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Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

A Case for the Voice Alone

Quite often people send me queries about what instruments are permitted and what instruments are forbidden at Mass. This is the way the message begins but then there is often a followup, usually concerning a specific (sad) situation that has come up in a parish or seminary setting. The organ is neglected as the piano is brought front and center. Or a new guitar player is permitted to do his thing during Mass.

These are often cries of desperation, stemming from an intuition that something is going wrong and surely there must be some rules governing this situation, something to cite to say no. It is not always about trying to push music in a more traditional direction. In one case this past year, a leader of a praise team found herself annoyed that a bongoist insisted on joining the group but she didn’t want him. She hoped for some legislation that would disallow bongos but permit extended soloing on praise music with piano accompaniment. I could cite no such legislation.

The situation just isn’t that simple. It isn’t just a matter of placing all instruments in the category of “permitted” or “forbidden.” Church legislation is pretty clear that the organ is favored, occupying an exalted place among liturgical instruments. But current legislation does not ban other instruments. Most anything is permitted as a technical matter, but the problem with this focus is that it hones in on the letter rather than the spirit.

I won’t comment on the possibilities for the bongos – I seriously doubt that there are any – but I can imagine situations in which the guitar would actually be an improvement on the piano. Now, to be sure, I’m devoted to the piano as a solo instrument. But it is a percussion instrument, with hammers that hit keys, and this sound alone cuts against the style of sacred music which is always toward a constant upward elevation, as modeled by the style of plainsong. Our cultural associations with the piano range from dramatic symphonic settings to lounge environments; liturgy is not really part of that association. While the guitar might have an improved sound over the piano, it too has cultural associations that do not make it a natural partner with the liturgical sound.

There is a strong case for the organ but my own preference is to use it as a solo instrument. This is when its voice is most beautiful and expressive. It is a waste of a great instrument, and a competent musician’s talents, to turn the organ into nothing but a instrument to accompany voices, whether the chant or congregational singing. I’m completely unconvinced by the cliche that the organ helps people in the pews sing better; I’ve experienced the opposite too many times.

Here is what I do not understand about all of these discussions: why is it that people so rarely consider that the human voice alone is the proper and ideal liturgical instrument? I really think that people have a fear of singing without instruments. They believe that it cannot be done without some external thing to give them the notes, rhythm, and groove. This is the first and greatest mistake that takes place within all these discussions of what instruments are permitted at Mass.

One thousand years of Christian song took place without instruments, so far as anyone can tell, and the organ itself had to earn for itself the right and opportunity to be heard alongside that primary instrument of the human voice. We need more of that: voices alone. Only the human voice can bring together those two necessary things at once: the text and the notes. Too often it is not even considered an option.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

The Opportunity of the New Missal

Roma locuta est offers “An Open Letter to Music Liturgists…”

There is nothing more tragic than the complete elimination of the texts proper to the Mass. Certainly, we would be horrified if the second reading were to be eliminated and replaced with a generic faith reflection unrelated to the reading it seeks to supplant. Why, then, have we allowed the antiphons that accompany the Entrance, Offertory, and Communion processions to completely disappear from liturgical use? The GIRM, in listing the four options for the Entrance, speaks first of “the antiphon from the Roman Missal or the Psalm from the Roman Gradual as set to music there or in another musical setting.” The next two options are also psalms and antiphons. It is not until the very last option that the GIRM mentions, “a suitable liturgical song.” The norms for the other proper chants reference the same principle.

Why have we made the last option the norm for our liturgical celebrations? Moreover, the songs chosen almost universally bear no resemblance of the chant texts in the Gradual. Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth, Executive Director of the ICEL Secretariat, observes that these Propers represent the Church’s own thoughts about the readings, that they serve as a sort of lectio divina pointing us towards the mysteries and riches of the day’s liturgy. The problem with choosing hymns instead of receiving the Propers is the temptation to impose our own interpretation of the sacred texts that will be read during the Liturgy of the Word. According to Msgr. Wadsworth, “It is seriously deficient to consider that planning music for the liturgy ever begins with a blank sheet: there are texts given for every Mass in the Missal and these texts are intended for singing.”

Continued.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

How Stable are the Propers?

I would like to draw your attention to “Proprium Missae: Unity, Variety, and Rupture in the Roman Rite” by László Dobszay, which includes three pages of detailed charts from Missals from all ages demonstrating that the propers of the Mass have been remarkably stable since the 8th century. His piece was published in Sacred Music 134.1, starting on page 16. The reader is left with a sense of astonishment that we could have ever found ourselves in the position of leaving out an essential part of the Mass, year after year, replacing the liturgical propers, rooted in scripture, with hymns with texts by poets and chosen by music directors and publishers. Dobszay shows that this situation is essentially unprecedented.

Sacred Music, 134.1, Spring 2007; The Journal of the Church Music Association of America

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

The Politics of Vovete

We all have our favorites among Gregorian chant propers, and Vovete et Reddite is mine. In the ordinary form, this is the communion chant for next Sunday.

It begins with the Psalmist urging us to gather to make offerings to the Lord but also make vows and accomplish them. So the entire first line has the sound of urging us to act and sustain that action, with the lingering notes on FA, moving to this tricky liquiscent figure on “circuitu.” The first half of the chant ends calmly. And truly it could end there and be very beautiful.

But it doesn’t end there. Suddenly, matters become much more serious. We start again on FA but this time move to LA on the text “Terribili” and with no break pass through this firery phrase that is extremely intense with drama, especially once we get to “principum.” When you sing that, your voice just feels the intensity and the heat of the moment. Then again we sing the word “terribili” and move through another striking musical phrase the burns with the passion of someone singing about an awesome power. Just to listen to it, you know that the story here has taken on a much greater significance at the end that it began with.

And so what are we singing about? Our vows, we are told, are made to “the awesome God who takes away the life of princes; he is greatly feared by all the kings of the earth.” Thus does God stand above all states, no matter how powerful they may appear. God can strike down all earthly power, and so should all earthly rulers live in fear. Who then should receive our vows? The state? Or God?

Is it any wonder that Rousseau considered Christians essentially dangerous to the collectivist-secularist civic order he attempted to create? The chant explains why. At liturgy, we are not singing about the glories of the “general will” but rather about transcendent power that reigns over all. We are loyal citizens, yes, but our first loyalty is to God.

Here is an audio of this chant.

Posted on by Adam Bartlett

Simple Propers for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

In continuation with the ideas discussed in Jeffrey’s recent post “Toward the Singing of Propers”, here are two experimental samples of what such a simple parish resource for English propers might possibly look like. You can even sing them in Mass this weekend if you’d like!



The first sample is an engraving of the Introit, Offertory and Communion antiphons of the Graduale Romanum in English translation, set to simple Gregorian psalm tones. There are many reasons why a collection of propers using the Gregorian psalm tones would be an attractive solution, almost the “no-brainer” answer to the need for a simple parish resource for propers. After all, the Rossini propers, which were the Latin antiphons set to Gregorian tones, were very popular before the council, and the “Anglican Use Gradual” also uses a psalm tone approach and it is a very useful resource for many. Still, there are very real problems that are encountered in setting English texts to Gregorian psalm tones. The word accent and cadence patterns are very different in English than they are in Latin, for which the tones were composed, and 5 different people who set an English tone are likely to arrive at 5 different settings because of the challenges involved. Still this might be a reasonable solution to the problem of the average parish. Download it here.

The second sample is a similar yet different approach to solving the problem. In this case the same introit text is set in the first place using a melodic formula that is taken from the Gregorian modal and melodic vocabulary, yet is a sort of “hybrid” of a psalm tone (making great use of reciting pitches) and a through composed antiphon (with intonations, terminations and an overall melodic structure that is similar to these). The result is a melodic formula that is is a bit more sophisticated than a psalm tone, yet it is a formula that could be applied to virtually any English text (the formula in this example was composed as by Adam Bartlett and Fr. Columba Kelly, OSB). The main benefit to this approach for the beginning parish is that in learning a small set of melodies they will be able to sing a variety of, even all of the proper antiphons. A set of 8, 16, or even 24 of these melodic formulas could reflect the modality of the Gregorian propers, maintain a level of musical interest, retain simplicity, and could be used over and over again to make their use very simple for singers who are just beginning to sing the propers. Potential downfalls to this approach might be a perceived lack of “authenticity”, or a sense artificiality. Things to keep in mind are that the intention of the approach is to make the singing of propers as simple as possible for amateur parish singers. Download it here.

When we are talking about adapting the musical language of Gregorian chant to the English language there is always something that is going to be lost, and there is a hierarchy of values to be considered and taken into account. There is great opportunity, as we have recently heard from Msgr. Wadsworth, that there is a great opportunity for setting proper texts in a variety of styles. It remains to be seen as to which approach to the singing of the propers will be best for the aspiring parish. I think that there is absolutely an element of genius in the style of Gregorian chant that makes the weekly routine of singing new texts as smooth a process as possible, but I could be wrong. There are certainly many possibilities.

If you would like to participate in an An Experiment in Sacred Music Resource Production that explores these issues and is working toward solving the problem please visit the CMAA forum thread and get involved!

These musical samples use texts that are in the public domain and Creative Commons. Psalm tones for the verses are by Fr. Samuel Weber, OSB, and the second psalm tone antiphon is set to a “St. Meinrad Psalm Tone”, property of St. Meinrad Archabbey, all rights reserved. Licensed in the Creative Commons.

Posted on by Adam Bartlett

An Experiment in Sacred Music Resource Production: Let’s Lay an Egg!

If you haven’t read Msgr. Wadsorth’s recent address on sacred music, you must. The statements made here by the Executive Director of ICEL are full of unrealized potential that could change the world of Catholic liturgical music as we know it.

In this post I would like to uncover one of these potentials and to invite you to help make it a reality, helping change the landscape of Catholic liturgical music publishing.

Among the items in Wadsworth’s talk was a call to church musicians to sing the liturgical texts that are proper to the Mass, namely the proper antiphons which contain a portion of the substantial unity of the Roman Rite, a “textual unity”, as he put it. In assessing our current state of affairs, where there is virtually no singing of these proper antiphons, he reveals a very interesting dichotomy:

Firstly, on the part of commercial publishers: He stated that “…musical repertoire has for practical purposes largely been controlled by the publishers of liturgical music…this is unavoidable, for a whole variety of pragmatic reasons…“

He also said regarding commercial publishing: “This is something of a ‘chicken and egg’ situation. Praxis has governed the development of our resources of liturgical music and for the most part, composers and publishers have neglected the provision or adaptation of musical settings of these proper texts.“

The dichotomy comes in when Msgr. Wadsworth offers a solution to this dilemma: “a brief trawl of the internet produces a surprisingly wide variety of styles of settings of the proper texts which range from simple chants that can be sung without accompaniment to choral settings for mixed voices.“

How interesting is this dichotomy? Did you catch it?

On the one hand we have the major commercial Catholic liturgical music publishers who have “neglected the provision or adaptation of musical settings of [the] proper texts” because of a “chicken and egg” situation, and who control the music repertoire in Catholic parishes for “unavoidable” and “practical reasons”.

And on the other hand we have “a surprisingly wide variety of styles of settings of the proper texts” that are made available by “a brief trawl of the internet”.

To put it more concisely: On the one hand we have an “unavoidable” situation where the distribution of liturgical music resources necessarily depends on the whims of the commercial market and is regulated by purchase and sale and other external factors, while on the other hand we have a 21st century technology in the internet that has enabled the creation and promotion of musical settings of the proper of the Mass that is not subject to these seemingly unavoidable forces that are imposed by the commercial publishing industry.

This dichotomy between two different means of creation and distribution of liturgical music resources represents a paradigm shifting phenomenon that is happening now in the Church and in the world. At one time the distribution of music resources depended solely on the production and sale of paper and it is around this model that our systems of copyright, intellectual property, licensing, commercial distribution, etc. evolved. Paper is a scarce good that can be bought and sold and is the bearer of the music that the publishers distribute. Therefore the publishers must buy the paper, must hire production staff, they must buy printing presses, paper cutters, pay for shipment costs, pay the electric bills, and on and on. The cost for the production of printed sheet music is quite high. It goes without saying that this paper must be sold to consumers in order for publishers to cover their production costs and in order to build and sustain a successful business.

But we are seeing a new phenomenon today. A single individual who has a laptop can produce musical scores in his spare time using free software, from his sofa in his living room, and post it freely on a website that he accesses or even owns and manages for free. The situation that this person finds himself in allows him to assess the needs of the Church without any influencing factors such as commercial considerations, the whims of the financial market, client base, or anything. This person, in his spare time, as an activity of leisure, can produce musical resources, without the bias of any imposing influence, and instantly “publish” it freely on the internet and make it available and accessible to a virtually global market.

There was perhaps a time where such activity didn’t hold much stock in the “real world” of liturgical music distribution, but, as we have been told by the Exective Director of the International Committee of English and the Liturgy, the best place to find a variety of musical settings of the proper antiphons of the Mass–texts that form a part of the substantial unity of the Roman Rite–is currently the internet, in the forum of the self-publisher who can produce resources that the Church is asking for without having to play any “chicken and egg” games, or without having to be subject to the demands of the commercial market.

How extraordinary is this? The CMAA should be proud and people like Jeffrey Tucker, and many others who have done similar work should be thanked profusely for their tireless efforts in making musical settings of the texts of the Roman Rite freely available to the world. Who knows–if these resources had not been developed and had not been made available online would we be eternally consigned to the cycle of destruction that is found in the world of Catholic music publishing? Would we be suppressed by the “unavoidable” and “practical reasons” that have kept Catholics from having available to them a variety of musical settings of the texts of the Mass? Would there be no hope that things could improve and that we could some day finally arrive at Vatican II’s vision of a sung liturgy?

Well, the good news is that the pioneers have charted new and exciting territory in these past few years and the world of Catholic liturgical music will never be the same.

I think that it is time to raise the stakes. I would like to invite you, any and all of you, to participate in an experiment in the production of Catholic liturgical music resources.

As Catholics we have long understood the axiom “the sum is greater than its parts”. This is the way that the Body of Christ operates–we work together. What good is a hand alone? Or an eye? Or a foot? Alone these parts of the body can do very little on their own, but when acting as a part of the whole body, the potential is infinite.

Many of us musicians have made small contributions to the world of online liturgical music resources. Largely this has been the enterprise of a handful of driven individuals who have assembled very nice projects according to their individual gifts of time and talent. Many of these projects have been limited, though, in scope because of skills, knowledge, and of course time. Many of these projects have still found great success, but they could have been all the greater if the greater specialized skills or manpower were available.

I would like to invite you, even if you don’t feel that you have much to give, even if your contribution is small, to participate in this experiment. This will be an organized effort, the author of this post is the current leading organizer, and the place for discussion and delegation of tasks will be the CMAA web forum.

The project is called “Toward the Singing of Propers” and the immediate result might end up in a book of simple English antiphons and psalms for use in average parish settings by average parish musicians. Another result will be a open database of liturgical texts and source material for the development of future and various projects. The fruits of everyone’s labors will remain in the Creative Commons and in the open forum so that others can benefit from your work as they take on similar projects of their own.

What help do we need? Well, the first task is to organize a database of the needed source texts for the project. This involves the data input of all of a complete set of antiphon translations, and also of the Latin antiphons for proper and simple textual comparison. All of the metadata for these texts needs to be input and organized: biblical text source, incipit name, mode, psalm verse designations. Psalm verses for the antiphons have to be figured out and notated in the database. The psalm verses themselves need to be extracted and arranged in the database. We need someone with biblical/textual/language skills to undertake the task of “modernizing” the Douay Rheims psalter so that we can have a good public domain psalter for use in the Creative Commons. We need people to help typeset musical antiphons. We need proof readers, both textual and musical. There are surely many things I’m forgetting and surely many other needs that will arise.

The great thing about “open source” projects is that anyone can contribute to them with whatever time they have to give. I find it absolutely amazing that a computer operating system like Linux (a community developed and completely open source software) can rival the best commercial operating systems that money can buy. I have no doubt that an organized effort around sacred music resources can produce the same result.

I believe that in Msgr. Wadsworth’s addressed we have been commissioned to return the antiphonal propers back to their rightful place in Catholic liturgy and to work outside the conventional confines in order to do so.

We are able to give freely of ourselves, of our gifts, of our time, to the Church because Christ first gave of himself to us, and He continues to pour out the gift of himself freely to us in every single Eucharistic liturgy. Everything that happens in the liturgy is a response to Christ’s sacrifice of himself to the Father in the Holy Spirit. Our only able response as Catholics is to first receive this gift and to make a gift of ourselves back to God in our worship and in the making of our own lives a sacrifice.

It is because of this eternal gift that we receive in the liturgy that we live and move and have our being. It is in response to this gift that we are able to give freely of our time and our gifts for the glory of God, the sanctification of the faithful, and for the good of the Church.

I hope you’ll participate in this experiment in liturgical music resource production. Your involvement might be small, but when united with others working toward a common goal your impact will be great. Future generations of Catholics might thank you.