The music wars
Today’s Style section of the Washington Post has an entertaining article on the conflicts among Catholics today with regard to the music that ought to be sung at the liturgy. Unfortunately, it divides the battle-lines between those who learned to like the kind of thing produced by the St. Louis Jesuits in the 1970s and a younger generation that wants to recover more traditional music, including Gregorian Chant. This leaves out the two or three of us who can remember how things were before the 1970s and who, while unable to romanticize and idealize the past, as if every parish had a choir of Solesmes monks, also do not think it was progress to have Palestrina replaced by Ray Repp. (I fear my Purgatory will be longer because as a brand-new priest in 1964 or 1965 I taught grammar-school children the latter’s “Sons of God, hear his holy word…”)
The parish I attend now has never used any of the 1970s hymns. In the past several months, incorporated a lot of chant. It is badly done, in large part, I think, because people haven’t heard chant, and it’s not like modern singing. They seem to be getting better–or the cantor is singing louder. Can’t quite tell. Certainly, there’s lots of inertia among both young and old.
This is a pretty cold and sterile parish–no “Our Father” hand-holding, no touching during the Peace–benefits during flu season, certainly. Those who don’t go directly from the communion line to the parking lot have pretty much cleared out by the end of the recessional hymn. (I attend this parish largely because the priest is a good homilist and because it saves Raber the embarrassment of having to answer impertinent questions about why his wife doesn’t receive.)
It isn’t my place to judge what goes on in the hearts of my fellow worshipers, of course. My only question is whether “correct” or “better” or “more traditional” music really brings people together.
Jean:
I don’t believe that the purpose of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is to, as you put it, “bring people together”. I don’t believe Christ’s blood was shed for that; maybe I’m wrong. I go to publicly give God back a paltry crumb of the immense blessings he has given me. I just assume everyone else is doing the same, and within that collective act is contained an implied solidarity with my fellow parishioners. Of course, my mind wanders frequently, but hey, no one is perfect…
I thought we’d gone over this ground previously.
Strikes me that a lot of the divide comes from people’s taste.
If the hymns are the peoples part, and he who sings prays twice, then whatever helps folks sing and praise god best is what I think should happen, even if it’s not mostly to our taste.
Bob, I don’t think I said that the purpose of Mass was to bring people together, though perhaps I ought to have been clearer and said that the purpose of the music is to enhance worship.
And the musical selections in the church I attend and those I visit–chant, hootenanny, or something in between–doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. Catholics don’t sing much, though, where there is a choir, they do seem to enjoy hearing the music.
Cheers.
Mr. Schwartz:
I think the purpose of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is precisely to bring people together. That was also the view of St. Thomas Aquinas who said that the final purpose of the Mass was the unity of the Body of Christ that is the Church. As for Christ, the Epistle to the Ephesians, 2:11-22, says that this was God’s purpose for him was precisely to bring Jew and Gentile together, by his blood, on the cross. Henri de Lubac in his book “Catholicism” sets out the whole drama of salvation as the splintering of the original unity of the human race by sin and its restoration in Christ, the Church now being an anticipation of the Kingdom in which people from every land, nation, and tongue will be brought together to the everlasting praise and glory of God. De Lubac set this out in distinction to a view of the Mass that saw it as so many individuals each doing his thing, with any solidarity with others only implied.
Whether music is in theory or in fact an instrument of such unity is a further question.
As a Freshman college seminary student in 1965, I remember that song joyfully ringing through our chapel. Over the years we surely mocked it some, but it still holds a special place with me — along with Tantum ergo, O salutaris, Hail Holy Queen, Pange Lingua, and Holy God… that entire odd mix that characterized those early post-conciliar years. i give Rap Repp a lot of credit really for even these these less than classic hymns. Although I surely yet appreciate the corpus of the St. Louis Jesuits, I wish my ‘tweens had some music that resonated for them. Nothing out there right now really does — even with a great folk group and a decent choir… maybe it’s just me… I could use some old chant, but that’s nostalgia more than reverence….
“Whether music is in theory or in fact an instrument of such unity is a further question.”
In theory? YES! In fact? Maybe occasionally on Christmas Eve.