Institute of Liturgical Music

[johnquinn39]

Does anyone know anything about this?

'The Blessed John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music launches in September. It will be based jointly at the Oratory in Birmingham and Maryvale.' (Information from James MacMillan at Pray Tell ...)

[presbyter]

It is a project being undertaken by Rev Fr Guy Nicholls CongOrat.

[NorthernTenor]

In a comment deep into close on 400 under an entirely unrelated blog by a good friend of the SSG, James MacMillan writes:

I would rather people didn't look to composers to solve the problems of the liturgy. The Church is awash with new music that isn't good enough. We should be looking to the sacred treasury for inspiration. To that end a new initiative will come into being in September. The Institute of John Henry Newman is being established at the Birmingham Oratory and Maryvale and will stress the importance of chant. They will be encouraging the singing of the Propers especially. I'm one of the Patrons, and I hope that the venture is a great success. Watch for developments later this year.

On James' own website, under 'news', comes:

James is also central to a new national initiative on liturgical music organised by the Birmingham Oratory. A new ‘school’ providing general formation in liturgical music has invited him to be Patron along with the Archbishop of Birmingham. It is geared towards both clergy and laity – to enable them both to sing the Mass (in English and in Latin and in both forms – Novus Ordo and Extraordinary Form ) according to proper liturgical principles expounded by the present Pope, and to study the theological foundations of the ‘treasury of sacred music.’ The school will be located in the Newman Building at the Birmingham Oratory, but will also make use of courses and lectures at the Maryvale Institute, Oscott.

James has expressed his desire to be more than a figurehead for this initiative and hopes to have a practical and philosophical input into the school’s activities.

I look forward to the details.

[gwyn]

More labourers in the vinyard. Da iawn.

[alan29]

With the planned revival of the Extraordinary Form, I would expect the necessary revival of its characteristic music - Gregorian Chant. This is all to the good. A traditionalist/tridentine religious order are planning to take over a redundant church in our deanery. I look forward to hearing alleluia verses and Tracts again on a regular basis - though goodness knows where they will get the expert singers.

[NorthernTenor]

With the planned revival of the Extraordinary Form, I would expect the necessary revival of its characteristic music - Gregorian Chant. This is all to the good. A traditionalist/tridentine religious order are planning to take over a redundant church in our deanery. I look forward to hearing alleluia verses and Tracts again on a regular basis - though goodness knows where they will get the expert singers.

I wouldn't be so pessimistic, Alan. There are quite a few of us out here with an active interest in Gregorian chant. True, many have been alienated from parish music by its widespread failure to sing the mass, by the cult of the ephemeral and the rejection of the Council's desire that chant be ubiquitous, but encouragement will bring people back who will help train a new generation of chant singers. It will help, of course, if liturgists and musicians don't attempt to restrict it to the old form of the rite, an attitude which implies the new one didn't grow out of the Council that so commended chant to us.

I can't say just how pleased I am, then, to learn of the new initiative in Birmingham, and of its apparent intention to take chant seriously as an integral part of the rite, rather than something to be confined to celebrations of the old form, or considered one specialist option amongst many in a post-modern world.

[alan29]

As long as its done well.
Style etc matter less to me than worthy execution. If there are singers able to make music with the Propers, then all well and good. If not, then one should leave well alone and do what can be done well.
But all through my Tridentine childhood and teenage years I never heard a choir, let alone an assembly that could do more than belt out a version of bits of De Angelis and Credo III molto con welly. I certainly don't want to see a return to that.

[NorthernTenor]

As long as its done well.
Style etc matter less to me than worthy execution. If there are singers able to make music with the Propers, then all well and good. If not, then one should leave well alone and do what can be done well.
But all through my Tridentine childhood and teenage years I never heard a choir, let alone an assembly that could do more than belt out a version of bits of De Angelis and Credo III molto con welly. I certainly don't want to see a return to that.

I couldn't agree more that the propers from the Graduale shouldn't be done if they will be sung badly (that goes for all those choral party pieces that we like to trot out too), as that will only put us off rather than deepen our worship. But alternatives to the Graduale music are available - some of them in the vernacular, and some of those very well put together (the best should never be the enemy of the good). It's also quite straight-forward, with a little practice, to put together psalm-tone based responsorial psalms for a choir to sing. And the danger of doing things badly should be an encouragement to learn to do things well, rather than a reason never to do them at all. Which is where the proposed institute comes in ...

As for congregations singing De Angelis & Credo III molto con welly: rock on, Alan!

[nazard]

Whatever music is used at mass, there is a painful stage as it is introduced which improves with time and work. For choral music, that pain can be in the privacy of choir practice: for congregational music inevitably it will be at mass. However, good training is always a help, and that is where I hope this institute will help us along. I am waiting for its programme of courses to be published.

Yesterday evening I went to tridentine mass at Our Lady of Lourdes in Weston super Mare (not a town exactly noted for its music, but it does have its high spots occasionally). The choir sang Palestrina's Missa Brevis and the gregorian propers very well indeed, and the congragation belted out Credo III and Salve Regina. It was all an uplifting experience. Congregations do belt things out. They have no subtlety, their phrases are unformed and their intonation random. Nevertheless, provided that the music is suitable, a congregation's singing is uplifting. I am all in favour of letting them get on with Gloria VIII and Credo III and the like. The propers, on the other hand, call for a much more polished rendition. I agree with Alan, a wide range of styles are perfectly acceptable. I think the arguments about exactly what constitutes authentic chant practice are ultimately destructive.

The mass at Our Lady of Lourdes for Corpus Christi seems to be becoming an annual event, so keep an eye out for it next year if you live anywhere near the M5.

In the meantime, does anyone know what the Newman Building is? No building was called that when I was familiar with the Birmingham Oratory.

[NorthernTenor]

I agree with Alan, a wide range of styles is perfectly acceptable.

So do I (I'm working on a setting of the 'Our Father'), but the statement misses the point that most Popes of the century of the Second Vatican Council, and the Council itself, envisioned a particular style at the centre of practice: chant, the cultic music that developed with and inseperably from the Western Rites. That vision includes the admonition that those considering the use of other styles should first consider their sympathy with the liturgy and its ethos, taking chant as the exemplar and Rennaisance polyphony as an example of a style that shares the qualities that make chant so suitable to the liturgy.

It also misses the point that parish music in this country is seldom in tune with that vision. Where the mass is sung (significant parts of it seldom are), much of the music that is employed at best lacks chant's noble simplicity, and at worst is emotionaly facile and self-centred, substituting feel-good for profundity.

The liturgy is the ordinary means of our encounter with God. The music that we sing it to can have a considerable effect on the nature of that experience, for better or worse. I am therefore encouraged by the news of the proposed Institute and those involved with it to hope that it will address these issues, which are of great significance to the life of the Church in England and Wales.

[alan29]

..... as to styles. I feel that different kinds of celebration and different kinds of assemblies require different styles of music. What is appropriate in the setting of an occasional celebration of the Tridentine Mass which can be prepared for over several weeks, might not be either fitting or dignified (in execution) at the weekly family mass at St Aggies on the Marsh.

[nazard]

When our previous parish priest was with us, I used to teach the choir two gregorian communion antiphons a year. It took six weeks to get the choir to an acceptable standard. We did no other gregorian propers at all. Just from a practicality point of view, the average parish needs something a lot simpler.

[alan29]

Playing at a Holy Hour tomorrow. benediction with the two trad hymns in Latin. I e-mailed my pp explaining that I wasn't sure I knew how to play in the particular language. am tempted to use the proper gregorian tunes to see how the congregation respond.

[NorthernTenor]

..... as to styles. I feel that different kinds of celebration and different kinds of assemblies require different styles of music. What is appropriate in the setting of an occasional celebration of the Tridentine Mass which can be prepared for over several weeks, might not be either fitting or dignified (in execution) at the weekly family mass at St Aggies on the Marsh.

When our previous parish priest was with us, I used to teach the choir two gregorian communion antiphons a year. It took six weeks to get the choir to an acceptable standard. We did no other gregorian propers at all. Just from a practicality point of view, the average parish needs something a lot simpler.

Well, that seems to assume all or nothing - the whole choir sings all the propers from the Graduale Romanum every week or not at all. There are other options: the Graduale Simplex, the Simple English Propers project & similar, psalm-tone based settings, judicious use of cantors for the more complex chants, special efforts for particular feasts: all these and others in a variety of combinations are possible, with forethought, preparation and training. Maybe not all at once, but it's something to work towards. And even in the Graduale not all chants are difficut: various Ordinaries are not; the responses are not; and chanted Ordinaries and responses alone can make such a difference, in terms of participation and tone. I also find them of spiritual value to the DoM and choir, who don't have to try to be creative and imaginative in their choice of settings and hymns, but just work and sing in the tradition, as asked of us by the Council.

ps hope it goes well tomorrow, Alan.

[Southern Comfort]

There is a tendency to look back at preconciliar days with rose-tinted spectacles.

It's worth recalling that, contrary to popular belief, before the Council many choirs did not sing Gregorian Chant propers at all. Those that sang them all were few and far between. Many would sing the texts to the tonus in directum. A proportion might sing the proper chant for the Introit and Communion, but not the Gradual, Alleluia or Tract, or Offertory. For the Graduals and Alleluias/Tracts, they would use collections such as Dom Laurence Bévenot's Tones for the Propers (can't remember the exact title and am not in my office so cannot check), where the texts were chanted to melodious (accompanied) tones that typically had melismatic endings. Those tones were very pleasant, and saved quite a bit of time at High Mass — probably a good five minutes on each occasion, as well as saving a lot of rehearsal time that could then be used for other things, such as a choral setting of the Offertory antiphon text or another appropriate piece.

The Bévenot tones could also be used for the Introit and Communion. During Holy Week, choirs would often use things such as R.R. Terry's fauxbourdon settings of the propers. From all this, it can be seen that the emphasis was on getting through the texts, not on using the plainchant to do so.

The Graduale Simplex, with its alternative texts and simpler settings, did not exist then, of course.

NT is therefore correct in suggesting that an all-or-nothing approach is not the way to go; and before the Council it did not happen either (although some would fondly like to believe that it did).