop and extend something you do not know anything about in the first place.

What the commission really needs to take on is the issue of the Mass texts themselves. Can we freely dispense with them and replace them with texts of our own composition and choosing? Or must we defer to the liturgy as we have received it and ennoble that liturgy with music appropriate to the task? This is the real question. To put the matter plainly, the Vatican needs to rewrite its own legislation as regards music. It must make the propers of the Mass the mandatory sung text. Mandatory. No exceptions. It must absolutely forbid them to be replaced by something else. This change in the legislation alone would do far more than yet another cautious statement about the lasting value of the Church’s treasury of sacred music.

To review the history here, the idea that the propers of the Mass can be displaced has absolutely no precedent in the history of our faith. I can hear the critic now attempting to correct me on the point: “before the Second Vatican Council, we never sang the propers; at Mass, we sang various hymns at the entrance, offertory, and communion, and it is no different today.”

That’s true enough but here is the major difference. When the people were singing hymns in preconciliar times, the celebrant was saying the propers of the Mass. He said the entrance antiphon, the communion proper, and so on. They were not neglected completely; they were part of the Mass but at low Mass, they were restricted to the priest alone.

There can be no question that a major ambition of the liturgical reform was to do something about the problem that the low Mass had become the primary form of the Mass that nearly all Catholics experienced week to week. The goal – and this comes through in the writings of the liturgical movement dating back to the early part of the 20th century – was to raise the bar and make every Mass a sung Mass. The Mass was no longer to be the private preserve of the celebrant but rather those prayers and those propers were to be publicly shared and made part of the audible experience of the Mass for everyone..

For this reason, it really was a catastrophic concession that the propers of the Mass can be replaced by the other songs that we alone decide are appropriate substitutes. The concession was made as an afterthought, the option four that was thrown in to deal with the unusual contingency, but it proved to be a moral hazard of the worst sort. It quickly became the norm, and suddenly we found ourselves in an even worse position than we were before the Council convened. Not only were the propers not sung, they were not said either. They completely dropped out of the picture.

Many people have pointed out that the new edition of the flagship hymnal of the GIA, called Worship, contains for the first time an index item that draws attention to the entrance antiphon for Mass. People have sent this to me and said it represents progress. I suppose it does. But consider the irony. A mainstream book of some 1000 pages that purports to offer music for the Mass has a few inches in the way back that actually addresses the sung proper of the Mass – and this is cause for celebration? It’s incredible to think that this is what it has come down to.

If you want to see a vision of the future, take a look at Jeffrey Ostrowski’s Vatican II Hymnal. Here we have one book that is all about music and all about the liturgy, a book in which the two are not separate but a united whole. The propers of the Mass are there in English and Latin, along with the readings and plenty of music for the whole of Mass. It also provides some traditional hymnody but clearly as supplemental material designed to enhance our experience at a Catholic people and give us additional music with which to praise God. The balance is correct here. The title itself sums up the point: this is much closer to what the Council fathers envisioned.

I’ve not previously mentioned another visionary project by Adam Bartlett, the Lumen Christi Missal. What I appreciate most about this book is the clarity of vision, which comes through in the stunningly beautiful typesetting. As I looked at the first draft, I thought: this is so advanced, so effervescent, so solid. I stammered a bit at realizing what I was seeing here. It offers a serious challenge to the way we think of the sung liturgical structure. It gives us readings, the text of the antiphons of the Graduale Romanum and Roman Missal, musical settings of the Mass ordinary, Psalms (including weekday Psalms), plus weekly antiphons from the Missal and seasonal antiphons (primarily from the Graduale Romanum, but also from the Missal and Graduale Simplex) for entrance, offertory, and communion. These antiphons are through-composed with the idea that the assembly can participate in singing them if the propers are not sung in their fullness by the schola. There are no occasional hymns; 100% of this book is drawn from the liturgical text.

In some way, I would say that Adam’s book is really the first music book that takes seriously the ordinary form of Mass in English as a ritual of the Catholic faith with a voice all its own, and it is a voice that it is serious, substantial, and special. There is not a hint of nostalgia in this work (not that nostalgia is always bad); rather, we see here a settling down of a uniquely conciliar vision for how the liturgy is to be conducted in light of both tradition and the need for development. How many parishes will be bold and (dare I say) progressive enough to embrace this project? Already, there are many people who have signed up to receive notification when the project is complete. Perhaps it will end up in 2% or 5% of the best parishes. Fine. That’s a great beginning. I predict that this could be the beginning of something wonderful in our future.

In any case, these are two of many such projects underway. They are in in their infancy, and it will be some time before we begin to see them used more broadly. They all point the way foward. Gregorian chant, yes, but with a practical and realizable strategy going forward. These books move us beyond slogans toward real practice. As the Vatican commission fires up its work toward a musical reform, these books need to be widely circulated as models for how to tackle stage two of the reform of the reform.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

How to Get Started with Chant

All the activity in the Catholic music world has inspired many people who have never been involved to think about trying it out. They been sitting in the pews for years, enduring the music or just tuning it out but not really considering trying to help. But the new Missal and all this talk of new kinds of music for liturgy has inspired them.

The first thing is to get over the intimidation factor. Most of these people do not play any instrument and they do not read any form of music. They feel like they lack expertise, which is why they long ago gave up trying to give pointers to the pastor or the hired musicians. They are outgunned and outclassed, they assume, and don’t have the wherewithal to take on the parish establishment.

(Actually, many priests feel this way. They worry that because they can’t play piano and can’t speak the puzzling language of musicians, they can’t really exercise any real authority over the music in the parishes, so they have to leave it to the experts. They fear the topic and worry that by dipping into it, they will be shown up. Truth be told, musicians often count on this and even try to manipulate these fears.)

Well, if you think about it, music in the Catholic Church was sustained for more than 1000 years by singers only (no people who play instruments) and none of them could read music because there was no music to read (the musical staff wasn’t invented yet). These 1000 years sustained the chant tradition by singing and listening, that is, learning “by rote.” So these people who consider themselves to be “musically illiterate” are in excellent company.

The great challenge of being a singer for liturgy is all about being able to declaim a text with confidence and pitch stability. At liturgy, there is only once chance to sing “Lord, have mercy” at the Kyrie or “Holy” at the Sanctus. These are the scariest moments for any singer at the Catholic Mass, the times when we fear messing up, the times when the heart bounds and the fingers get cold.

To sing these intonations again and again with confidence is the great challenge. The singing is exposed. The singer music break the silence, which itself is beautiful. Indeed, it is hard to improve on silence. You need a pitch your head and the first time you really vocalize that pitch is the very time when you must start singing “for real.” Will it be there? Will it sound funny? Everyone will be staring and you if you are up front, and that itself is alarming.

Fear strikes at the last instant. This is called the “choke.” It happens to the best. The more experience you have, the less chance there is that this choke will happen. The only way to gain experience is to sing and thereby risk messing up. But this must be done. Be ready to bury the ego and jump.

So how do you prepare? Do it in private spaces. Seize on the words “Lord, have mercy” and sing them to the pitch in the Missal, the first three notes of the major scale. Try it in the morning. In the shower. In the car. In your office. At home walking from room to room. In front of a few people, and then by yourself again. Do this 10 times whenever possible.

Experiment with different articulations, ways of breathing, volumes, and different starting pitches. Sing it in as many different ways as you can. Then settle on the one way that makes the most sense. Do that again and again. Try to become louder. Sing with the mental image that your blowing dust off a desk five feet away. Then imagine you are singing for a large concert hall. Pay careful attention to the way you begin, remembering that this is where the flubs occur.

In less than a week or two, using these approach, anyone can develop a competent voice for liturgy. Of course the conditions will change once you are in front of a hundred plus people but then you will at least have some experience to draw on.

Experienced singers will look at what I just wrote and think: this is crazy. Who can’t sing three notes? Well, experienced singers do look at it this way. But in all the teaching I’ve done over the last year, I’ve found that the ability to stand up and sing three notes without accompaniment, with a pitch that travels from imaginary to real in a instant, and to do it with strength and conviction – this is the hardest of all things that new singers can learn.

And guess what? Most singers in the Catholic church today cannot in fact do this! And this is because they haven’t tried, much less practiced. Instead they depend on the three great crutches of singers: accompaniment ooze to give them comfort, microphones to enable them to sing shyly with more breath than pitch, and sheet music to hide their face so they don’t have to look up and out.

If you can sing three notes in Church without these three crutches, you are will immediately be better than most all singers in the Catholic church today.

Most of the challenge is mental. But mental is a big deal when it comes to singing. In the backdrop of all of this stands the gigantic industry of recorded, professional music that trains us all to believe that music comes from tapes, iPods, iPhones, speakers in stores and cars, and only the most amazing professionals in the world would ever dare to stand in front of an audience and sing. If we believe that, if we go along with what the current culture of music production is telling us, we would never sing in Church.

But look what the Church is asking and has always asked. Every single parish is expected to raise up enough singers from within the parish to cover all the liturgical needs of the Church in that one microcosm. All the texts of the liturgy are to be sung by a local human voice or many voices.

What this means is that your parish needs you. It doesn’t need more karaoke stars or pop idols or electronically produced instruments. It needs human beings who are aware that they have been given a gift of vocal production and that they are being called to use that gift as an offering back to God. And this means: the voice alone. The voice alone must be capable of rendering all the sung texts of the liturgy.

This is the skill that must be practice and eventually mastered. You can start right now wherever you are.