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Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Someone Finally Did It: The 10 Worst Hymns

Most people in the Catholic music world are too polite to do such things, but First Things doesn’t know the rules, and one of its editors, speaking as a layperson to music, has assembled what he considers to be the 10 worst hymns in current use. Before you condemn this editorial and practice, consider that this point of view is real and widely held across the demographic spectrum, and the costs are quite high. If you have never understood why people (mostly in private) express disgust about the music they hear at Mass, you owe it to yourself to read this post blog, as well as the comments, and try to understand.

Feel free to vent here or there.

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

Explanation of the Ceremonies of Holy Mass, Part 3

The priest starts out the Mass with the sign of our salvation as we all make the Sign of the Cross over our bodies as he sings, In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Mass is a Trinitarian act of worship to the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. Many of the prayers of the Mass are addressed to the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit for this reason. The priest than turns to the faithful and addresses them, The Lord be with you. This invocation occurs several times in the Mass. It is taken from the Book of Ruth, where the pious farmer Boaz greets his wheat reapers with those words before he takes the foreigner Ruth as his wife. Boaz is a type of Christ, who gives the LORD to the Church, His Spouse. We respond and with your spirit, as we realize that the priest is performing a work of the Spirit, and by these simple words pray that the priest who offers the sacrifice may be in the Spirit, to fulfill his office as priest worthily and well.

Priest and people recite together the Confiteor, a prayer asking for the intercession of Mary and the saints in our request that God may forgive our sins. This prayer, borne aloft by sorrow for our sins, suffices to wipe away venial sin and orient us to receive the graces that come from the Mass. We then sing the Kyrie, the ninefold invocation of Father, Son and Spirit for mercy which is often reduced in the Ordinary Form to six fold. The Kyrie is the remnant of a longer litany which disappeared from the Roman liturgy very early on and was restored, in Greek, in the Latin liturgy in the sixth century because of its antiquity. On Sundays and feasts the celebrant intones the first words of the Gloria just as they were announced by the one angel at Bethlehem to the shepherds before a chorus of angels took up the song of praise. This ancient hymn was put into the Mass around the year 160. This hymn ends, as end so many prayers and hymns, with the Hebrew word Amen. This little word, which is the automatic end of our prayers, means so many things: so it is, let it be done, I believe. It is a statement of belief, a profession of hope, and an exclamation of trust in God.

The priest then prays the first of three prayers which change according to the day. This prayer is traditionally called the Collect, because by it the Church collects together various strands of thought in a short prayer, usually to the Father, sometimes directly to Christ, but always invoking the entire Trinity. The priest performs a gesture called the Orans position, from the Latin word for praying. He stretches out his hands in supplication before God, to show that his prayer is directed to God on behalf of His people. The priest raises his hands before God like the poor man begging alms from a rich man, the priest praying on behalf of poor sinners to the source of all riches, Christ. Whenever he mentions the Holy Name of Jesus, everyone in the congregation bows their head reverently at the Name before which the demons flee.

The Liturgy of the Word

Jews gathered in places called synagogues to study the Word of God. At the center of the synagogue is the Ark in which the scrolls of the Law were kept and from which they were joyfully removed to be studied. In front of the Ark is the bema, a raised platform with a reading desk on which the Word is read and from which the teachers of the Law expounded on its meaning. Christians gather in their churches to study the same Hebrew Scriptures as well as the writings of the Evangelists and Apostles which are also the Word of God. At the center of the church is the Tabernacle in which the Word made Flesh dwells and from which the Blessed Sacrament is joyfully removed to nourish the faithful. Because Christ is truly present in the Eucharist under the forms of bread and wine, the written word, although it is treated with great reverence, takes second place. The bema of the church is called a pulpit or ambo, and on it is placed the Lectionary from which the appointed readings for the day are proclaimed.

In the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, the first readings were proclaimed facing the altar. Because those were the readings which pre-dated Christ, they were like the preaching of John the Baptist which pointed to Christ, hence they were proclaimed towards the altar which is the symbol of Christ. In the Ordinary Form those readings are proclaimed towards the people, as a sign of God speaking to the people through them.

Between the Epistle and Gospel in the Old Rite and between the Old Testament and New Testament readings in the New Rite, the Gradual is sung. The gradual comes from the Latin word for steps; it is a psalm, and just as the Jews sang psalms as they ascended the steps of the temple in Jerusalem, Christian cantors sang the psalms from the steps of the altar. Often today the Gradual is replaced by a responsorial version of the psalm.

Before the Gospel, the Church places on the lips of her people another Hebrew word, Alleluia. The Church has always sought to praise her LORD with the same word that Christ praised His Father, in the same tongue, a word which merely means, Praise the LORD! The proper Gregorian chant Alleluias will often have a large number of notes on one syllable, symbolizing the effusion of joy of the Spirit in praising the Father, pointing out the yearning for union with Him. On penitential days, the mournful Tract or the simple Gospel Acclamation replaces the Alleluia. During the Alleluia or Tract, the deacon asks for the blessing of the priest to proclaim the Good News worthily and well. He goes to the altar upon which at the beginning of the Mass he placed the Book of the Gospels. In Revelation, we read I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a book written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. As the altar is the symbol of the throne of Christ, the deacon takes the Book of Life from Christ Himself to announce the word of salvation to men in the Gospel. He says, The LORD be with you, but he does not open his hands in the Orans position as the priest does, not usurping the priestly gesture of raised hands. He then reads the name of the Gospel writer as the faithful make the sign of the Cross on their forehead, mouth, and chest, praying that the Gospel will be in their minds, on their lips and in their hearts. In the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, the Gospel is chanted facing north, against the cold and dark regions of the earth that symbolize the malice of the Evil One. The Gospel is audaciously sung in the face of evil itself. Now it is usually read towards the people, that the evil in their hearts may be driven out by the words of the Saviour.

Faith is a gift from God; the priest, who stands in the person of the object of faith, Jesus Christ, intones the first word, Credo, I believe, to show that faith is a gift from God that demands a response, a response given by the faithful taking up the words of a profession of faith drawn up at two ecumenical councils of the Church at Nicea and Constantinople, in the fourth century. When Henry, the Holy Roman Emperor, went to Rome in the eleventh century, he was scandalized to find that they did not sing the Creed like they did everywhere else in both West and East, at Mass. The Pope told him that the Church at Rome had no need to profess her faith because she had never needed to be corrected from error like so many other places, but shortly thereafter the Pope ordered that the Creed be sung on Sundays just to make sure that no one would ever claim they didn’t know the central truths of the faith even if they came to Mass. In the middle of the Creed are the words, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man. To symbolize the condescension by which Christ came down to earth in the Incarnation, the ministers and the faithful bow profoundly during these words, except on Christmas and the Annunciation, when they kneel.

At the end of the Creed, General Intercessions, prayers for the state of the Church and the world, may be prayed.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

The Preconciliar World of Catholic Music

It is extremely interesting to look through the legacy issues of Caecilia for a gimpse into the preconconciliar world of Catholic music. Many things are familiar (not enough pay, in-fighting among musicians, focus on petty issues that do not matter) but many things are not (focus on excellence, uniformity in vision, shared understanding of what liturgical music is for, the constant striving for ideals). Three new issues are up now, one from as far back as 1930.

Here is a quotation from a 1930 issue:

0nly a limited amount of energy is given us. Perhaps we would tackle the problem better by leaving off preaching the beauty, and all that, of the Chant, and beginning to convince the world and ourselves in particular by giving the Chant a chance to talk for itself. If we admit that its exalted mood of meditation and mystic calm and all that is a bit foreign to the hip, hip, hurray spirit of twentieth-century America, then the task of making Gregorian chant prevail begins where our vocabulary leaves off. The solution seems to be: less talk and more honestly patient work.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Teaching Chant in a Space for Chant

NLM reports on St. Anthony’s High School in South Huntington, New York.

Fr. Brian T. Austin conducted a chant workshop there in February at the invitation of Miss Lynn Wilson and with the support of Br. Joshua.

As a result, a chant choir has grown up that is already singing all the propers of the Mass, and in a space very conducive for liturgical music.

Here we have a demonstration of how central education is to the liturgical experience. No workshop goes to waste. Every effort to teach yields fruit at some point.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Let the Turtle Doves Sing on Sunday

This weekend, Catholic scholas get to sing the wonderful little communion antiphon, the “Passer Invenit”–one of the more charming in the entire Gregorian repertoire. The monk who composed this was having a very good day, even a day of intense spiritual awareness and love.

See the three successive liquescent notes in the first line? They are sung with a clear sound on the lower note while the higher note is sung in a manner that causes it to evaporate very quickly on the closing consonant (in this case a “t” and two lightly rolled “r”s). See what is happening? It mimics the sound made by a turtle dove. We are ourselves are chanting like little doves at this point.

So the piece begins with announcement about a sparrow. It has found herself a home, the chant says. And then we move immediately to the turtle dove, phrased in this lovely and expressive way: it has found a nest in which to lay her young.

And how comfortable is this spot where the young are laid? You can know from the first line of notes on the second line: “reponat” is sung on a single note held through a dotted punctum and three successive repercussive notes before falling again and ending with this beautifully relaxed and expressive phrase.

But the story doesn’t end there because it turns out that this home and nest causes us to reflect on the altars of the Lord. In announcing this metaphor, we again see this long note, earlier sung to signify safety and comfort, this time sung to show that the altars of the Lord provide the same. This phrase ends with an exuberant announcement “Rex meus, et deus meus” or my King and my God!

The chant antiphon ends with song directed toward all of us: we too are invited to dwell in this house and praise God forever and ever. In this one little tune, we have covered so much and done so with charm and grace and amazing beauty.

Here is a sound file.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

If Music Is Free, What Can Catholic Music Publishers Sell?

A site called Technium addresses a burning question on the minds of many Catholic publishers of music. The question is put to me all the time: if you are suggesting that we not copyright restrict our offerings, how do you expect us to make any money?

The question has always boggled my mind, mainly because it suggests that Catholic music publishers have been asleep for about 20 years during which time software writers and many recording artists have successfully used the greatest tool for evangelization ever invented while finding ways to sell their products. Either the publishers are zoned out or completely lacking in creativity because billions of dollars are transferred via digital means every day without resorting to restrictions on downloads and without hiding content behind pay walls.

I need only give the example of this blogging platform that I’m writing on right now – which is 100% free. The content is published into the commons, so that anyone can take it and repost it. And yet, the companies and creators who have encourage Chant Cafe bloggers to use it are doing quite well for themselves.

Back to Technium. The blogger points out that “When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. Well, what can’t be copied? There are a number of qualities that can’t be copied. Consider ‘trust.'” He continues to offer many practical suggestions, all of which require intelligence, creativity, and work to implement. At least it requires something more creative than merely sitting around waiting for people to cough up money to pay for something that costs nothing on the margin to produce.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

The Guido We Never Knew

The most influential musician of the last one thousand years was Guido d’Arezzo who lived in the first half of the 11th century and gave us the lined musical staff, surely the greatest musical innovation of all time. His four treatises on music were studied in great detail throughout the middle ages. If music had its own “industrial revolution,” its own period of enlightenment, Guido is surely the instigator and guide. Christopher Page’s treatise The Christian West and Its Singers: The First One Thousand Years rightly offers a massive and complete chapter on his life and influence – beautifully written and inspiring on every page.

But there is also what struck me as a blockbuster revelation buried here. I’ll just quote Page directly: “Guido is commonly regarded today as the author of four works all of them musical tracts, whereas his legacy almost certainly runs to five treatises, the last being devoted a sharply different matter, or so modern habits of thought make it seem. To be fair, the abundant transmission of Guido’s musical works gives no clue to the existence of this extra item, which is a trenchant letter on the subject of simony (the sale or purchase of ecclesiastical offices) addressed to one of the most exalted ecclesiastics in Italy…”

This was complete news to me. Guido, it turns out, was not just a musical innovator. He was a passionate advocate of purifying the life of the monastery and the Church in general. In fact, this is precisely was motivated his effort to make it possible to transmit the chant from place to place and time to time without the need of a teacher. He wanted to free the monks from endless studies of music, under the control of a single master, in order that they could have more time to purify their spiritual lives. It was the same motivation behind his campaign to end the trafficking in the Holy Spirit: the free the Church of contact with the bribes and fees associated with the offices and rituals of the pagan temples.


The book is called Epistola Widonis. In it, Guido says that simony “pollutes the chastity of Holy Church with a disgusting contagion.” He notes how Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, how Dathan and Abiron were swallowed up by the ground for soliciting the governance of the priesthood, and how St. Peter put Simon Magus under perpetual anathema.

Guido writes:

It is excessively shameful that the Church should now, in its fullest vigour, succumb to such a bestial enemy that it had the power to conquer it its infancy with such strength…. who cannot see that the Masses and prayers of such prelates or priests [guilty of simony] will bring the wrath of Gold up on the people and not placate him in the way we believe such observances can do? For it is written: ‘Whatsoever is not of faith is sin’ … When, therefore, do we shuns such bishops, abbots, clerics, and others if we hear the Masses of those, and pray with those, with whom we take excommunication upon ourselves? Just to believe such men to be priests is to go entirely astray, as Peter said to Simon Magus: “Thy money perish with thee, because thou has thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.”


Apparently, his treatise was highly influential and led to and was certainly central to major reforms that permitted the lowliest person to hold the powerful accountable for the sin of simony, which Guido believed to be pervasive in his time. The Catholic Church had to take a stand that the graces of its sacraments, the offices and rites of its holy spaces, were not to be subject to bribes and payments. And certainly there can be no question that Guido was very serious about this subject. He had already shown himself to be made of strong character, having endured exile from his own monastery, apparently over the innovations in music that led to his fame, and having finally gained an audience with the Pope to seek vindication (which he finally received).

Just how “sharply different” were the matters of music and simony in his time? It is hard to say. There was no printing, so no opportunity for anyone to claim private ownership over the text of the Mass, the Psalms, or the chant. No one would have done so. The institution we call copyright – that government-granted privilege to a single author and its contracted publisher – was unknown in his time. Yes, there was private ownership over the chant books themselves, and they were highly guarded and protected as nearly priceless. But the contents, the melodies, the words? It would have been unthinkable for anyone to claim to own those and seek payment for permission to pray or sing their contents.

But let us imagine that someone had, in Guido’s time, done so. In light of his views of how simony is the despoiler of the chastity of the Church, what might he have said? He stood up in his time against very powerful interests, even offering the sweeping judgement that many bishops and priests of his time were tainted with the sin of simony. He would surely have had strong words for those who would attempt to privatize the liturgy and proceed to profiteer from a restrictive legal status.  

Today, the institutions of copyright and royalties, exclusive use and fees, payments and contracts with authors and publishers, war chests of “intellectual propersy rights” held by favored publishers, are all the norm. Musicians are highly dependent on these systems. Parishes believe that they cannot participate in the life of the faith without subscribing to “rights management” software sold by private companies. Parishes are even told to destroy last year’s readings booklets because their rights to use them have expired. This system, which is not a purely private system but one that makes use of government regulations, was first used by Christians little more than a century ago. Today it is taken for granted and these “rights” are bought and sold as if this is merely part of the professionalization of publishing and the legitimization of Catholic musical life.

And yet: there is another way. There is publishing into the commons, precisely as Guido’s own books were published. This does not mean the end of property. All things that are real physical things remain property. But what is infinitely reproducable belongs to everyone. Nor does it mean the end of commerce. There are still legitimate profits to be made by selling goods and books and liturgical items. What needs to come to an end is the selling of what should belong to all, those things of the Holy Spirit such as the texts of Mass, the text of the Psalms, the music of worship, the words that make up the liturgy. What need to be subjected to commercial restriction should not be restricted.

It is strange and fascinating to me to discover this side of  Guido. A musician friend of mine suggests that we ask for his intercession to lead us out of the problems of our own time with the buying and selling of that which ought to be free gifts to all the faithful.