Mass is . . . and regarding music . . .

[gwyn]

. . . a moment of reflection and encounter with God, rather than a form of entertainment, says Cardinal Francis Arinze.

Regarding "music in the liturgy, we should start by saying that Gregorian music is the Church's precious heritage," he said. "It should stay. It should not be banished. If therefore in a particular diocese or country, no one hears Gregorian music any more, then somebody has made a mistake somewhere."

However, "the Church is not saying that everything should be Gregorian music," the cardinal clarified. "There is room for music which respects that language, that culture, that people. There is room for that too, and the present books say that is a matter for the bishops\' conference, because it generally goes beyond the boundaries of one diocese.

"The ideal thing is that the bishops would have a liturgical music commission which looks at the wording and the music of the hymns. And when the commission is satisfied, judgement is brought to the bishops for approval, in the name of the rest of the conference."

What should not be the case, insists the Nigerian cardinal, is "individuals just composing anything and singing it in church. This is not right at all -- no matter how talented the individual is. That brings us to the question of the instruments to be used.

"The local church should be conscious that church worship is not really the same as what we sing in a bar, or what we sing in a convention for youth. Therefore it should influence the type of instrument used, the type of music used."

Suitability
"I will not now pronounce and say never guitar; that would be rather severe," Cardinal Arinze added. "But much of guitar music may not be suitable at all for the Mass. Yet, it is possible to think of some guitar music that would be suitable, not as the ordinary one we get every time, [but with] the visit of a special group, etc."

"The judgment would be left to the bishops of the area. It is wiser that way," he pointed out. "Also, because there are other instruments in many countries which are not used in Italy or in Ireland, for instance.

"People don't come to Mass in order to be entertained. They come to Mass to adore God, to thank him, to ask pardon for sins, and to ask for other things that they need."

"When they want entertainment, they know where to go -- parish hall, theatre, presuming that their entertainment is acceptable from a moral theological point of view," added the cardinal.

[Merseysider]

What should not be the case, insists [Cardinal Arinze], is "individuals just composing anything and singing it in church."

Well that's quite a lot of us *beep*!

[VML]

If the Wurlitzer and the Hammond had become the perceived instruments of pop, rock, blues, punk,...indie, garage....., would we now be exhorted to do our best to use the guitar in church?
It is easy to form a prejudice against any instruments if one has only seen their limitations rather than their possibilities:
Melodeon? Concertina? Mountain dulcimer anyone?


V.

[contrabordun]

Hmmm, I possess several CDs of Gregorian Chant (which I'm afraid weren't bought to create me an authentic monastic experience at home for Evening Prayer), and these same CDs have featured heavily in the, er, hit parade, over the last few years. Perhaps somebody should warn the good Cardinal that there is a serious risk of finding music associated with entertainment in church.

Perhaps we should campaign for a new type of music, one that's never going to feature in the charts, one that nobody would dream of calling entertainment.

Such music might feature any or all of the following:

Grade 3 pianists sightreading hymns or worship songs in five flats that they were given five minutes earlier, whilst wracked with guilt about their inability to give a concert performance.

Five people singing a piece with some "choir only" sections, in which one of men is singing some of the bass notes, while the other is singing the top line with two of the women. The other woman has not yet found the page. The Joneses are away this week, so there is no tenor line, which is a shame, because the tenors have the tune at this point.

Three guitars providing a strong rhythmic lead and harmonic infill without giving the slightest clue about where the singing should start. Verses 1,2 and 4 are the same length, but v3 is mysteriously shorter. There are 4 or 6 bar interludes between every verse, and again, nobody is quite sure where to start singing.

I think most of us are pretty safe from accusations of providing gratuitous entertainment value?

[gwyn]

contrabordun,

(fx) hearty guffaw

Fantastic. You're right on the money there.

Hand me my Stradivarius. I'm sorry it's an old violin but I lent Yehudi me new one.

[docmattc]

Gregorian music is the Church's precious heritage,"

True, but if we concentrate solely on polishing our antiques while ignoring our contemporary material we will rapidly become a museum not a church.

[docmattc]

When they want entertainment, they know where to go -- parish hall...

I don't know what Arinze's parish hall is like, but that's certainly not where I go for entertainment! Last 'entertainment' we had in our parish hall was a beetle drive, I didn't go- couldn't get my sheep dog to herd ladybirds!

[gwyn]

Towards the end of 1999 I was chatting with the minister of the town clap-happy sect. We got around to the subject of music so I asked him what they were going to be singing at their Millennium Celebration Service. He rattled off a couple of modern religious songs pointing out that they don't sing anything that's more than three years old. He then asked, "And what will your lot be singing at your Milllennium Celebration?"
I answered, "More or less the same as we sang at the last one." (snigger)

Maybe as long as plainsong is alive it doesn't become antique.

The Cardinal went on to speak about the Mass:

Protestant view
Referring to a negative tendency in the Western world, the cardinal revealed that an increasing number of Catholics have "a more Protestant concept of the Eucharist, seeing it mainly as a symbol."

The "synod fathers recognize that many Catholics don't have correct faith in the real presence of Christ in the holy Eucharist," he said. "This was mentioned in one of the propositions as well.

"It was recognized so much that many of the synod fathers suggested that there be themes suggested for homilies on Sundays. Seeing that for many Catholics the Sunday homily is about the only religious instruction they get in a week, the synod fathers suggested that the four major areas of Catholic faith should be covered by the homily in a three-year cycle."

The four areas correspond to the parts of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

"First part, what we believe," Cardinal Arinze said. \"Second part, how we worship, i.e., sacraments. Third part, what we live, life in Christ, so the moral law, the Ten Commandments, the Christian life lived; and the fourth part, prayer."

Therefore, "although the homily should be on the Scripture readings and the other liturgical texts, some way has to be found to cover the whole area of Catholic faith in a period of three years because many Catholics are really ignorant of fundamental matters. That is a fact nobody can deny."

Showmanship
"Vatican II brought many good things but everything has not been positive, and the synod recognized that there have been shadows," Cardinal Arinze acknowledged.

"There has been a bit of neglect of the holy Eucharist outside Mass," he said. "A lot of ignorance. A lot of temptations to showmanship for the priest who celebrates facing the people.

"If he is not very disciplined he will soon become a performer. He may not realize it, but he will be projecting himself rather than projecting Christ. Indeed it is very demanding, the altar facing the people. Then even those who read the First and Second Reading can engage in little tactics that make them draw attention to themselves and distract the people.

"So there are problems. However, some of the problems were not caused by Vatican II, but they were caused by children of the Church after Vatican II. Some of them talking of Vatican II push their own agenda. We have to watch that. People pushing their own agenda, justifying it as the 'spirit of Vatican II.'"

The Vatican prefect continued: "So, if only people would be more faithful to what has been laid down, not by people who just like to make laws for other people, but what follows from what we believe. 'Lex orandi, Lex credendi.' It is our faith that directs our prayer life, and if we genuflect in front of the tabernacle it is because we believe that Jesus is there, and is God."

Abuses not new
Contrary to what many think, he said, "even when there was the Tridentine Mass there were abuses. Many Catholics did not know, because they did not know Latin! So when the priest garbled the words, they were not aware of this.

"Therefore, the most important area is faith and fidelity to that faith, and a faithful reading of the original texts, and their faithful translations, so that people celebrate knowing that the liturgy is the public prayer of the Church."

Cardinal Arinze concluded that the liturgy "is not the property of one individual, therefore an individual does not tinker with it, but makes the effort to celebrate it as Holy Mother Church wants. When that happens, the people are happy, they feel nourished. Their faith grows, their faith is strengthened. They go home happy and willing to come back next Sunday."

[Merseysider]

WARNING: Rant and ramble….

Do we not have a style already or are we in the process of developing one? Look at the work of the Thomas More Group – it's taken a while but it's catching on, developing. Younger composers are, in many ways, emulating and developing the style(s) exemplified by Walker, Inwood, Tamblyn et al. Look at Paul Wellicome's "Send forth your spirit" or Martin Barry's setting of Psalm 117.

Cardinal Arinze's comments are nothing new. Of course the Church has made several attempts to ban secular styles of music in the liturgy. The Council of Trent decreed that "nothing profane be intermingled", effectively banning Mass settings based on secular tunes (ie Dufay's Missa L'Homme Armé) and it was decreed that the liturgy "should be sung so that the words are more intelligible than the modulations of the music". Noone seemed to notice at the time that while Arcadelt's setting of Ave Maria was indeed "intelligible", the tune was from a chanson proclaiming the virility of a group of young men.

William Byrd certainly composed in a much simpler style than his predecessors – but was that because he was also writing for the reformed liturgy which demanded "for each syllable a note"?

Good Catholic boy that he was (ie flawed like the rest of us) Mozart wrote Masses of huge grandeur – they will have impressed his patrons and helped create a sense of awe and magnificent in the cathedrals and court chapels of the time – but 200 years after Trent, Mass settings were, again, becoming florid and, beautiful though they were, a tad OTT.

The Victorians certainly seemed to blur the distinctions between the sacred and the profane. "Sweet Sacrament Divine" and "To Jesus Heart all burning" are immensely singable pub songs – grab a pint and try them – and "O bread of heaven" is a barely disguised Viennese Waltz – grab your favourite girl (or boy) and try waltzing in the moonlight while humming it.

Leslie Stuart – composer of , "Lily of Laguna", "Little Dolly Day Dream" "Daisy Daisy" and "Soldiers of the Queen" – was actually of Tom Barrett, one of Martin Barry's predecessors at Salford Cathedral. Martin, do you happen to know if he wrote anything for the liturgy?

Despite the reforms of Pius X, liturgical singing appears to have remained the job of the choir. Am I write in thinking the Sir Richard Terry was largely responsible for restoring the use of polyphony? So the people stuck to their pub songs and waltzes at Benediction and other devotions.

We've been through experiments with music from the folk revival of the 1960s and chucked out most of the dross but we've embraced the traditional folk tunes collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams – "There's a widness in God's mercy", "On Christmas night all Christians sing" etc – as well as those from France ("Now the green blade riseth"), Italy ("The snow lay on the ground", if anyone remembers it) and Spain ("The angel Gabriel from heaven came").

Unless we really do return to a solid diet of Gregorian chant, we need to allow music to develop as it always has.

Bill Tamblyn tells me his "Lord of the Harvest" was written for a pub piano but you can't help but hear the influence of the Dutch liturgical composers.

I could well imagine the refrain of Walker's "Teach Me, O God", appearing in a Lloyd Webber musical or his "Laudate Dominum" fitting in Les Miserables. So has he deliberately chosen musical structures which appeal to our collective ear? The words and functionality of these pieces – the antiphonal singing between choir and assembly, their use for specific parts of out liturgy: gathering, processing, sprinkling, communion, psalm – places them in a different setting and makes them feel… well, different.

None of the above facts are checked or supported so feel free to challenge me but, please, Cardinal Arinze, don't interfere with our musical development when we have come so far.

[Crumhorn]

...but didn't plainchant itself originate in popular singing, or even in folk song? And wasn't it chosen for church use precisely because it was popular music that people could understand and sing?

So isn't a bit bizarre to insist, after the passing of some 1300 years, that we stick for some unspecified reason to a form of music that was popular then (and sometimes, thank God, popular now) while ignoring other styles of music that are equally suitable?

Traditional folk tunes (as instanced above) are, or should be, well known and if they were good enough for Vaughan Williams they're certainly good enough for me. But music, like language, is a living thing -- and living things need to grow and develop, in this case in the way the Spirit moves them.

The Cardinal's pronouncement is precisely the kind of thing we have come to expect from a certain element within the hierarchy: it stifles joy, creativity and a vital outpouring of the Spirit in the name of a rather pointless orthodoxy, without consultation, and without (it would seem) an adequate knowledge of the subject.

Well, that's my rant for the day... Anyone else want a crack?

[docmattc]

...but didn't plainchant itself originate in popular singing, or even in folk song? And wasn't it chosen for church use precisely because it was popular music that people could understand and sing?

There is a chant heard at Sheffield United's ground that goes "come on you Bla-ades".
For those not familiar with the tune, its exactly the same as "Lumen Christe", or even "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti"!

[mcb]

Leslie Stuart – composer of , "Lily of Laguna", "Little Dolly Day Dream" "Daisy Daisy" and "Soldiers of the Queen" – was actually of Tom Barrett, one of Martin Barry's predecessors at Salford Cathedral. Martin, do you happen to know if he wrote anything for the liturgy?

Not Daisy Daisy, I think - that was someone else. I don't know of anything liturgical written by him - in among the piles of mouldering copies of the works of Tozer and Kitson and so on that I've sifted through at the Cathedral I haven't noticed anything by Barrett. But I'll keep my eyes open! I don't think he was Cathedral organist and musical director for more than a few years at a relatively young age. If I remember correctly what I've read about him, he moved on from church music once he became famous. To find out for certain we'll have to watch You Will Remember, a 1941 biopic of our hero starring Robert Morley in the Tom Barrett/Leslie Stuart role. (I haven't decided who should play me when they get round to my biopic, assuming that comes with the turf. Perhaps a cross between Steve Coogan in Alan Partridge mode and Ricky Gervais doing David Brent.)

To wrench this back on topic, I'd say, pace Gwyn, that we don't really know too much about what liturgical music was like at the end of the first millennium; but that it's unlikely that the beauty of the music had anything to do with what was sung. Ritual music was functional rather than decorative; the idea of it being the pinnacle of high art came much later, and primarily in the forms that were at some length derivative of chant (Renaissance polyphony, for instance) rather than in chant itself. The idea that the chant is a model of aesthetic purity and creative inspiration is an anachronism; wishful thinking that comes from the sense every generation has that the world has been going to the dogs since before we were fully aware of it. As Crumhorn says, music is like language in that it is always changing. It's also like language in that there's always someone who thinks that change is decay. There's no more sense in believing that than in believing that change (in language or music) is progress.

As for the second millennium, what we know of musical history tells us that there's never been a period when chant was the sole form for liturgical music. Someone who knows better can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is a purely twentieth century idea, that came about from the wholly benign intention of putting music back in the mouths of the people. But there are other musical forms that serve this purpose just as well.

M.

[Merseysider]

To find out for certain we'll have to watch You Will Remember, a 1941 biopic of our hero starring Robert Morley

Now this is serious stuff... We're no longer talking about Gregorian Chant or the Church at the first millennium... Robert Morley also played WS Gilbert in a film full of historical inaccuracies. (Rather on a par with Julie Andrews's representation of Gertrude Lawrence in Star) This was only put right when Mike Leigh produced and directed Topsy Turvy Of course, I'm sure we all believe the Hollywood biopic, The Great Mr Handel when GFH was stuck for a tune but, as he gazed out of the window. he saw (and heard) a host of angels singing "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" In the same vein, St Matthew's Passion wasn't a patch on the original: The Greatest Story Ever Told ) and Jennifer Jones proved the saints can have perfect lip liner in The Song of Bernadette