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?