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Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Is the Chant in Danger?

I just got off the phone with an older priest in Wisconsin who was ordering the Parish Book of Chant for his small congregation. He told me that he is inspired by the sensibility of Pope Francis to rediscover the roots of our faith, strip away artificials, and just simply sing what’s true. To this priest that means that his congregation must rediscover the core music of the Catholic people.

He concluded in his talk with me: “Maybe the new Pope and his call for simplicity will help fix the musical problems in the Church too.”

Are you surprised at such a reaction? Many people would be. People have tended to associate Benedict XVI with chant, and rightly so. At the same time, in the last few days since the elevation of Pope Francis, people have wondered: is Benedict’s musical reform in danger? There is a real worry out there. It is palpable. It is happening among the many who are dedicated to uniting the Roman Rite with its native music, both in its proper texts and its chanted style.

Many people worry that Pope Francis will not continue the support for the Gregorian revival that has made such enormous strides in the last five years.

The new Pope’s emphasis on austerity, humility, and simplicity — underscored by his choice of name and his tendency to eschew material signs of wealth or position — shouldn’t necessarily be a cause for concern. No music is so simple in structure as plainsong, nothing can compare with its austerity., and every musician is profoundly aware of the humility required to defer to its role in the Church’s liturgy.

There was a faction at the Council of Trent that took the idea of austerity so seriously that it wanted to legislate against all music in Mass except the Gregorian chant. They wanted polyphony out. They were against organs. Popular hymnody would have been banned completely. This was all in the name of reform to purge conceit and opulence after the crisis of the Reformation. Fortunately — and mostly thanks to the intervention of the Spanish Bishops and King — this faction did not get its way.

But the point remains: for Catholic who seek a restoration of fundamental and simple truths in faith and worship, the chant tradition has been there as a symbol of what they seek. The text is holy Scripture. The music is evocative of the text. The music is a dedicated servant of the liturgical action and not employed solely to pass the time or entertain.

Even as recently as the late 19th century, the highly influential Caecilian movement in Germany was driven by this ideal of austerity — in contrast to what they perceived as decadence of the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic traditions — to demand a central place for Gregorian chant in Mass. Their views had a big influence on St. Pius X’s motu proprio on music that kicked off the 20th century rediscovery of chant.

I think, for example, of the communion antiphon for the 4th week of Lent, Oportet Te. It is tells the story of the Prodigal Son. The melody is light and almost sounds like a dance. It is an beautiful expression of the father’s joy, a song perfectly integrated with its message. It’s this kind of piece that reminds me that Gregorian chant truly does have folk-like origins, a liturgical art form designed to convey truth to a culture where all learning took place by hearing. It is the people’s music — for 2000 years.

And yet we all know the popular perception, particularly in the United States, is exactly the opposite. Within the Catholic music world, everything is upside down. Somehow, people associate Gregorian chant with highbrow intellectualism, high-church ceremony, conservatory training, spiritual pride, aesthetic attachment to “classical” music, and snobbiness in general.

It makes no sense but there it is.

In contrast, in this upside down Catholic culture of the United States, people associate simplicity and austerity with…wait for it…amatuer guitar strumming, popular songs with made up lyrics not from scripture and not associated with the liturgical text, the absence of trained choirs, hand clapping from the congregation, unleashed ego from performers, and a kind of exuberant spontaneity of musical expression that has more recently taken the form of rock bands placed near the sanctuary playing pop music.

This is simplicity? Absolutely not. This is humility? It’s anything but. There is no deference to the text and no attempt to simplify. It seems more like the embodiment of everything that the austere personality in Church history has opposed, even from the earliest Christians who tended to look with skepticism on anything but Psalm singing.

Why is the perception the opposite? The explanation probably dates to the late 1960s — a period I’ll apparently never understand no matter how much I study it — and the emergence of the genre of music that was called “folk” but was in fact anything but. This fake folk music was somehow supposed to be closer to the people, opposed to the corporate music empire, a restoration of fundamentals. There was a political and protest edge to it all — wholly understandable in light of the draft and all.

In a period of liturgical upheaval, however, it was imported to liturgy and took on the same ethos. Those who played it and pushed it imagined that they were engaged in some kind of protest against artificiality, stuffy ritual, and clericalism. None of it was true actually. It was the seminary directors who pushed the musicians in this role, and there were no real barricades to push down at all. The chant has mostly evaporated from liturgy anyway in favor of vernacular hymnody.

That perception remains today. No matter how big a corporate business “Christian rock” has become, and no matter how entrenched the copyright-craving corporate elite in the Catholic publishing world are, the persistent belief is that somehow chant is elitist and canned, electronic, tap-your-toe pop music is for the rest of us.

So this is the source of the danger. If Pope Francis really is proclaiming a turn away from pomp and ritual, and claiming to want to exemplify Franciscan-style humility, can we be so sure that he will not also overthrow the enormous progress that has been made over the last years under Benedict XVI?

The evidence of the first days of the new papacy has been a sharp turn in matters of liturgy in a series of ways, most of which have been carefully chronicled by online observers. We now take it for granted that we are able to investigate every gesture, to instantly read a homily, to observe changes in vestments or the positioning of the altar.

But think of it. How much of this voyeurism is a result of technology? It simply was not possible in the past for so many to look so closely at the first days of a papacy. There is the prospect of growth here as with any new position.

What’s more, chanted propers and ordinary are already deeply embedded in the praxis of Papal liturgy. To step away from that would require abandoning the liturgy itself.

I and others have long said that a major reason that chant was lost to Catholic liturgy for so long is that people just stopped hearing it and experiencing it. Now that it is heard and experienced, a growing love for it permeates Catholic culture today — more so than in half a century.

Another difference today as versus the 1960s: all the chant is online for free. It has been truly liberated. Millions know it and understand it. An entire generation of priests have come to expected it. Finally, we have chant in the vernacular today so not even the claim that Latin is elitist holds water.

So I can understand why this older priest who called me was excited. So far, he discerned that the new Pope will continue what was started and embed it in a spiritual sensibility that is supremely important to people today: a path to authenticity, simplicity, holiness, and truth.

I remember often having heard ascribed to Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who used to oblige the lectors to recite the psalms with such slight modulation of the voice that they seemed to be speaking rather than chanting. But when I remember the tears that I shed on hearing the songs of the Church in the early days, soon after I had recovered my faith, and when I realize that nowadays it is not the singing that moves me but the meaning of the words when they are sung in a clear voice to the most appropriate tune, I again acknowledge the great value of this practice. So I waver between the danger that lies in gratifying the senses and the benefits which, as I know from experience, can accrue from singing. Without committing myself to an irrevocable opinion, I am inclined to approve of the custom of singing in church, in order that by indulging the ears weaker spirits may be inspired with feelings of devotion. ~ St. Augustine

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

Is There a Rupture Between Benedict and Francis?

We are only a few days into the reign of Papa Francesco, and already there are many people trying to scrutinize the tea leaves to read into every word, action and gesture some interpretation of what the Franciscan papacy will be like.  The blogosphere has already become a battlefield with people taking sides based on their interpretation of what they have seen.  The basic narrative, however, seems to be this: there is a rupture between Benedict and Francis.  For some, this is a source of joy, because they like the latter and did not like the former.  For others, it is a source of great anxiety, and because of it, they are tempted to question the motives of the new pope.  Then there are many who see all of this as just ridiculous and that the people who are freaking out on either side need to “get a life” and do something more useful with their lives
I should like to offer an observation which undergirds my contention of why all three reactions are misplaced: it shows what is wrong with an essentially Ultramontanist view of the Roman primacy.  It is no secret that, after the loss of the Papal States and the accession of Blessed Pius IX to the Throne of Peter, the influence of the papacy and Roman administration has become more prevalent in the daily life of the Church.  After the proclamation of the doctrine of papal infallibility and the rise of modern mass media, the influence of the papacy would be increasingly felt throughout the world.  Vatican II sought to do what was supposed to have happened at Vatican I, but which was made impossible because of the Franco-Prussian War: place papal infallibility in the context of the ministry of all the bishops.  At Vatican II itself, there was quite a war between what we call papal maximalists in the Ultramontane vein and papal minimalists in a basically Conciliarist vein. 
Vatican II chose to see the relationship between Pope and bishops in terms of collegiality, and the relationship between Pope, bishops and People of God, less in terms of papal absolutism and more as a communion.  The reality, however, is that how this theological vision is lived in the Church has also competed, to a certain extent, with the brilliant personal charisma of many of the Popes of the post-Vatican II period, particularly Blessed John Paul II.  People now have certain expectations of how the Pope should act because of the way in which Papa Wojtyla incarnated the post-Vatican II papacy.
So when Josef Ratzinger became Pope, many people were watching very closely to see how he “did” the papacy.  In an age in which visual images and soundbites are supremely important, everything he did was up for scrutiny.  One of the principal themes of Pope Benedict’s pontificate was the “hermeneutic of continuity.”  His principal point was that the Church of post-Vatican II is not radically altered or different than the Church of pre-Vatican II, a corrective against the revolutionary rhetoric of both progressive and sedevacantist alike.  But that vision was also seen in the gradual reintegration into papal vesture and liturgical celebration of visible elements in continuity with the papacy before and after Vatican II.
He was alternately celebrated and pilloried for the ferula, for the fanon, for ad orientem worship, for chant and polyphony, for lace and for fiddleback chasubles.  The prophets of rupture saw these things as a return to the pre-Vatican II Church in all of her ecclesiology and liturgy.  Those who interpreted these things in this way celebrated or pilloried him as a result.  Yet, anyone who has read Ratzinger’s theology in depth also knows that his theology of the Roman primacy is anything but a facile reappropriation of a supposedly pre-Vatican II ecclesiology of papal monarchy.  It is anything but Ultramontane and anything but revolutionary at the same time, and is much more.
Yet, the post-Vatican II reincarnation of the Ultramontane spirit welcomed the recovery of these signs and symbols as beautiful and as highlighting the papacy.  Yet it was not that spirit which animated Benedict XVI to reintegrate these things into the liturgy.  It was quite another.
What do I mean?  The classical liturgical movement of the 20th century, particularly as influenced by men such as Louis Bouyer, Pius Parsch and Josef Jungmann, had a severe allergy against Tridentine Baroque liturgical form.  They saw it as a decadent devolution from a truer liturgical spirit which breathed only in antiquity and which needed to be rediscovered and retranslated in modern idiom.  I think we cannot underestimate the power of this allergy against the Tridentine Baroque in the thought of the liturgical reform.  Because they saw the papal court with its traditions and liturgy as fossilized into that form, they loudly called for its rejection.  The aesthetic crafted under Paul VI and Virgilio Noe sought to bring about the de-Baroquicization of the papal liturgy and the formation of a papal vision coherent with the pride and prejudice of that classical liturgical movement.
That aesthetic was a powerful exercise in a hermeneutic of rupture, even as it was intended to give visible form to the ecclesiology of Vatican II, which in many ways was a continuation of the theological development of papacy, hierarchy and ecclesiology of the preconciliar period and Magisterium. 
Previously, there was a powerful idea that the Pope bore the weight of the tradition, not just in sense of what Congar would see as Tradition versus les traditions,“ but in all of its particularities of vesture, behavior and the papal rites.  It is probably apocryphal, but Blessed Pius IX’s “Io sono la Tradizione” incarnates that idea.  In some ways, it is analogous to Louis XIV’s, “L’etat, c’est moi.”  For an American, unused to the highly stratified and specific culture of court etiquette, it seems all a bit effete, overwrought, and hardly in symphony with evangelical simplicity. 
Yet, monarchy perpetuates itself, not like an inspirational idea like the American Dream, but as a complex language of rites, customs and symbols into which monarch and ruled live and dwell and use.  The papacy has always had that kind of weight of tradition assigned to it.  That is why every single visible change to the way things are done around the Pope has weight.  For many people, the visceral reactions to Pope Benedict and now Pope Francis, prove this principle, but others do not grasp their importance: they see it as all adventures in missing the point.  They do not understand the weight of the ceremonial life in which the Roman Pontiff goes about being Peter. 
With Pope Benedict, we had a rich theological treasure and Magisterium which helped us to understand why he insisted on recovering aspects of the papal liturgy and ceremonial as an exercise in the hermeneutic of continuity.  He was profoundly influenced by the classical liturgical movement, but also clearly saw its tendency towards rationalism and puritanism.  His cultural idiom was forged by the Bavarian and Italian Baroque, and he was able to see these elements of continuity for their own beauty and shorn of any sinister ideological interpretation.   
Pope Francis, however, is an entirely new player on the papal stage.  He is a Jesuit, first of all, and we all know the conventional wisdom about Jesuits and liturgy as being like oil and water.  And he also comes from Latin America, a continent which I would offer is the land that the liturgical movement, both classical and new, forgot.  It is important not to jump to conclusions about why the first steps of his papacy seem to be so radically a rupture with the last steps of his predecessor.  But, at the same time, the weight of tradition, volens nolens, upon the Roman Pontiff is so serious that he cannot for long continue to “do his own thing” without it being interpreted in various ways not according to his intention.  Perhaps that is why the Popes for so long were content with being their own men, but conforming to the expectations of the ceremonial life of the Pope of Rome.  Such conformity may (and arguably should) be personally uncomfortable, agonizing and even annoying.  It is also a reminder of Our Lord’s words to Peter in John 21.18, Truly, truly I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would: but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.  Papal conformity in this way avoids individual holders of the office arbitrarily and eccentrically undertaking words, gestures and rites which may be interpreted in a way far from their actual intention.  Far from glorifying the papal office overmuch, it actually conforms the man to the office and holds him accountable to it and not his own preferences.  It causes him to disappear behind the office and become Peter and less himself.
It is also important to note that in the Church’s life, there has always been a tension between visible exuberance and simple austerity.  In the Middle Ages, Bernard of Clairvaux with his Spartan Cistercian simplicity arrested Europe just as much as Abbot Suger with his soaring riots of color and glass and precious materiel.  Yet Bernard and Suger belonged to the same Church.  The same Church produced the rococo churches of Austria and the mud huts of the Tamanrasset.  The tension between the two must not be capitalized upon by ideologues who see only one or the other as the true Gospel: they must live in communion with each other.
Three people in the Church’s tradition saw this very well.  The great Jesuit Robert Bellarmine lived in a time in which the Church desperately needed great reform.  His personal life was one of unmitigated austerity.  The people knew that underneath the pomp and circumstance of the office to which he was called, his was a life of penance and interior and exterior mortification.  Humility for him was not casting aside the weight of his office, with all of its expectations, but an interior virtue of obedience to it all.  And it was that, combined with a life of piety and zeal, which made him into the great reformer.  Blessed John XXIII was concerned to made the Gospel accessible to modern people, but he loved the ceremonial and liturgical splendor of the Church.  He embraced it and reveled in it, but his human warmth and virtue made all of it seem, not alien and weird, but even more beautiful. 
The deacon Francis was a servant of the Church because he was a servant of God.  His love of poverty and simplicity did not cause him to go off on revolutionary crusades against the Church’s rich liturgical and artistic patrimony.  He instead infused all of that patrimony with the presence of Christ.  Now the Pope who has taken his name, and seeks to rebuild the Church which has fallen into ruins, has the chance to live the virtue of humility and obedience by taking up the weight of the papal tradition in a hermeneutic of continuity.  If he infuses that tradition with his own personal love for the poor and the marginalized, his own personal simplicity and desire to not be on the world stage, he just might be the most incredible witness for Christ and His Church we have seen in a long time.                  

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Myths about St. Francis and Chant

Already I’m seeing myths spring up about chant and St. Francis.

On the Catholic forums, someone asks:

So I know that St Francis banned Gregorian chant, but I can’t find any explanation of why he did so. Sts. Francis and Dominic were contemporaries and I’ve always heard stories (legends) of them trading belts/cords upon meeting so it can’t be just a separation of the times in which they lived. So why did St Francis ban it when St Dominic (or his children) embraced it so readily? Was there a theological reason, some reason he believed it somehow harmed the community, or did St. Francis simply dislike it?

This was the first time I’ve heard that claim. If someone has evidence to support it, please do so. Otherwise, I’m going with Lavern John Wagner’s observations in “Franciscan Chant as a Late Medieval Expression in the Liturgy”  
 When St. Francis turned his back on earthly vanities and established the Franciscan order in the first part of the 13th century, his biographers tell us he did not cease his interest in music. The Little Flowers of St. Francis recount that he went about singing, and we have the text, though not the music of several of his songs. In sending his friars out to preach he admonished them to sing God’s praises as if they were “joculatores Domini,” i.e. “minstrels of the Lord. The friars were closely associated with the composition and spread of laude spirituali simple religious songs in the vernacular that became enormously popular.
While this popular aspect of the Franciscan musical contribution has been duly noted, the liturgical chants which the Franciscans developed, especially those commemorating saints of their order, have not been as thoroughly considered. It is interesting to explore some characteristics of Franciscan chant, and relate its musical style to the mainstream of medieval liturgical chant, the better known Gregorian chant…

As a starting point for this consideration of Franciscan chant it is interesting to observe that the musical notation of Gregorian chant today, using square notes as it does, is the result of Franciscan usage. While square notes were first developed in northern Europe by the Notre Dame School on the Ile de France in Paris, they were introduced into Italy through the Franciscans. A little later, with the adoption of the Franciscan liturgy into the mainstream of the Roman Catholic church, the square-note notation for chant became the norm. ..

A further comparison of manuscripts written in the older Beneventan style and the newer square-note style illustrates the improvement in readability. The manuscript from Rome, Cod. Vatic. lat. 8737 (before 1266), fol. 251v, contains the office of St. Francis in Beneventan notation, and it may be compared to the manuscript with the same office from Freiburg, Switzerland, Minoritenkloster cod. 2 (also 13th century), fol. 213v. The clarity of the square notes over the earlier notation is striking.

For that matter, musicasacra.com has a PDF of a full Franciscan processionale and a complete Franciscan Graduale online with beautiful chant. So much for the claimed distance between Francis and chant.

I’ll have more to say about the relationship between chant, simplicity, and humility later today, but we should also address what I’m sure is going to be an immediately detectable trend: the ubiquity of the “Prayer of St. Francis” song that you will find in your hymnal.

The music is by Sebastian Temple, written in 1962. The text is not St. Francis. It was written during World War I as a prayer for peace, inspired by the popular image of St. Francis. But it is not his prayer. The sentiment is fine and worthy but it is absolutely and indisputably inauthentic.

Long before the Internet came along to settle all such questions, I personally read the works of St. Francis, looking for this prayer. What I found was a a surprise to me. His writings were actually quite severe and stern and not for the lax of mind and spirit. Nothing in them suggested the Woodstock spirit people somehow associate with him today, much less anything like modern environmental politics. Above all else, this prayer is not in there.

I suppose it does no good to point this out. The “Prayer of St. Francis” will undoubtedly make a gigantic return and become inescapable in the coming years.