Chant Café

Come learn how to read and sing a common repertoire of Gregorian chant following the Solesmes style. We will explain different types of notation and sung parts of the Mass (Ordinaries and Propers). The initial goal will be to learn a few hymns sung during Benediction (e.g., O Salutaris, Ave verum corpus, and Tantum ergo). Participants are invited to sing at Exposition and Benediction immediately after at 12 Noon. You can attend part or all of the workshop. Music will be provided. No singing experience required. Come simply if you want to learn about our beautiful music tradition which, following the Vatican II document Sacrosanctum Concillium, continues to be given pride of place in the Roman liturgy. All are welcome. Pre-registration is helpful for planning and logistics, but not required.

Instructors:
Brian Bartoldus is doctoral candidate at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music with a concentration in Choral Conducting.
Fr James Bradley is a priest of the UK Ordinariate studying Canon Law at the Catholic University of America.
Contact: Candy Bartoldus (candy.bartoldus@gmail.com)

Sponsored by The Georgetown Traditional Latin Mass Community
Saturday: January 25
10 am – 12 noon
Followed by Benediction
Location: Copley Chapel
FACEBOOK EVENT: https://www.facebook.com/events/641934129201971/?fref=ts

Having thought a great deal about the liturgical music commonly practiced in the United States, it’s always interesting to me to visit someplace new and to see what might be going on in the Catholic churches there.

Having lived in Rome for just a few months, I would say that I’m only beginning to understand the liturgical music here. One of the reasons for this is the sheer number of different parishes in Rome. In the States, it is not atypical for a suburban parish to have 10,000 members, most of whom arrive by car. In Rome, it is not atypical for a Sunday Mass to comprise 25 congregants, most of whom arrive by foot, and who could just have easily have walked to half a dozen other parishes in a 10-minute radius.

If you have 10,000 parishioners, and buildings and a plant built within the last 100 years which require much less repair and maintenance than Renaissance-era buildings, you can afford a staff that includes a top-notch full-time Music Director. And if that musician is concerned with sacred music, rather than keeping up with the latest trends and styles, then true, consistent beauty is within reach of the average American parishioner. If we were to fail at this, and we often do, it seems to me that this failure would be preventable, and fixing it must be a priority, as part of pastoral care.

Fixing Roman parish music, which must be a matter of extreme pastoral urgency, seems much more difficult. Again, I do not pretend to understand the local issues, but I do believe there are universal problems that can be named. I’ve been to a few Masses with music that was simply badly performed. I’ve been to Masses with wonderful music, but with a rather theatrical and operatic style that can be distracting. I’ve been to Masses in which parishioners themselves have begun singing from the pew whatever hymn they chose. The Sunday Mass I attended at 11 am on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord had no music; the Alleluia was not chanted, the Sanctus was not chanted–there was no music at the Mass at all. At one daily Mass, a recording of a song was played during the distribution of Communion.

One wonders why this must be so. Rome is a musician-dense city, like Washington or New York. Furthermore, from what I understand from musician friends, they work for much less money. A cantor-organist combination could easily be hired for less than the cost of either musician alone in the metropolitan US.

One obstacle to sacred music that the two countries have in common is that we have become accustomed to a widely accepted musical idiom that musicians know to be banal. An Italian version of the popular bilingual American song Pescador de Hombres is popular in Rome,  for example, and there are local equivalents to our own “pop” composers. The only excuse possible for these lesser types of music, which are in every way unworthy of the Mass, is the likewise widely accepted misreading of Sacrosanctum Concilium and its call for actual participation–a misreading that our previous two pontificates have repeatedly tried to correct.

Fortunately there are also excellent examples of truly sacred music, which after all has the strongest possible heritage in the Eternal City. They include:

• The English College and the North American College. These two seminaries have incorporated vernacular propers, gorgeous polyphony, and often chanted ordinaries into their already robust traditions of hymn singing. Doubtless other seminaries have as well. The interest of rising seminarians and young clerics in truly sacred music suggests that marvelously hopeful things are in store for the future.
• St. Peter’s Basilica. Some English-speaking critics fault the Sistine Chapel choir for not sounding more like German or English choirs. I do not think this is fair. Italian-sung music moves differently from music conceived in countries where language is less multi-syllabic and spoken in a less cadential way. Where speech is different, music will be different. The tango couldn’t arise in New Orleans any more than jazz could arise in Buenos Aires. These regional differences in choir sounds should be accepted as part of the richness of the Church’s music. The choir wisely avoids sounding operatic–according to Magisterial cautions that other accomplished choirs in the city might well heed. The only exaggeration that I hear, and again, this could be simply American ears talking, is a tendency towards an extreme of ritardando and diminuendo at cadences. I believe these could both be moderated for an overall better effect.
• Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini. This FSSP parish’s music program is by far the best I have heard in Rome. The music is concert-quality, full stop. A paying concert audience could not demand better singing on any level. And yet there is nothing in the music, no display, to suggest that the music is being sung at anything but a Mass–and a Mass that is being celebrated with the highest care and beauty, as are the Masses at the seminaries and St. Peter’s. Recollection is easy, prayer is easy, in a Mass such as this, which is probably why Santissima Trinità is so crowded with young adults.

Undoubtedly there are many other excellent examples. I have heard that the choir of at least one of the undergraduate universities in Rome routinely sings Renaissance polyphony–much like in the States, where college-age young people tend to be much more interested in sacred music than the previous generation or two. This gives me much hope that the future is bright, and that many of our problems are due to simple misunderstandings, and that the Holy Spirit is actively working to build us back up again where we had rather lost sight of the heights to which we are called.

Anyone who knows me knows what my opinion of “praise music” – awful, worse than your boyfriend’s garage band in the 60s, etc., etc.  And in 90% of the places this music appears and for 90% of its performers – at Mass, poorly rehearsed, over-amplified, with poor singers – that judgment holds.  It lacks the depth of Taize or the complexity of Margaret Rizza in the realm of contemplative music.  It is hopelessly adolescent.  And I have a pretty good idea that most readers of this blog think that as well.

Now for the great exception that I experienced last weekend.

It was time for the annual March for Life in little St. Augustine, Florida.  The evening before was a Holy Hour for Healing and Hope.  And I only went because a friend I hadn’t seen in ages was going to be there.  Exposition started. There was a Gospel reading and a quite good homily.  Then there began a procession where people knelt at the Communion rail (yes, there is still one in this church) and the priest passed along with the monstrance and they were able to hold the humeral veil briefly while the priest prayed over them individually.  And for many, this was deeply moving.

Out of nowhere in the back, this woman began to sing a cappella in one of the most lovely voices I’ve heard in years – a clean, supported straight tone – always right on the money and with a sure range that never wobbled or wavered.  She continued singing for over an hour – mostly those simple praise refrains, sometimes with a good keyboardist, sometimes alone.  And this singer “owned” this music – or better, the music “owned” her. 

In this context, what I had always heard as banal bleating had a remarkable transformative power that matched the moment.  I may never be so fortunate again, but it did give me a taste of what that music can be – in the right place with the right voice.

I may never hear anything quite like this again, but it also made me think about all of my snap judgments – and maybe I should think again. 

Here is something a little out of the ordinary – this morning’s organ voluntary at Westminster Cathedral was an organ duet version of Jupiter from Holst’s Planets Suite. The video includes a walk-through the Cathedral’s galleries and ends up at the Grand Organ Console with the two players, Assistant Master of Music, Peter Stevens and the Organ Scholar Ed Symington.

Today I attended a particularly beautifully celebrated and sung Mass in the Extraordinary Form. Truly, it was poetry in motion. It “preached” in a way that even the best homilies could never do, about the joys of the Kingdom, where all is beautiful and all is rest.

People who are able to attend such beautiful Masses in either form of the Rite, or an equally well-done Liturgy in one of the other Rites, are very fortunate as Christians. The beauty of the Liturgy can and should exemplify the great hope to which we are called.

The beauty of these Liturgies stands in stark contrast, not to the poor (as beauty’s critics often claim), but to sin. In order to examine our consciences, to see how we are doing, we first have to see what we are supposed to be like. Our lives are supposed to be beautiful and good enough that joining this iconic Liturgy seems not only attractive, but right. In such a context, it is easy to see that none of us, including the ministers, are yet purified and holy, which accounts for the many confessions of sin and need for grace in the Mass.

As with most of the EF Masses I have attended, this morning there was a confessor with a confessional actively at work. People rather easily left their pews and went to confession during the first half hour or so of the Mass, and then went right back to their pews.

In contrast, most pastors have the experience of low usage of the confessional in their parishes, and this is one of the liturgical tragedies of our times. It does not have to be this way. In one parish where I worked, confessions were heard 21 times every week. Most of these times were brief: the priest would arrive at the time posted in the bulletin, and leave when the line was gone. Often there were 2 or 3 penitents, but just as often  there were many more–daily after the second daily Mass, and on Sunday mornings. The Liturgy was beautiful, the charitable works of the parish were excellent, and confessions were heard every single day.

The sacramental life is an integral whole, and a critical weakness in one aspect should lead us to wonder whether the rest of the system is sound. Confession, in almost every parish, is in a desperate state. There are many reasons for this, from the rise of pop psychology and its denial of guilt, to sometimes poor catechesis, to the “4:00 pm to 4:15 pm Saturday afternoons and by appointment” minimalism of parish offerings of the sacrament.

Another reason, I believe, is the lack of beauty, and thereby of hope, presented in the average parish Mass.