Search Results for: graduale romanum

by William Mahrt

[This article appears in the Spring 2008 issue of Sacred Music, published by the Church Music Association of America]

ing to the Lord, a thoroughgoing replacement of Music in Catholic Worship, was approved by the bishops’ conference at their meeting last November. It had been the subject of consultation in October 2006, and had been redrafted extensively. At the actual meeting, according to a report of Helen Hitchcock in Adoremus Bulletin, the bishops reviewed over four hundred amendments, but they voted on the document without seeing the amended text. Originally it was proposed as binding liturgical law for the United States, which would have required Vatican confirmation, but it was decided not to present it as binding law but only as recommendation, thus avoiding the necessity of submitting it to the Vatican. The previous year, the bishops approved a directory for hymn texts and sent it for Vatican confirmation, which confirmation is yet to be received. It seems unlikely that the Vatican would have confirmed the present document, and thus they settled for a lesser status. The result is a document with extensive recommendations about the employment of music in the liturgy. It incorporates the views of many without reconciling them: Everyone will find something in the document to like, but the astute will notice that these very things are in conflict with other statements in the same document. Essentially, it states the status quo, with the addition of principles from Vatican documents; what comes from Vatican documents, however, does represent binding liturgical law.

There are distinct improvements over the previous document, most notably, that it takes seriously the existing liturgical legislation. There are copious citations from major sources of liturgical law. Yet these citations often seem to be imposed upon a document already written without them, and some authoritative statements, after being cited, are ignored in subsequent discussion

One of the most positive and fundamental statements in the document is that the priest celebrant should sing the most important parts that pertain to him. “The importance of the priest’s participation in the liturgy, especially by singing, cannot be overemphasized” (¶19). Seminaries should give sufficient training in singing, so that future priests can confidently sing their parts in the Mass(¶20). In my opinion, this is the lynchpin of a successful sung liturgy. When the priest sings his parts, the parts of congregation and choir fall naturally into place as integral parts of an organic whole. When the priest speaks these parts, the parts the congregation and choir sing seem to be less integral to the liturgy. That the parts are all sung gives them a continuity that binds them together into a coherent liturgy.

This notion goes back directly to Musicam Sacram, where three degrees of the employment of music are delineated: 1) the dialogues with the congregation (at the beginning, before the preface, before communion, and at the conclusion), the Sanctus and the Lord’s Prayer, and the collects—principally the priest’s parts plus the most central congregational parts; 2) the rest of the Ordinary of the Mass and the intercessions—principally the rest of the congregation’s parts; 3) the sung Propers of the Mass (introit, gradual, Alleluia, offertory, communion) —principally the choir’s parts, and possibly the lessons. Musicam Sacram proposes that these be instituted in order, that is, the first degree should be in place before the second and third degrees(MS ¶28–31).

Musicam Sacram places these degrees in the context of a general statement about the sung Mass: “The distinction between solemn, sung, and read Mass . . . is retained. . . . However, for the sung Mass different degrees of participation are put forward here for reasons of pastoral usefulness, so that it may become easier to make the celebration of Mass more beautiful by singing, according to the capabilities of each congregation” (MS ¶28). This compromise of the notion of a completely sung Mass, a high Mass, was allowed to permit congregations gradually to add sung parts according to their abilities, the ideal being gradually to achieve the high Mass. Since then, however, a new principle has been extrapolated, that of “progressive solemnity.” Sing to the Lord proposes that the amount of singing be used to distinguish the most solemn feasts from the lesser days. The document cites Musicam Sacram, ¶7, but not the more pertinent ¶28, where the context is to achieve a completely sung Mass, not to differentiate the days.

It is quite true that traditionally, there was a principle of progressive solemnity, by which the chants of the Ordinary of the Mass were more or less elaborate according to the solemnity of the day; likewise the use of instruments was restricted during the seasons of Advent and Lent as a sign of the penitential character of these seasons. On the other hand, the chants for the penitential seasons are sometimes more elaborate and more beautiful. But there is nothing in the tradition that omits the singing of a text as a sign of lesser solemnity, except for, perhaps, the very depth of Holy Week. It is true that the General Instruction on the Roman Missal concedes that parts of the Mass usually sung need not always be sung (¶40), but this is in the context of weekday Masses and for the accommodation of the abilities of the congregation.

As a practical matter, progressive solemnity may be useful; the gradual introduction of sung parts is a much more realistic strategy than the sudden imposition of a completely sung service upon an unsuspecting congregation. Yet, there is good reason to be consistent about which pieces are sung from day to day, and the differentiation of the solemnity of days should be achieved principally through the kind of music employed, rather than how much. As a matter of principle, I would suggest that “progressive solemnity” does not properly serve the sung liturgy, since it omits the singing of certain parts of the Mass which should and could be sung and thus gives up on the achievement of a completely sung service. The result is what I have called the “middle Mass,” neither high nor low, in which the beautiful and purposeful differences between the musical parts of the Mass are overshadowed by the more obvious differences between the spoken and sung parts.

It is encouraging that the document mentions the singing of the lessons; until now, this has been swept under the carpet. Traditionally in the high Mass, the lessons were always sung; the present document seems to recommend them on more solemn days, but there is no reason not to sing them as a matter of course. The continuity from prayer to lesson to chant at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word contributes to an increasing climax the peak of which is the gospel. When the lessons together with the authentic Gregorian gradual and Alleluia are sung and a gospel procession is made, a splendid progression of increasing importance is depicted in the liturgy.

Another positive statement and a distinct improvement in the present document is the acknowledgement of the role of Gregorian chant, quoting the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which gives chant “pride of place in liturgical services,” (SttL ¶72) and citing the council’s mandate that the faithful be able to sing the Ordinary of the Mass together in Latin (¶74), and even asserting a minimum: “Each worshiping community in the United States, including all age groups and all ethnic groups, should, at a minimum learn Kyrie XVI, Sanctus XVIII, and Agnus Dei XVIII.” A second stage of learning then includes Gloria VIII, the Credo, and the Pater Noster (¶75). Though the document does not mention it, the latter two are particularly desirable for international gatherings, especially for papal audiences, where everyone can participate in a common expression of worship. There is a touching story from the time immediately following the Second World War: Two trains arrived at the same platform, one from France and one from Germany, and the tension between the two groups disembarking was palpable. Then someone intoned “Credo in unum Deum,” and the entire crowd spontaneously continued singing the whole Creed, expressing a common faith which transcended the recent history of animosity. Would enough people today even know the Credo, were the same event even to occur now?

The normative status of chant is, however, qualified by citing the council’s “other things being equal.” This is elaborated (¶73) by saying that every bishop, pastor, and liturgical musician should be sensitive to the reception of chants when newly introduced to a congregation. Who could dispute that, in principle? Yet why is such a qualification made only for chant, when it should apply equally well to any music newly introduced? How many of us have heard “other things are never equal,” when we ask to sing the church’s normative music?

The endorsement of chant is thus not as strong as it could have been, and should have been. Several reasons in support of chant are given, reasons of tradition, universality, and contemplation. The principal reason, however, is not given—that the chant is integral to the Roman rite, it sets its normative texts, and that it uniquely expresses the nature of each of its liturgical actions. Pope John Paul II expressed it succinctly:

Liturgical music must meet the specific prerequisites of the liturgy: full adherence to the text it presents, synchronization with the time and moment in the liturgy for which it is intended, appropriately reflecting the gestures proposed by the rite. The various moments in the liturgy require a musical expression of their own. From time to time this must fittingly bring out the nature proper to a specific rite, now proclaiming God’s marvels, now expressing praise, supplication, or even sorrow for the experience of human suffering which, however, faith opens to the prospect of Christian hope.

This is, of course, a problem that is wider than the present document. Ever since Musicam Sacram (1967), the admission of alius cantus aptus, “the anthrax in the envelope” according to Lazlo Dobszay, any other suitable song in place of the proper chants, has meant in practice the virtual abandonment of the Gregorian propers. The present document even represents a progressive erosion of the priorities: for example, the Alleluia verse: “The verses are, as a rule, taken from the lectionary for Mass,” ( ¶161) but the General Instruction states “the verses are taken from the lectionary or the gradual,” (GIRM ¶62a) without expressing a preference.

There has, in fact, been a progressive conversion of the Alleluia into another genre that is prejudicial to the Gregorian Alleluia. The present document refers to it only as the gospel acclamation, stating its function to be the welcoming of the Lord in the gospel by the faithful. But the Gregorian Alleluia has two functions: it comes as a meditation chant following upon the reading of the second lesson; as such it is even more melismatic than the gradual, and this contributes to an increasing sense of anticipation of the singing of the gospel, and this is its second purpose—to prepare the congregation to hear the gospel. This is a function more fundamental to the liturgy than the act of the congregation welcoming the Lord, since it prepares the congregation internally as well as externally for the high point of the whole liturgy of the word, the hearing of the gospel—the congregation welcomes the Lord best by being prepared sensitively to hear the gospel.

The problem, wider than the present document, is that the ultimate in Gregorian chants, the gradual, tract, and Alleluia, chants whose liturgical function represents a profound entrance by the congregation into the ethos of the liturgy of the word, have gradually been replaced by, at best, pieces from the divine offices, which were composed for quite different purposes—e.g., the antiphon with the three-fold Alleluia as a text from the Easter Vigil—or, worse, mediocre refrains, repeated too frequently. The congregation’s rightful participation in the liturgy of the word is the sympathetic and in-depth hearing of the Word itself. I have consistently maintained and continue to maintain that this fundamental participation is achieved in a far better and more profound way when they hear a gradual or Alleluia beautifully sung than when they are asked to repeat a musically impoverished refrain with similarly impoverished verses. I concur with the notion that these parts should be sung, but I maintain that their simpler forms are only an intermediate step in achieving their singing in the authentic Gregorian forms, where possible, or a practical solution for Masses where a choir cannot yet sing the more elaborate chants or does not sing at all.

Much discussion of repertory throughout the document passes over the facts that Gregorian chant sets the normative texts of the liturgy and that it uniquely expresses the nature of each liturgical action. A particular case in point has to do with the texts of introits and communions. The texts in the Graduale Romanum are not the same as those of the Missale Romanum, and it is those of the missal which are printed in the disposable missals used in the parishes. I have often been asked, “Where can I find the Gregorian chants for the introits and communions in the missal?” The answer is, you cannot find them, because they were provided for use in spoken Masses only. Christoph Tietze, in these pages, sets out the documentation of this issue: for sung settings, even to music other than Gregorian chant, the texts of the Graduale Romanum are to be used. The present document says only that they may be used (¶77). The bishops were to have voted upon a proposal to amend the American text of the GIRM to prescribe the texts of the Graduale Romanum for all sung settings, but for some reason, this proposal was withdrawn. However, with the growing incorporation of Gregorian chants into our liturgies, missal publishers should now be persuaded to include both texts.

One is grateful that the place of the organ is asserted: among instruments, it is accorded “pride of place” (¶87). It is praised for its role in accompanying congregational singing, improvisation to accompany the completion of a liturgical action, and playing the great repertory of organ literature, whether for the liturgy or for sacred concerts. The recommendation of other instruments, however, raises a few questions. Instrumentalists are encouraged to play music from the treasury of sacred music, but what music for instrumentalists is meant? Is it the church sonatas of the seventeenth century, requiring an ensemble of string players and keyboard? One hopes it is not a recommendation that the treasury of organ music be played upon the piano or that secular piano music be played.

The wider issue that this raises is the suitability of other instruments. The document does not state the principle reason for the priority of the organ: it is primarily a sacred instrument. Other instruments do not share that distinction. A citation of Old Testament usage of “cymbals, harps, lyres, and trumpets” (¶89) begs the question of their associations in the present culture. The document proceeds to allow “wind, stringed, or percussion instruments . . . according to longstanding local usage, provided they are truly apt for sacred use or can be rendered apt” (¶90). This avoids the vexed issue of whether instruments with strong associations with popular music, such as those of a rock band, but even the piano, are really apt for sacred use.

A curious omission from the document is that there is no mention of the special status of sacred polyphony, as stated by the Constitution on the Liturgy. It mentions a general use of the treasure of sacred music among musics of various periods, styles, and cultures (¶30), and again, in a general statement about the role of sacred music in Catholic schools, music from the past is mentioned alongside other repertories (54), but with no hint that there should be any priority.

There are, alas, some more negative aspects to the document, most of which are survivals from Music in Catholic Worship. Perhaps the most pervasive of these is the anthropocentric focus upon the action of the congregation and its external participation, rather than being in balance with a theocentric focus upon giving glory to God. ¶125 states “The primary role of music in the liturgy is to help the members of the gathered assembly to join themselves with the action of Christ and to give voice to the gift of faith.” It must be acknowledged that this comes after having said that “the praise and adoration of God leads to music taking on a far greater dimension,” but the emphasis in the document is mainly upon what the congregation does, and how music expresses their faith; even the action of Christ is mentioned in the context of how the assembly joins itself to it. I would have said that music has three functions in the liturgy, to give glory to God, to enhance the beauty and sacredness of the liturgy, and to assist in the aedifcation of the faithful. But a quotation of the purpose of music from the council is even more succinct: “the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful.” Both of these things are theocentric, the first focusing upon the object of what we do, the second focusing upon what God does for us. Neither focuses only upon what we do.

Related to this is an emphasis upon external participation. A good example is the discussion of music during the communion procession. “The singing of the people should be preeminent” (¶189). The purpose of the music is “to express the communicants’ union in spirit by means of the unity of their voices, to show joy of heart, and to highlight more clearly the ‘communitarian’ nature of the procession to receive Communion.” It is recommended that they sing easily memorized refrains, “limited in number and repeated often.” (¶192) There is no mention of Who is received in communion or the possibility of singing praise and adoration of Him. The focus is upon the attitude of the congregation. There is no addressing of the problem that a devout person may not want to be providing the musical accompaniment to his own procession, but rather be recollecting for that moment when the Lord Himself is received. “Easily-memorized refrains . . . repeated often” is a prescription for triviality. A tendency to over-manage the congregation seems to be in evidence.

There is, however, a statement about the need for participation to be internal, and it is strengthened by a quotation from Pope John Paul II:

In a culture which neither favors nor fosters meditative quiet, the art of interior listening is learned only with difficulty. Here we see how the liturgy, though it must always be properly inculturated, must also be countercultural.

The context of this statement is even more powerful, and would have made an even stronger statement about listening:

Active participation does not preclude the active passivity of silence, stillness, and listening; indeed it demands it. Worshipers are not passive, for instance, when listening to the readings or the homily, or following the prayers of the celebrant, and the chants and music of the liturgy. These are experiences of silence and stillness, but they are in their own way profoundly active. In a culture . . .

Music in Catholic Worship famously proposed three judgments: musical, liturgical, and pastoral, and even suggested by placing it first that the musical judgment was prior to the other two, though not final. It made a statement about the artistic quality of the music:

To admit the cheap, the trite, the musical cliché often found in popular songs for the purpose of “instant liturgy” is to cheapen the liturgy, to expose it to ridicule, and to invite failure.

This statement turned out to be prophetic, for who has not heard the cheap and trite regularly performed in the liturgy? who would have thought that such a statement had been made 1972? The seeming priority of the musical judgment in the 1972 document was relegated to the dustbin before the ink was dry on it. So nothing will change, because the present document denies the priority of any of the three judgments, placing the musical judgment last, devoting the least attention to it, and giving the criterion of excellence no more than the statement quoted above, this in a document ostensibly about music.

The discussion of the musical judgment is concluded by a serious misquotation of the Second Vatican Council. “The church has not adopted any particular style of art as her own” (SC ¶123), concluding that the church freely welcomes various styles of music to the liturgy. There are two things wrong with this statement: it comes from the chapter on sacred art and was said about art and architecture. The church has not adopted Romanesque or Gothic or any other style as canonical, but when it comes to music, the church has acknowledged the priority of Gregorian chant and to a lesser degree polyphony. These are styles and they do have priority.

Similarly, even though the document regularly uses terms like sacred music and sacred liturgy, there is practically nothing about what constitutes the sacred and its role in the liturgy. This would be, of course, a controversial topic, since so many of the styles now adopted into liturgical practice are blatantly secular. It seems that as long as the texts are acceptable, no judgments from this document will concern the acceptability of musical styles, however secular—until it comes to weddings and funerals. Finally, a statement comes forth in the context of requests by parties to a wedding that their favorite song be included: “Secular music . . . is not appropriate for the sacred liturgy” (¶220). The same statement is repeated for funerals (¶246).

The discussion of funerals is the occasion of another misrepresentation—in the statement about the purpose of funerals: “The church’s funeral rites offer thanksgiving to God for the gift of life that has been returned to him.” If one examines the proper texts for the funeral Mass, one finds quite a different picture: there among reminders of eternal life and the resurrection are prayers for the repose of the soul of the departed. Nowhere in the fourteen paragraphs on the music for funerals does this even receive a mention. Even for those of the strongest faith, the death of a beloved is a deprivation, and the funeral must be the occasion for mourning. Likewise, the Gregorian chants for the Requiem Mass are among the most beloved of chants still cherished by the Catholic faithful, because the need for the objectification of mourning is so strongly fulfulled by the chant. There is not a peep in the discussion of funerals about chant. I remember the rather secular university service held upon the death of a young woman on the faculty, for whom my choir subsequently sang a Requiem Mass. I later saw a colleague from the woman’s department—an expert on Nietzsche—who said that he had been to the university service and it had torn him apart; he had then come to the Gregorian Mass and told me that although he was not a believer he had found consolation in it, “a fitting closure to a life.”

In spite of the fact that this is a document on music, there is precious little discussion of intrinsically musical matters. Only ¶124 asserts the affective side of music, as difficult to describe, even though it is very important and should be taken into account. So much more could be said about the intrinsic musical characteristics of chant, polyphony, hymnody, and instrumental music in a sacred context. Sacred Music will continue to address such issues, particularly since they are crucial to decisions about what music to incorporate into the liturgy. There is even less about beauty, a crucial criterion for liturgy, in my estimation. A couple of references in passing (¶83, 118) show tantalizing possibilities, but they are not realized.

Although the bishops have rightly been concerned about the soundness of the texts being sung in the liturgy, there seems not be a similar concern about the quality of the music; the document seems to encourage the continuation of existing repertories, with little further attention to quality. Still, our task is to work for the improvement of the intrinsic qualities of liturgical music. This is an educational function; one searches in vain for any statement in the document that the function of a musician is to educate the congregation in what is sacred and what is beautiful, to raise their level of participation in the liturgy by giving them better music that they understand as their own.

What, then, are we to make of this document? We will all find the paragraphs we like and quote them, but their authority is ambiguous: when the document quotes established liturgical law, such as Musicam Sacram andthe General Instruction on the Roman Missal, their authority is secure; we might as well quote the respective documents. For the rest, since the bishops did not submit them for ratification to the Vatican, they are in a kind of limbo, not liturgical law, but ratified by the bishops. But perhaps like the doctrine of limbo itself, the document will find itself obsolete in due time. We might view it as a transitional document—the revival of Gregorian chant and excellent liturgical music will progress apace, and a subsequent document, though it may only restate the status quo, will have to accommodate those things Sacred Music has perpetually advocated: the sacred and the beautiful as represented by the priority of Gregorian chant and classical polyphony in the service of the liturgy.

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William Mahrt is editor of Sacred Music. Mahrt@stanford.edu

by William Mahrt

[This article appears in Sacred Music, Volume 134, Number 3, Fall 2007]

At last the motu proprio is out. The release of Summorum Pontificum and the accompanying letter of Pope Benedict XVI will provoke much comment from all ranges of the spectrum; these discussions will be followed with great interest. The document could have an impact upon the celebration of the sacred liturgy for many years to come. Among its points that will please some, for example, is the allowing of clerics to use the old breviary; among the points that may cause difficulty is the provision that “priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books.” These and many other issues will be the subject of ongoing discussion; a few may require further clarification. Hopefully, the discussion will proceed with charity and mutual respect.

Much of the commentary that has begun to appear, in the journalism and on the internet, has dealt with purely liturgical matters and not with music; in fact, neither the document itself nor the accompanying letter even mention music; the ramifications for music, however, are many and important. Music, perhaps more than any other element of the liturgy, contributes to that sense of sacrality that Pope Benedict mentions in his letter. So my point here is the relation of the motu proprio to the principal aims of Sacred Music and our association—that through music the liturgy be made more sacred and more beautiful.

The Pope’s message, at its most basic, stems from his view of continuity with tradition—he frequently mentions the “hermeneutic of discontinuity” as an undesirable position taken by some after the council. This is why he emphasizes that there is but one Roman Rite with two uses, the ordinary (the Missal of Paul VI), and the extraordinary (the Missal of John XXIII, the last version of the Mass before the council, the so-called Tridentine Mass). He specifically mentions his hope that the celebration of the old use, will illuminate its continuity with the new use and the potential sacrality of the new use. In this view, it is important that the celebration in Latin of both uses be maintained and cultivated, even side-by-side. From the point of view of both liturgy and music, then, the more frequent celebration of the old use will be a mirror up to the new, pointing out potential ways of celebrating the new use in continuity with tradition, and even perhaps suggesting that some of the ways it is celebrated may not be so desirable. Likewise, then, the frequent celebration of the new use in Latin can be a fruitful point of comparison for its celebration in English, suggesting a more formal and sacral performance there as well. I shall address three specific issues relating to music: the sacrality of the liturgy, the singing of the Mass, and the propers of the Mass.

1) The sacred character of the liturgy. The ceremonies of the old use are fixed and very specific and ensure that the sacred character of the actions is maintained. No interpolated commentary or improvisation is possible, and a hieratic attitude prevails. In the vernacular, the temptation is to become chatty and conversational, and this mitigates the sacred character. The tendency toward arbitrary variation in the new use does the same.

The old use is customarily said facing the altar, while the new usually faces the people. Negative commentaries on this practice uniformly describe the priest as turning his back upon the people; this is a caricature, however, for the point is not to neglect the people, but together with the people to face God, and the traditional direction for facing God is the East; even when the church itself does not face East, the direction is described as liturgical East; this is the meaning of the word orientation, facing the orient. Interestingly, this stance of the priest is not prescribed by either use: the Tridentine Mass was always celebrated in St. Peter’s in Rome facing the people, since immediately in front of that altar is the Confession of St. Peter, the entrance to the crypt where the first pope is buried; moreover, as a Roman basilica, St. Peter’s faces West; the celebrant of the Mass faces East by facing the people. On the other hand, the Missal of Paul VI, including the recent edition of 2002, at several points in the Mass, for example just before communion, prescribes that the priest turn toward the people to address them directly, which presumes he is otherwise facing East. A renewed experience of celebrating Mass ad orientem may suggest to us that sometimes the stance facing the people may have created more of a dialogue between priest and people, and less of a direct address by both parties toward God; this more direct address to God is a stance that emphasizes the sacrality of the action. Perhaps it may even suggest a more frequent use of the ad orientem stance in the new use.

Pope Benedict expresses the hope that “the celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage.” It was his celebration of the Masses surrounding the death of Pope John Paul II that so impressed the world with the same sense of the sacred action he describes here; I suspect that it was even a factor in his election.

2) The singing of the Mass. In the old use, there is a hard and fast distinction between the low Mass and the high Mass. Either everything is spoken or everything to be said aloud is sung, including the lessons. This is still the ideal in the new use, articulated by Musicam Sacram, though it is not often practiced. Most often one hears a “middle Mass,” a mixture of spoken and sung elements, where the most striking difference between parts of the Mass is whether they are spoken or sung. When everything is sung, on the other hand, then the striking differences between the elements are those which represent liturgical differences, such as between Old Testament and New Testament lessons, and between lessons and responsorial chants between the lessons. Moreover, music becomes the medium of the celebration, and not just an occasional phenomenon, thereby enhancing the sacrality of the whole.

3) The propers of the Mass. The old use, whether low Mass or high, always includes all the propers of the Mass: introit, gradual, alleluia or tract, offertory, and communion. Except for the chants between the readings, these have mostly been forgotten in the celebration of the new use, though they can be found in the Graduale Romanum of 1974 and the Gregorian Missal of 1990, published for the new use. Even the chants between the readings have been transformed beyond recognition. Unfortunately, before the Council, the high Mass all too often replaced the proper Gregorian melodies with a setting of the text of the Mass propers to psalm tones, often called “Rossini propers” for the editor of the edition commonly in use then. If the celebration of the high Mass in the old form uses the proper Gregorian melodies, this will set an example for what should also be done for the new use. Even if the Rossini propers are used and co-opted for the new rite, this might just be a step in the right direction, if it does not stop there. At least the proper texts will be sung again. (Musicians should be reminded that for sung propers, the texts of the Graduale Romanum should be used and not those of the Missale Romanum which were provided for spoken recitation only.) In fact, for the celebration of either use in Latin, the old books of Rossini propers would contain most of the requisite Mass chants. Still, those who use psalm-tone propers should be reminded that, while they provide a setting of the text, they are far from adequate musically, being a kind of utility music against which Cardinal Ratzinger warned that utility music is useless. Still, a beginning with psalm-tone propers would be a base upon which gradually to incorporate a practice of genuine Gregorian melodies. One could begin with communion antiphons, including psalm verses alternated with the Gregorian antiphon, as recently presented in a publication of our association.

A problem with this program is that the currently available missalettes do not provide any of the texts of the Mass propers from the Graduale Romanum. For the Mass for which my choir sings, we provide a leaflet every week congaining all the propers with translations and all the music to be sung by the congregation, but this requires considerable effort. Publishers of missalettes might be persuaded to include both options. Another problem may be that not every pastor will want to see the Gregorian propers take the role they should. The pastor may argue against the use of Latin; he may argue against letting the choir sing them, contending that these pieces belong to the congregation; he may argue that they take too long. In such a situation, a gradual approach may be the only possibility—begin with the communion, when the communion is well accepted, add the introit, even if it means beginning it a couple of minutes early. The offertory should be possible, though the priest may have to be reminded that the offertory prayers may be said sotto voce when music is sung at the offertory. If there is an offertory procession, there is more time for the chant. Likewise, if incense is used at the introit and the offertory, there will be time for these chants. In unusual circumstances, melismatic offertory verses can be used, or a polyphonic motet sung after the offertory chant. Experience will show what kind of time is allowed at each place.

It is important that when the old use is celebrated as a high Mass, the music be done well. It will have to serve as a paradigm. One such Mass in a large city with properly prepared and performed music could be a leaven for the musical practice of the whole city’s churches. There will be those who will attend this Mass regularly and faithfully; they will come to experience the orderliness and serenity they may have missed at their parish Masses; if the music is excellent, they may find a quality they have missed in their parishes as well. There will be those who will attend this Mass occasionally; they will return to their parishes with new expectations, and may have an influence on how things are done there. There will be the curious and the skeptical, who may attend this Mass once; if it does not radiate beauty and holiness, they will go away confirmed in their belief that it was right to discard it. This poses for musicians a challenge and a high expectation; why should it not, though, for its purpose is the highest a human being can seek.
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William Mahrt teaches music at Stanford University and serves as President of the Church Music Association of America. This article appears in the Fall 2007 issue of Sacred Music.

by William Mahrt

[The following essay by William Mahrt is drawn from comments delivered during and following the Consultation on a Revision of Music in Catholic Worship, sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Committee on the Liturgy, Subcommittee on Music in the Liturgy, Chicago, Illinois, October 9, 2006. It appears in the Spring 2007 issue of Sacred Music]

I thank the members of the Subcommittee on Music of the USCCB Committee on Liturgy for asking our views of the document, for holding the recent consultation, and for receiving supporting statements. I attend the consultation as President of the Church Music Association of America, and I think I represent its views in general, but my recommendations are my own. I have directed a church choir, specializing in Gregorian chant and classical polyphony, for over forty years, and I am as well professor of musicology at Stanford University.

There are many aspects of Music in Catholic Worship that need revision. The purposes of music should be stated clearly; I would say that there are two overriding purposes: to make the liturgy more beautiful and to emphasize its sacred character.

To accomplish these purposes, the statements about the aesthetic judgment need re-emphasis. A principal problem today is that the quality of the music—not just the texts—is mediocre; it fulfills what then Cardinal Ratzinger called utility music, concluding that utility music is useless. Only music that is truly beautiful should have a place in the liturgy.

Music can establish unambiguously the sacred character of the action. Here the statements about style need a radical revision. All styles are not equal. The tradition of Roman documents establishes a clear hierarchy. Gregorian chant has pride of place; classical polyphony has a privileged role. It is because styles carry with them associations and even evoke a place—the style of a Broadway show tune evokes the theater; the style of cocktail music evokes the cocktail bar, yet we hear these styles in church. The priority of sacred styles needs re-emphasis.

The analysis of the purposes of the parts of the Mass needs reformulation. The distinction between proper and ordinary is a very useful one—propers accompany other actions, ordinary are the liturgical actions themselves. Thus the description of the introit as establishing a tone of celebration may not be the most accurate—the introit accompanies the procession, emphasizing the focal point of the altar as a point of arrival, and observing its sacredness by incensing it. It is then particularly the Gloria which establishes the tone of celebration.

The theology of music in the document is only anthropocentric; but it should also be theocentric. The document speaks only of the action of the congregation; but this has no meaning unless it is in the service of the action of Christ in the Mass. To say that music has the purpose of the glorification of God (theocentric) does not contradict that it cultivates the faith of the people (anthropocentric); these two purposes reinforce each other.

If music is to be central to the liturgy, a strong statement needs to be made that the singing of the celebrant of the Mass is crucial; otherwise the music seems secondary to the structure of the liturgy. In this context, the attention of the subcommittee should ultimately turn to the melodies for the celebrant, particularly the Lord’s Prayer, but also the dialogues —these are sorely in need of revision.

II.

What makes music and liturgy sacred? Some of the meanings of music come about by association. Music does not have connotations, rather its meanings accrue by association. Take two examples: We have had classes in the dancing of Baroque dances, for example, the minuet, which gets its name from the tiny steps used in dancing it: one dances in a small pattern and does not get anywhere. We had a classical guitarist engaged to play during one of the Masses, and at the communion time, he played a Bach minuet. I thought to myself, how am I ever going to get to communion with these tiny steps? I once heard a Beethoven piano sonata played during Mass. I was astonished to realize just how vividly it recalled a place, and the place was the home. The music is domestic—house music. I would not have anticipated how incongruous it seemed to hear it in church.

Others of the meanings of music derive from intrinsic qualities of the music. Cocktail music has a quality of relaxed familiarity that reinforces the inhibition-releasing qualities of the cocktail itself and encourages social interaction. This is probably not very suitable for a sacred action. In fact, the very notion of “sacred,” being set apart for special usage, suggests that music that is free from such associations is better suited to sacred purposes. The inherent qualities of Gregorian chant are particularly in its rhythm. The more strongly metric music is, the more closely it is tied to the passage of time. The non-metric qualities of Gregorian chant leave it free from being tied down to the temporal and allow it to evoke the eternal. This evocation of the eternal accounts for the fact that Gregorian chant is rarely used for anything else; it is not even very successfully employed in concerts, despite its high artistic status. Rather, whenever it is heard, its character is unmistakable—it is sacred music, set aside for a most high purpose.

III.

How should we approach the question of heritage? Pius X in his Tra le sollicitudini, the motu proprio in which he authorized the revival of Gregorian chant, defined three characteristics of sacred music: it is holy, beautiful, and universal. But his term for beautiful is more precise: bontà delle forme, bonitas formarum, literally, goodness of forms (in the plural). What I think this means is that each of the forms of Gregorian music suits its particular liturgical function, an introit works best as an introit, projecting a sense of purposeful motion to accompany the action; a gradual works best as a gradual, creating a sense of recollection and receptivity in the listeners as a complement to the lessons, and so forth. This is how these pieces are intimately linked, not only with their texts, but also with the rite itself. This is how Gregorian chant constitutes in a special way the beauty of the liturgy, its splendor formae. Pius X proposed that Gregorian chant should be the model against which other sacred music is to be judged, precisely for this reason.

Gregorian chant should then be taken as the paradigm of sacred music. This can be done in many different ways: the paradigm can be exemplified in the singing of a Latin High Mass, in which all its parts are sung in the proper Gregorian chants. It can be translated into English, and some of the parts of the Mass sung in that way. It can serve as a model for other compositions, taking into account the stylistic differences that serve the different liturgical functions.

IV.

I propose several areas where clear statements could improve Music in Catholic Worship (MCW).

1. Reconciliation with Vatican documents. Perhaps the most important issue is the relation of MCW to Sacrosanctum Concilium (SSC) and the Second Instruction for its implementation, Musicam Sacram (MS). These documents reflect the fact that in general the regulation of the liturgy belongs to the Apostolic See. While I am not a canonist, it would seem to me that for this reason they bear the highest authority, and where MCW is in conflict with them, there should be a resolution of that conflict. While it is true that MS was issued before the promulgation of the Missale Romanum of 1969, very little of it was made obsolete by the new Missal, because it deals mainly with general principles that apply to either rite. Some of the points of conflict in MCW are the place of Gregorian chant, polyphony, and the organ; the overall purposes of music; and the role of the proper and ordinary of the Mass.

2. The place of Gregorian chant, polyphony, and the organ. I take Bob Hurd’s point that there is a place for diversity, and that polarization should be avoided; still, I would suggest a third way of viewing the choices he proposes: within a rather wide range of traditions, styles, and instruments, the document should present some priorities. Gregorian chant should have “pride of place,” and classical polyphony should receive special cultivation; this does not rule out the use of chorale melodies or popular religious songs, but it does present a priority. It seems to me that this priority could be stated without prejudice to the other genres. In fact, in the consultation none of us proposed that chant and polyphony should be the exclusive music of the liturgy, though it was reported in the Tablet that we did. I regret it if our enthusiasm for chant and polyphony may have given a false impression, but I doubt that any of us thinks that hymns, for instance, should be eliminated. Likewise, among the instruments, the pipe organ is clearly stated as the sacred instrument of preference. This could be emphasized, leaving the judgment about the suitability of other instruments open.

3. The theology of music. The description of the purposes of music in MCW focuses almost entirely upon the subjective aspect of the congregation and not at all on the intrinsic significance of the rites or their overall meaning theologically, particularly the action of Christ in the liturgy. These are not mutually contradictory: the traditional purposes—the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful— are not in conflict with the expression of faith on the part of the congregation, but their restatement in this document would remedy an almost completely anthropocentric view with a complementary theocentric one. Further, the traditional descriptions of the functions of music—it adds delight to prayer, fosters unity of minds, and confers greater solemnity upon the rites—could only enrich the view of the document on the place of music.

4. The sacredness of music. There is a further qualification about diversity. “Not all forms of music can be considered suitable for liturgical celebrations” (Pope John Paul II, Chirograph for the Centenary of the Motu Proprio, 2003, Par. 4). Within the diversity of available musical styles, judgments should be made about which styles are suitable for incorporation into the sacred liturgy. In order for them to be truly sacred, there must be something which distinguishes them from the merely secular. There are some musical styles that are intrinsically sacred, set apart for liturgical use, free from secular associations; others which have secular associations, but which can be distinguished by sacred hallmarks; still, others may be too strongly associated with secular styles for them not to insert into the liturgy elements that are too strongly secular. I am speaking particularly of entertainment music, cocktail music, theater music, or even classical secular genres, such as Baroque dance music, or operatic styles. Thus, not all styles are suitable for incorporation in the liturgy.

5. The beauty and sacredness of the liturgy. Over and above the aforementioned purposes of music, I think that there are even more general purposes, and if they were taken seriously, they could transform the music of our liturgies. They are obvious to some, but somehow forgotten by others: music should make the liturgy more beautiful, and music should emphasize the sacredness of the liturgy. If music were really selected to fulfill these purposes, our liturgies would amply fulfill all the other purposes mentioned above.

6. The quality of the music. The statement about making the aesthetic judgment in MCW is crucial. Its priority should not be compromised in the revision. In fact, it should be emphasized: too much music published today is simply mediocre. It fulfills what then Cardinal Ratzinger called “utility music,” concluding ironically that utility music is useless. Sadly, I hear the complaint regularly, “The music in our churches is so awful.” The criterion should be whether the music is truly beautiful, nothing less. The subcommittee is proposing a directory, general principles for the selection of music in the liturgy, setting criteria for texts which are sound theologically. They should be applauded for this. Still, they should not forget the next, much more difficult task, setting criteria for music that is truly beautiful, truly sacred.

7. The ordinary and the proper. MCW seems to downplay the distinction between ordinary and proper and to deemphasize the ordinary, often dismissing it as “secondary.” But there are important distinctions between the ordinary and the proper. The proper parts of the Mass accompany other actions, mainly processions; even in the case of the gradual and alleluia, their function is to complement and respond to the lessons. On the other hand, the ordinary parts are in and of themselves liturgical actions; this is the ground for attributing them normally to the singing of the whole congregation. There is a practical reason for this as well: as unchangeable texts, they can be learned through repetition until the congregation is secure in singing them. This cannot be said of the propers which change each week, and should change each week, since they are a source of the sense that each day is unique.

8. The ordering of the sung parts. MCW denies the significance of the distinction between sung and recited Masses, asserting that “almost unlimited combinations of sung and recited parts may be chosen.” (Par. 51) This is in direct contradiction with MS, which retains the distinction between the low and the high Mass, and yet proposes various degrees of incorporation of singing into the Mass. The first degree is the melodies of the celebrant plus the Sanctus; the second degree is the rest of the ordinary; the third degree is the chants of the proper. I suggest that these are very practical stages and should be incorporated into the revision of MCW, at least as an ideal; this does not mean that other schemes should be prohibited, but that this ought to be the recommended one.

9. The singing of the celebrant. A key feature of the scheme of incorporation of singing in MS is the priority of the singing of the celebrant. The revision of MCW should exhort, as strongly as possible, celebrants to learn to sing their parts in the Mass; seminaries should instruct their students in the singing of the priest’s parts. The reason is that when the celebrant sings his part, the rite itself is clearly sung, and this unifies it; the other musical parts then play a natural role in the scheme of music. Without the singing of the celebrant, the other music seems to be less central to the celebration and the congregation’s role is denigrated. When the priest sings his part, he validates the singing of congregation and choir at the same time.

V.

This concludes my general comments on the proposed revision. What follows are comments on some specific paragraphs of the document; these are secondary to the foregoing general comments, but still, I think, of interest.

¶11. Thematic unity: traditionally this has always been true of the feast days and the special seasons of the year. Yet ordinary time (traditionally the Sundays after Epiphany and Pentecost) did not show the same thematic unity, but rather each of these celebrations embraces a multiplicity of themes, so that what characterized the Masses in ordinary time was a comprehensiveness. This is still true of the propers of the current Graduale Romanum.

¶15. While it is important to suit the music to the needs of the congregation, an important need on the part of most congregations is to be educated in sacred music, to have their taste formed for the higher sorts of music truly suited to the liturgical action. This ultimately will enhance their participation. The process is a slow one and progress is only evident on a scale of years.

¶16. If the psalms create rather than solve problems where faith is weak, this should not be the case if they are regularly employed in the liturgy; preaching should address such problems as well.

¶17. “All must be willing to share likes and dislikes with others whose ideas and experiences may be quite unlike their own.” This points to the need gradually to establish a repertory of sacred music that is above the differences of likes and dislikes and which fulfills the quality of universality spoken of by St. Pius X in the Motu proprio. The liturgy needs to rise above such limitations, not impose them.

¶21. The celebrant has to conduct the liturgy as a sacred action. While a “human naturalness” is a necessary quality, the bearing of the celebrant should transcend that by projecting the sense that it is a sacred action.

¶28. Styles themselves need to be the subject of liturgical and pastoral judgment: not all styles are suitable to incorporation in the liturgy.

¶30. MS prescribes priorities concerning what parts are to be sung, based upon the nature of the liturgy.

¶31. I would suggest eliminating suggestions that parts of the ordinary are secondary; the Kyrie and the Gloria are fundamental acts of worship; to sing them in ample settings cannot detract from the liturgy of the word.

¶35. Cantors should not dominate the congregational singing, either by using overly operatic voices or by singing through a highly-amplified microphone. When leading the congregation, the cantor should step back from the microphone somewhat to avoid dominating the sound.

¶37. The organ should not be used as background music: “soft background to a spoken psalm” is a very bad idea.

¶39. The people’s expression of their faith should not be the only criterion for the pastoral judgment.

¶41. Sensitivity toward the needs of the congregation should include their need to be formed in singing and hearing excellent and suitable liturgical music.

¶42. The analysis of structure is defective. The notion that a festive entrance rite with elaborate music distracts from the liturgy of the word is mistaken—it enhances it. Only if the liturgy of the word is conducted without sufficient solemnity will its importance be deemphasized. The statement that the introductory and concluding rites are secondary should be deleted.

¶44. There is a deficient analysis of the structure behind the statement that the
entrance song is primary, but the Kyrie and Gloria are secondary.

¶49. Concerning the recessional song, one should reflect carefully on why the whole tradition of liturgy prescribes no such piece. If anything is secondary it is the priest greeting the people at the door, not a culmination of the whole concluding rite.

¶50. Include a positive statement about employing the treasury of sacred music as in SSC.

¶51. That “the musical settings of the past are usually not helpful models for composing truly liturgical pieces today” is in direct contradiction with SSC and particularly with the notion from St. Pius X that Gregorian chant is the norm against which other liturgical music should be judged. This statement should be omitted.

¶45. I would delete “all else is secondary.” Many other things are important, the worship of God, for instance. It is an oversimplification to say that the chants between the lessons comprise the people’s acceptance of the readings; in addition to that significance, there is a very ancient tradition that views the psalm as another lesson, and another that views the gradual and alleluia as meditation chants.

¶47. Calling the Sanctus an acclamation is an oversimplification—it is much more than that. St. Augustine designated it as a hymn, and it certainly has other aspects than the “statement of faith of the local assembly.”

¶54. The isolated singing of “five acclamations” is in contradiction with MS, whose conception of the centrality of the priest’s parts to the singing represents a better functional use of music. The sung preface is important to the Sanctus; the sung Lord’s Prayer is important to the doxology which follows it. It is not that these five pieces should not be sung without any other singing, but this is far from an ideal, liturgical use of music.

¶55. This overlooks the Tract, which replaces the alleluia in Lent as an extended psalm text. It also overlooks the fact that the alleluia when sung in Gregorian chant is a meditation chant. Perhaps it is better to have the people remain sitting until the repeat of the alleluia when it is sung in Gregorian chant.

¶57. There is surely more to the memorial acclamation than the expression of the people’s faith—praise of the Lord just made present, for example.

¶61. The description of the entrance song is incomplete, first of all to accompany the procession and to emphasize the importance of the altar and sanctuary as the location of the sacred action (also emphasized through incensation); its mood is more one of anticipation than of celebration—that comes with the Gloria.

¶62. Adoration is not in conflict with communion, unless the union is only among the people, rather with Christ.

¶63. Curiously, there is no purpose attributed to the responsorial psalm. I have sometimes heard it said that its purpose “is to give the people something to do,” clearly not quite a sufficient purpose. I believe that the purpose and function of this part requires fundamental examination, and will devote a session to this subject at the next Summer Colloquium of the Church Music Association of America. A serious problem is that the brief antiphons for the people are often so very trivial musically. Reflection upon the gradual and alleluia from the Graduale Romanum suggests another purpose: recollection, even meditation, as a complement to hearing the lesson. I believe that this purpose is fundamentally much more pastoral than giving them a trivial antiphon to repeat.

¶64. The ordinary are fundamentally sung texts, with the possible exception of the Credo. MS prescribes them as the second degree of the incorporation of music.

¶65. The Kyrie is not a prayer of praise, but clearly a litany asking for mercy. The statement that anything but a simple setting gives undue importance to the introductory rites should be eliminated: the dismissal of the Kyrie and Gloria as merely parts of the introductory rites is based upon a faulty analysis of the structure of the liturgy of the word.

¶66. This statement should be revised in the light of the new translation of this text.

¶67. It would be sufficient to call the Agnus Dei a litany, not a litany-song.

¶69. MS does not make the Credo an exception to the singing of the ordinary. A well-sung Creed is surely a good expression of faith.

¶70. The Graduale Romanum includes specified texts for the offertory.

¶71. The function of the offertory is much more than accompanying the procession; it accompanies making the offerings, and it has an additional musical function of allowing a period of reflection before the important action of the preface, Sanctus, Eucharistic Prayer, etc. This reflective character is represented in the Gregorian offertories by the fact that they are, like the graduals, responsories, not antiphons.

¶77. The need for well-qualified music directors requires adequate salaries.

My prayers and best wishes are with you in your deliberations, and I thank you once again for the privilege of contributing to the discussion.

Sacred Music
Fall 2006, Volume 133, No. 3, pp. 27-36

The St. Louis Jesuits: Thirty Years, edited by Mike Gale. Oregon Catholic Press, 2006, 190 pp. ISBN: 1569290741. $30

here’s no accounting for taste, but surely there is some answer to the mystery as to why Catholic music in America went the direction it did after the Second Vatican Council. Some insight arrives via a close look at the central players in this drama, a group that came to be called the St. Louis Jesuits—a phrase that alternatively inspires snickers and disdain in many Catholic observers, and deference and respect in others. One person credits them with wrecking the liturgy and the next person credits them with saving it. Neither side can begin to account for the perspective of the other. For all the talk of community and unity that is invoked on behalf of their simple, popular, folk-like style, this music remains some of the most divisive in the history of liturgical music.

Partisans of sacred music might argue that the whole period is best forgotten, the same way the fashion industry would like to forget the leisure suit or patchwork platform shoes for men. But this is not yet possible, for their music is still very much with us at liturgy. Their music continues to dominate contemporary songbooks. Of all the hymns in the mixed-repertoire, mainstream Heritage Missal published by Oregon Catholic Press, 24% are by a member of the St. Louis Jesuits, with 70% written in the style they pioneered. The 2000 edition of Glory & Praise, “the most popular Catholic hymnal ever published,” according to OCP[1] , contains 100 songs written by them. One member of the St. Louis Jesuits serves on the US Bishops’ Subcommittee on Music, which is working toward naming a common repertoire for parishes.

The St. Louis Jesuits have indeed succeeded in transforming the sound and shape of Catholic liturgy, so much so that the authentic sound of Catholicism has been largely relegated to the land of CDs and specialized liturgical settings. Their music does indeed constitute the “Catholic classics” of our age, as painful as it is to admit. To some extent, their music has penetrated beyond Catholicism: The Saint Louis Jesuit’s music was played at Ronald Reagan’s funeral and Bill Clinton’s inauguration.

For these reasons, it is in the interest of all sides to gain a greater understanding of who they are, what they were doing, and why they enjoyed such success. To see their music as a product of its time, and their successes as related to a liturgical vacuum that appeared in a highly turbulent period of church history, is to understand their music as an aberrant event that cannot and will not enjoy a lasting presence in the life of the Roman Rite. Their music will always have fans and a market to serve, but a growing realization that this music, as liturgical music, reflected a profound confusion over fundamentals—a cultural commodity bound to a particular generation and time—assures that its domination will go the way of other secular iconography of the period.

The St. Louis Jesuits recently re-united on the thirtieth anniversary of their appearance on the Catholic music scene. A glossy and even hagiographic book of appreciation has been published: The St. Louis Jesuits: Thirty Years (Oregon Catholic Press, 2006, 190 pp., ed. Mike Gale). The book is packed with color photos and interviews that celebrate their emergence and eventual dominance in Catholic liturgy but (typical of the genre) avoids serious questions and only vaguely alludes to the existence of critics. It can make for painful reading at times but it is nonetheless revealing. It cannot fully account for why and how a phenomenon like this group came about and achieved such dominance in Catholic music, but it provides some very instructive clues—clues that point to larger lessons about the future of liturgical music.

The book opens with a series of high-level endorsements of their music and their genre, as if to say “this is not just 70s kitsch,” or to dispel the impression that their music is rogue, unorthodox, or contrary to established liturgical norms. First comes Rev. Virgil C. Funk, president emeritus of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, an organization that has long supported this type of music in liturgy. “The St. Louis Jesuits were important contributors to the development of liturgical renewal in the Catholic Church in the United States. Not only did they provide music to sing at worship but, even more importantly, they provided a way for the best truths of the Catholic Church to be internalized by everyone who sang them.”

Surprisingly, we also hear from Most Rev. William Levada, Archbishop Emeritus of San Francisco and current Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Benedict XVI’s successor in that position): “You have made a great and lasting contribution to the liturgical life of the Church. Many have noted favorably the way in which you have drawn from and developed Scriptural themes in your music. We are grateful to you…”

Next: the Superior General of the Jesuit order, Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach: “Your creativity and dedication have helped to bring church music to the people and the people to church music.” The endorsements continue: Bishop Remi J. De Root, retired Bishop of Victoria; Most Rev. Donald W. Trautman, Bishop of Erie, Pennsylvania and Chairman of the US Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy. The reader is overwhelmed: surely this music is legitimate, licit, and unimpeachable.

Indeed, after reading all this, and knowing nothing else about the subject, you might think that their music must exceed the scale and magnificence of Palestrina, Victoria, Monteverdi, Machaut, or even build upon the musical and textual complexities of the Gregorian tradition, with its astonishing integration of text, music, and purpose.

You might almost forget that we are speaking here of the simple, well-worn, and recognizably popular melodies, written in that pseudo-folk style of the period, that have achieved ubiquity in millions of parishes, and can be (and usually is) sung and played by people (usually on guitar) with little or no formal training in music. I am speaking here of such Catholic favorites as “Be Not Afraid,” “Here I Am Lord,” “City of God,” “Sing A New Song,” “Come to the Water,” “For You Are My God,” “Yahweh, I Know You Are Near,” “Though the Mountains May Fall,” “Glory and Praise to Our God,” “Only This I Want,” and “One Bread, One Body.”

These are some of the more familiar pieces, and they are all studied expressions of low-brow tunefulness having nothing to do with the deeper tradition or the transcendent aspirations of sacred music—which would not be a problem by itself but for their use in liturgy. There are hundreds more songs, along with 30 CD collections that continue to sell well in the catalogs of Catholic music publishers. Their composers have countless impersonators, and many of them (such as Marty Haugen and David Haas) offer tributes herein.

And yet there are so many ways in which listening to their music today provides a blast from the composers’ own personal past. The men in question are Bob Dufford, John Foley, Tim Manion, Roc O’Connor, and Dan Schutte. They attended the seminary during the most turbulent times in modern Catholic history. They entered seminary at the time of the transitional Missal of 1965, which had already severed a link from the past with the introduction of vernacular. Their primary educational experience took place during and after the Second Vatican Council. The ordinations of 4 of the 5 followed the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae. Tremendous confusion reigned over what music was appropriate at Mass. After the 1965 Missal, there was already a growing sense that Latin texts were not the future. The text of the new Mass had been imposed in 1969-1970 without an attached volume of chants for the Propers or Ordinary. Indeed, the music question appeared to be completely open, as if the past no longer had any bearing on what the future held.

Because of profound misjudgments and missteps following the promulgation of the new rite, Rome provided no clear guidance. Even pastors and musicians who wanted to be faithful to norms were left to speculate on how the Propers fit with the new calendar and structure. The transitional Missal of 1965 had already contributed to the new-era ethos, and, after the New Rite, three years went by with no authoritative intervention while the experimentation took hold. The first word from the Vatican came in 1973 with release of the Ordo cantus missae—with no perceptible effect. Far more attention was given to the 1972 release of Music in Catholic Worship, a non-authoritative document issued by the Liturgy Committee of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. This contained language that seemed to endorse all the US trends, especially that pioneered by the group in question. The document, for example, noted that “good music of new styles is finding a happy home in the celebrations of today” and that “music in folk idiom is finding acceptance in eucharistic celebrations.”[2]

It endorsed the “pastoral judgment” that music must “enable these people to express their faith, in this place, in this age, in this culture…”[3] Most incredibly, “[T]he musical settings of the past are usually not helpful models for composing truly liturgical pieces today.”[4]

Then in 1974, Paul VI released a book of simple chant (Jubilate Deo) and, finally, the Solesmes monks published the Graduale Romanum in accordance with the new calendar and liturgical structure. These two releases provided authoritative and practical guidance concerning the music question—fully five years following the issuance of the new Mass. But by this time, the sound and feel of Catholic liturgy had already been transformed, the student protest movement had radicalized a major part of the student population, popular music had matured in its revolutionary style, and the press claimed that people everywhere were looking for some vague sense of awakening.

At the very time of this musical confusion—the period between the release of the new Mass and the appearance of the musical settings attached to it—the St. Louis Jesuits were in the late stages of studies at the University of St. Louis as part of their Jesuit formation. Like most men in their early twenties in 1970, they played guitar, an instrument on which it is easy to affect a certain competence with some mashed down fingers in the left hand and some vigorous strumming in the right. Everyone, it seemed, played guitar. What made these men different was that they were Catholic and in last years of seminary.

Their first venue was the campus liturgy at the College Church and the Jesuit House of Studies. As Foley, who could play piano but learned guitar in seminary, says “Just at the time, the guitar started to be allowed in the new liturgy. I thought ‘well, they need music, so let’s go.’ ” Indeed, at every step they were encouraged by their superiors to bring the music that they thought of as popular song into Mass. Says Schutte: “I never would have continued these stumbling attempts at music had it not been for the encouragement of my Jesuit peers and superiors.” Hence, they were not seminary’s equivalent of campus rebels. They were cultivated and promoted and encouraged by their teachers and superiors.

To their credit, and despite their recent concertizing on the occasion of their reunion, they avoided giving concerts. They were concerned that their music be used in prayer sessions—not necessarily in liturgy, at least not initially—but not as a venue for popular acclaim, though even by that time folk music had become common in Mass. They were surrounded by models of musical stardom in the secular culture, and the Catholic Church seem to provide an opening for the same. The vogue of “modernization”—alongside the rejection of high art, music, and dress in favor of folk styles—gave their approach a unique appeal in Catholic circles. The music caught on all over the St. Louis area. The men began to use the ditto machine and stencils to make copies. In early 1972 they decided to produce a bound copy of these songs. When they pooled all their music, they had 57 pieces. Their volume was 107 pages, and they decided to record each song.

The result was their first compilation and recording, Neither Silver Nor Gold, as published by North American Liturgy Resources. It was a surprise seller and a huge hit by Catholic standards. It was met with rave reviews from “progressive” publications and disgust in “conservative” ones.

Following this release, members of the group went in separate directions. Dan Schutte and Roc O’Connor left to teach on an Indian reservation as part of their training. Bob Dufford left to teach in Omaha. Tim Manion left seminary altogether. Only John Foley stayed in St. Louis. But by the summer of 1974, the success of their music led their Jesuit superiors to gather them together again, and send them all to Berkeley for the summer to compose music. It was this summer—in Berkeley 1974, which has meaning in the history of popular culture as the most radicalized spot in the country—that yielded a sizeable amount what passes for liturgical music in this genre, including “Be Not Afraid,” “Earthen Vessels,” and the like. The result was Earthen Vessels, which remains a best-selling collection.

This music followed in the same vein as the previous release. It was nearly all unison, sometimes with a predictable obligato. There is nothing there for a serious choir to learn. It is music suited for a “praise band” driven by a non-professional ethos. A parish using it could dispense with its organist and choirmaster. As for the basis of the appeal, it is not difficult to discern. For those seeking a break with the past and the dawning of a new sensibility, the strumming of a rhythmic guitar during liturgy, with melodies and beats drawn from popular culture, must have seemed to be quite a revelation, an audible sign that the Church was taking some unspecified leap into a new time. It signified a clean break from the past.

Two years later, they were singing Masses at the NAPM convention, and by this time their status as mainstream had been sealed. They were often called the Catholic’s own Beatles (indeed Foley himself says their reunion was treated “as if the Beatles had just gotten together”). Tim Manion puts it this way in his interview in this book: “We were pretty big frogs in the small pond of Catholic music…. It was a good run.”

The volume under consideration here makes the very credible claim that they never sought to be big stars. They were only attempting to do what all young Catholics of that age were doing: experimenting towards updating liturgical expression for the new times. The new rite called for new music. And this new music would and should follow the prevailing trend in pop music circles, a notion that the US Bishops not only did not refute but actually seemed to support.

But like all legendary pop artists in mid-career, they began to take themselves very seriously as genuine musicians and liturgists, even though only Foley had the ability to read and compose music (as the book strongly implies in several places). Their entrenchment into the mainstream of liturgical life in the US was sealed with the release of Glory & Praise in 1977, with new releases in 1980, 1987, and 1984. It too was a huge seller and became a standard hymnal in the pew. As Thomas Day notes[5], the songbook did not contain anything preconciliar: not a single chant or hymn. It contained only the music of the genre of the St. Louis Jesuits. It was a repudiation of the past in every respect, a fact which reflected the spirit of the times and the milieu that surrounded the group.

In a scene worthy of the movie “Spinal Tap,” a very strange period in their lives began in 1980. They received a grant to study composition at Seattle University with Professor Kevin Waters, S.J, an expert in the serious avant-garde music of Elliot Carter and Bruno Batolozzi. How or why this happened is a puzzle. The only thing that unites Elliot Carter and the St. Louis Jesuits is that they are contemporaneous; otherwise, their music lies on completely separate planes.

Fr. Waters’s comment on this event raises more questions than it answers:

I vividly recall that I intended that [they] write a lot of exercises to loosen up their compositional joints. They resisted. They were reluctant to waste time and wanted to get right down to writing a finished product. Very few genuine exercises ever got on paper during the time the group spent with me… My responsibility in changing the dynamics of the St. Louis Jesuits haunted me in 1980. Would this group, which had a unified style and approach to music, be altered radically by the workshop? Would the individuality of each composer come to the fore in such a way that the distinctive style of the group began to fade or even disappear? I do not believe that I can answer those questions now. But perhaps the questions have changed or, perhaps they no longer matter.

Also, and consistent with the parable of pop stars who begin to believe in the artistic legitimacy implied by their exalted status, they broke up a year later. Manion became a Buddhist and left seminary permanently. Schutte was ordained but left the priesthood (though he still works in campus ministry). The others went their separate ways and concentrated on giving publisher-sponsored workshops around the country, up to two per month for many years. It was this medium that assured them a prominent place in parish liturgies. Amateur directors of music were attracted by the idea of meeting the men who wrote the songs they use at Mass. They would find themselves enraptured by their personalities and songs and go back to their parishes with an agenda to make the Mass ever more up to date, community centered, and folksy. This relentless work paid off for the style, as pastors found themselves unable to resist the pressure and the older generation of parish goers who resented the upheaval gave in to the demand that music appeal to the young. What was once the “folk Mass” in the typical parish became the family Mass and, finally, the only manner of celebrating Mass.

The volume under review, given its status as a glossy coffee table book, underplays the opposition that they faced. Anecdotal evidence suggests widespread exasperation with the rise of their sound—variously described by critics as “fluff” and “white bread” and far worse—at Mass. But one must also consider the extent to which the opposition was fighting a rear guard battle. The emphasis in those times was on the people and their participation; a superficial understanding of that idea led to demands that the people always be involved in singing in the vernacular, an idea that rules out the Gregorian Propers, which were not initially available for the new rite in any case. What else should people sing but peoples’ music, which, through slipshod thinking, seemed to mean the folk style of the time? All the while, the Church Music Association of America kept up its work but its voice was small as compared with the growing presence of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians. It wasn’t until the mid 1980s when a serious backlash became evident and culminated in Thomas Day’s classic book, Why Catholics Can’t Sing (1990).

It seems clear from this short rendering of their journey that these men never really confronted one central issue in all their years of writing tunes: Is the liturgy merely a text on which music of the times is to be imbedded based on the tastes and preferences of the current generation? If this were true, one might at least make a case for their method and approach, if not their style. After all, if the liturgy were nothing but a blank canvas, people are free to argue about whether the canvas ought to be used for a landscape, a portrait, or graffiti. The correct answer, however, which seems to have eluded them completely, is found not only in the whole history of papal legislation concerning music but also in the General Instruction: the foundational music of Mass is Gregorian Chant. It has pride of place, and any departure from its pride of place must draw from its style and sensibility in some way.

But what did the St. Louis Jesuits know of the Gregorian music of the Roman Rite? How much did they really know of Catholic music in general? How much had their training dealt with this subject in any serious way? What in their individual backgrounds had prepared them to correctly understand how music and liturgy are related? How much did they know of the Graduale? The answer is nothing, in every case, at least nothing that this book reports.

The most substantive comments on their musical influences in the interview portion of this book come from Bob Dufford, who says that his influences were Broadway music, popular music, and popular classical music along the lines of Handel’s Messiah, though this a bit of a stretch: it seems clear that the main influence on all these men was commercial popular music, such as sitcom themes and the top 40. As for musical competence, Dufford says that he had piano lessons for six weeks “but couldn’t stand them. I couldn’t get it and it drove me nuts. I never learned to play an instrument until I was studying philosophy in college.” The instrument, of course, was the folk guitar, as it was for all these men, since this is a “people’s instrument.”

What about singing experience? Dufford started when he was in sixth grade, which must have been sometime in the late fifties. “I started singing in choirs and learned all the chants.” Of course he must have misspoken since learning all the chants would be impossible for anyone but a full-time, dedicated scholar. In this single mention of chant in the entire volume, one is left wonder what chants he heard and learned and how they impacted him. Of the current trends toward more solemn liturgy today, Dufford expresses skepticism, as if it were nothing but a trend toward regimentation that a free people should reject. “There’s concern about the proper, official texts, about the importance of them meeting certain guidelines. I’m not totally convinced that is what people want.”

As for the influences on the others, Tim Manion’s first exposure to Catholic music was at a rogue liturgy (“a cool Mass”) run by the Jesuits at midnight on Saturday night, where he played electric bass. Roc O’Connor mentions only Broadway and rock music, including Pete Townsend, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. Schutte talks of Gordon Lightfoot, Rogers and Hammerstein, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. Foley had a broader background, to be sure, and even claims to be a composer of “classical” music as well.

Among them all, only Roc O’Connor seems to have moved on musically. He says that in the mid-1990s, he was studying at Weston Seminary and did a thesis on sacred space. He reports that he had a “growing sense of boredom with” all the music they had done, and began to seek more depth. “A good thing about the current work of the Vatican,” he says, “is its call back to a sense of reverence and transcendence.”

Another interview conducted after this book came out asked four of them specifically about chant[6]. Foley and Schutte answered the question, and only vaguely. Foley: “I love chant. The problem is that not all churches use it, so it’s more limited….” Schutte: “The GIRM calls us to preserve chant, which is appropriate. I would say that no music of any age should be excluded from possible use”—quite a statement considering the imperious agenda of the 1970s and an apt statement of the extent of the retrenchment currently underway.

Friends of sacred music can take some comfort from understanding the historical trajectory of the St. Louis Jesuits. It seems clear that the detour that Catholic music took in those years had much to do with what was not known or understood at the time: that the sacred liturgy and its music is not guesswork or a matter of fashion. It is something handed down as part of the structure of Mass. It is a completely different style and sensibility from the profane. It is rooted in Scripture from prescribed texts. It is integral to liturgical prayer. The normative music is itself prescribed to serve as a model and ideal. The notion that a few kids in seminary with amateur guitar skills could write anything that could equal the theological and aesthetic magnificence of the sacred music tradition is absurdly implausible on the face of it.

An interesting note of optimism can be drawn from this history. In the course of only a few years, Catholic music had been transformed in a way that the previous generation of Catholic musicians could not have imagined, and hence we cannot rule out another transformation along the same lines.[7] In the same way it is always easier to make water run downhill than uphill, the reemergence of sacred music cannot count on the same combination of forces that swept away the old music and brought in the new. It will not be enough to seek popular support for change. Nonetheless, it would be foolish to ignore the need for people in the pews to come to love the sound and feel of chant in a similar way that the generation that came of age in the mid-1970s was attached to the St. Louis Jesuits.

Given the new emphasis from the Vatican that music at Mass must have a link to chant and polyphony[8], we can probably expect some interesting strategic twists and turns in the coming days, including efforts to justify music of the St. Louis Jesuits as not a break from but a continuation of the past. Bob Hurd, for example, writes in Today’s Liturgy[9] on the communion rite, and acknowledges the Church’s preference for the text in the Graduale Romanum. But, he complains, this book “exists only in Latin. Its Gregorian chant antiphons are too complicated for most assembly singing.”[10] Having the choir sing alone ends up “rendering the assembly voiceless during Communion.” But does the celebrant’s homily similarly render people voiceless; do people really desire to have a voice during communion (experience suggests not). He continues, then, to argue that Dan Schutte’s “Only This I want” is “an equally wonderful way to reflect on these Scriptures while receiving Communion. Our biblical piety would be the poorer if his Scriptural song were eliminated from our repertoire, simply because it does not come from the Roman Gradual.”[11] He further recommends other familiar songs by Marty Haugen, Bernadette Farrell, and David Haas—music that most any Catholic listener knows in his heart is as far from chant as a church-in-the-round is from a traditional cathedral.

Writing in the same issue, Don Saliers discusses chant, its “discovery and rediscovery,” with a special focus on Adore Te Devote. He credits the “semiological approach” with giving license to restore “earlier free-flowing Latin forms found in the Triplex“—using terms and references few readers of this publication could possible follow or understand. He invokes the need for “ecumenical sharing of chant forms” and “modified chant in hymns” to eventually recommend popular songs such as “How Lovely is Your Dwelling Place” (Randall DeBruyn, 1981) as suitable substitutes. Thus does his article imply that contemporary praise songs are viable successors to the old chant.

We can expect to see more such efforts to re-render contemporary Christian song as a continuation of chant rather than the break that it truly does represent. Whether or not this effort is successful, it does suggest a last-ditch attempt to salvage the legacy of the changes of the 1970s by implicitly conceding that Gregorian chant is indeed the standard or the paradigm of Catholic music—something that the entire project of the St. Louis Jesuits had set out to deny. But it still begs the question: why accept a substitute when the genuine song of the Church is available to us if we are willing to challenge ourselves to offer the best?

Education in this regard is crucial, and workshops—of all sizes and for anyone who is even mildly interested—are especially necessary. There are language barriers to overcome and a host of psychological fears of old notation. For decades, Catholics have been fed a very restrictive diet of music, and it will take time to broaden people’s understanding of what music at liturgy can and should be. Certainly, there must be transitional measures that include vernacular plainsong and new polyphony. Truly sacred music does have advantages in this struggle. It is the music of the Church and not some interloping foreign voice. It is inspired and true. It demands more of the singer and listener, which means that people are going to be called to a higher sense, and challenged to achieve it. It demands humility and deference to truths we cannot always entirely understand. It calls forth a radical change in our liturgical sensibility. It will be as new to this generation as the music of the St. Louis Jesuits was to the generation coming of age a third of a century ago.

There is a final point that concerns the difference between eternal sounds and temporary fashions. The music of the St. Louis Jesuits was of their times, and its use in liturgy is little more than a microcosm of the upheaval that afflicted Americans in the age of Woodstock, the Vietnam War, and Watergate. Whether the music of the St. Louis Jesuits will continue to hold a place in the hearts of Catholics is a question that will be decided in the fickle marketplace for popular religious song. Whether it should have a normative place in Catholic liturgy is a separate question with an indisputably negative answer. The peculiar rise of this group and its music was then—and this is now.
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Jeffrey Tucker is managing editor of Sacred Music. jatucker@mindspring.com He would like to thank Michael Lawrence, Arlene Oost-Zinner, David Hughes, Thomas Day, and William Mahrt for their comments on a draft.