From the Archives - “Summorum Pontificum: An Act of Extraordinary Humility”, by Jeffrey Tucker

On September 14, 2007, the day that the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum became legally active, Jeffrey Tucker, a long-time contributor to NLM and my predecessor as editor, published this brief essay. I make bold to suggest that it is worth a second read, and holds up quite well after the period of more than a decade that has subsequently passed.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Pope John Paul II prayed a prayer that sought forgiveness for many errors of the past, times when leaders and members of the Church have not lived up to Christian ideals. “We humbly ask for forgiveness for the part that each of us with his or her behaviors has played in such evils, thus contributing to disrupting the face of the Church. At the same time, as we confess our sins, let us forgive the faults committed by others towards us.”

In some ways, Summorum Pontificum extends this model of humility to address what will surely go down in history as one of the most imprudent and ill-conceived actions to follow any Church Council: the suppression of the traditional Roman Missal and the imposition of a new Missal that, in many respects, had not developed from the old, but rather, in crucial ways, represented a new creation entirely. This was most striking in its externals: Latin to the vernacular, strict rubrics to only vague guidelines, required prayers to more options than most people can keep up with. It was imposed without the proper preparations concerning music, rubrics, and other matters.

It came at a time of incredible cultural upheaval, so the dramatic change flung open the doors of sacred space to admit a blizzard of profane actions, words, and music. It was not entirely the fault of the new form, but the conditions under which it came about led millions of Catholics the world over to believe that the Faith had somehow undergone a kind of extreme makeover, and so every old doctrine and moral teaching came into question, unleashing a kind of chaos that persisted for decades. Orders of priests and nuns collapsed. Publishers went bankrupt. Mass attendance plummeted. Confessions fell. Traditional and beautiful churches were gutted to make way for the new. Treasures were thrown out. New forms of architectural outrages were given free reign.

And what of those who long for the Mass of old? In the new sociological environment following the Council, they were made to believe that they were inferior members of the Church, not with the times, rebellious to authority, and hopelessly outdated. They were ridiculed and caricatured, psychologically tormented merely for believing what they had been taught to believe. They were told that there was only one choice: conform to the new or leave. Many left, demoralized and confused. Those who persisted in saying and attending the old Mass occupied a confusing status within the law of the Church, most famously the order of St Pius X. There developed an atmosphere resembling a witch hunt for “traditionalists,” who were told that they must learn to loathe the old and praise the new. Pastors and bishops treated regular Catholics who ask for the old usage as unworthy of serious consideration.

This environment, so clearly untenable and unsustainable in retrospect, lasted nearly forty years, if you date its beginning to the promulgation of the new Mass. Finally this year, Pope Benedict XVI intervened with the only real answer to the problem: not half measures, or vague permissions, but the complete liberalization of the old usage. He gave all priests in the Roman Rite permission to use the old Missal in public and private, with very few qualifiers, and went a step further to clarify that that the ordinary form of the Mass should not be regarded as something wholly new, but part of the same Roman Rite of the ages. The decision concerning the form resides at the parish level, consistent with the idea of subsidiarity. This action ended, in one fell swoop, the wholly misconceived error of the suppression of old forms. It was an act of extraordinary humility for a Pope, an admission of error in judgment. In many ways, then, this Pope has picked up on a theme from the last Pope; for this he deserves our deepest gratitude. It is a model we should all follow in our lives.

A Personal Note from the Editor

As I take over the position of editor of NLM, I just want to take a moment to offer some overdue words of gratitude, first of all to outgoing editor Jeffrey Tucker, and his predecessor Shawn Tribe, our founder and original editor; not just for all of the help and support I have received from them over these last several years, but also for the many years of work which they have put into this project. I also wish to thank our publisher, CMAA President William Mahrt, our editorial assistant, Ben Yanke, all of our writers, and the many people who keep the site running behind the scenes. Since the transition was announced, I have received a number of messages of congratulation and encouragement, for which I am also very grateful, but in a particular way, I wish to thank Shawn for the very kind words which published about this here on Saturday. My best wishes and prayers also go to all our readers for the keeping of a holy Advent, and a truly joyful Christmas!

Guest Article: a Tribute to Jeffrey Tucker and Gregory DiPippo

Readers have probably noticed a few changes to the masthead of New Liturgical Movement in recent weeks.  They began when our friend Jeffrey Tucker made it official to us that his absence from the duties of Editor was changing to a retirement, while he carries on his work in other spheres as a publisher, writer, and entrepreneur.

This week Managing Editor Greg DiPippo has stepped up into the role of Editor, invited by our Publisher William Mahrt, president of the Church Music Association of America, which is the sponsor of NLM.

All of us on the NLM team are grateful for these two fine writers and the energy they have brought to building this site.

As it happens, today Shawn Tribe, the founder of the site, was inspired to write his own salute to his first two successors; we present it as a guest article.

A Tribute to Jeffrey Tucker and Gregory DiPippo

Shawn Tribe

Transitions can be great times for reflection and during this moment of transition I would like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to two men: Jeffrey Tucker and Gregory DiPippo.

Many of you will know that recently Jeffrey Tucker stepped down as editor of NLM and Gregory DiPippo has now moved into that role. Anyone who has run a site will know how time consuming a project it can be, especially if it is a project of any seriousness or size. Between writing articles, sourcing out photographs and images, not to mention managing comboxes and private correspondence, time is at a premium -- never mind all of the other things that need to be done to maintain a site, from its coding to other administrative tasks like renewing domains and dealing with broken links and otherwise. All of this comes in addition to editorial tasks when such a site has more than one writer and, what's more, this is not even one's day job in instances such as these; it all happens in one's "spare time" -- whatever that is. Fortunately NLM has now evolved to include people who specifically take care of these different aspects rather than having them fall upon one person's shoulders, nonetheless the burden of an editor should never be underestimated. It is no small commitment of time or energy.

When the NLM project began in 2005, my philosophy then, as well as for the rest of my tenure at NLM, was that the NLM project was multi-disciplinary and if it were to succeed and be relevant, there needed to be good and knowledgeable writers to represent and speak to those various disciplines to a level and quality that would not be attainable -- or sustainable -- by any single person. Accordingly, I sought out writers who I felt were amongst the best in their particular areas. Both Jeffrey and Gregory certainly fit into this category.

Jeffrey was involved from the earliest days of the project back in 2005 and what always amazed me about him, aside from his copious practical and theoretical knowledge of sacred music, was his ability to toss off a quality article seemingly at will. The prodigious volume of his work has always amazed me. To this day I have no idea how he does it and it hardly comes as a shock that in his affairs outside of NLM he is wildly successful. From the earliest get-go Jeffrey was one of the strongest supporters of and advocates for the ideals and goals of the New Liturgical Movement and given his tenacity, when the time came for me to move on, I certainly felt assured that the project would continue under his steadfast watch -- as it indeed did. Now that Jeffrey has himself retired from NLM, it seems only fitting that I should thank him on both counts.

Gregory: I first met Gregory in 2008 when I was travelling to Rome and Milan. This trip had a dual purpose. One was to be present for the inaugural activities associated with Ss. Trinita being assigned to the FSSP in Rome. The second was to attend an event which afforded a rare opportunity to observe the usus antiquior Ambrosianus. Gregory was present for both events and so there was ample opportunity for conversation. I can recall the specific moment when we were sitting in a Roman restaurant enjoying a glass of Limoncello after dinner when the thought crossed my mind that Gregory, with his fluent knowledge of Latin, his immense knowledge of Roman history, his ceremonial knowledge of the Roman rite and general knowledge of Roman liturgical history, would make an excellent addition to the NLM team. Over that same glass of Limoncello I casually tossed out the idea to measure what his reaction would be and, as it was not received with any sort of obvious distaste, a few weeks after I had returned home I contacted Gregory by email and noted that I was actually quite serious in my proposal that he consider joining the team of NLM writers. The rest is, as they say, history -- and what an addition he likewise made.

As I look back, I can say that the NLM project would not be the same without all those writers who have participated in the project over the years and each of them is deserving of their own tribute -- something that I hope I will have the pleasure of doing in the future for each and every one of them. As for Jeffrey and Gregory, both have been key figures and components in the success of the project and I wish to personally thank them for their commitment to it over the years as writers and eventually also as editors. Your efforts, gentlemen, have been of inestimable value. Thank you.

Follow Shawn Tribe on Facebook or Twitter

Church Music versus Utility Music

Joseph Ratzinger has often spoken about the sharp contrast between authentic sacred music and “utility music” (Gebrauchsmusik). By their own admission, the architects of the liturgical reform tended to favor the latter over the former, because their sole criterion was creating a new body of vernacular music that was catchy and easy to sing. Here is how he describes it in The Ratzinger Report:

Many liturgists have thrust this treasure [of the traditional music of the Catholic West] aside, calling it “esoteric” and treating it slightingly in the name of “an intelligibility for all and at every moment, which ought to characterize the post-conciliar liturgy.” Thus instead of “church music”—which is banished to cathedrals for special occasions—we only have “utility music,” songs, easy melodies, catchy tunes. (127-28)

But there are at least two major problems with this shift from the lofty ideals of traditional sacred music to the simplistic repertoire of the postconciliar era, whose populist agenda has, of course, triumphed everywhere in the church, except for small fortunate pockets of survival or restoration. The first problem is what Jeffrey Tucker aptly calls “a truncated range of emotional experience”:

One of the failings of mainstream parish music today (and I mean the style more than the text) is that it appeals to and expresses a truncated range of emotional experience. Mostly it suggests a sense of contentment and satisfaction, often to the point of superficiality. There seems to be little about struggle, disappointment, pain, suffering, and finding peace even within great difficulty. If “happy” is all that our parishes offer, what happens when tragedy strikes? Sometimes it seems that our missalettes are training us to live in denial, so that when we have to deal with terrible illness, war, depression, we are asked to buck up and get with the happy program or go somewhere else.

Again, Ratzinger pointedly agrees with this diagnosis: “Every phase of life has to discover its own specific maturity, for otherwise we fall back into the corresponding immaturity” (Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 111). Superficial, frivolous elation is far removed from the solemn joy or “sober drunkenness,” sobria ebrietas, of the mystics. As Arvo Pärt once remarked: “Music, like other arts, is a result of a certain way of thinking. What do you think about life?”

Ratzinger is famous for his exposure of the Dionysian, diabolic spirit behind rock music. Apart from some aberrations that occurred more in the seventies than today, the devil knew he could not get straight-up rock music into the churches. So he got his cloven hoof into the Mass by a softer, subtler device: insipid, uninspiring, artistically banal, relentlessly horizontal music that derives from rock and pseudo-folk music, but has something of an appearance of reverence without the substance. In this way it was possible to retard an entire generation’s transformation in Christ by institutionalizing the sensual shallowness of profane existence.

The second problem is the very loss of artistic greatness itself, manifested in a truncated range of aesthetic response to the majesty and holiness of God. The utility music in contemporary liturgy suffers not only from emotional impoverishment but also from intellectual vacuity. It does not challenge, elevate, expand, and refine the senses of man so that he may become a more fit vessel for divine action and for the suffering of divine mysteries.

In an interview in Dominicana, the philosopher Roger Scruton speaks of the critical role played by fine art and the treasury of artistic works:

I agree with you that the high [European] culture in which I have always put my trust has been effectively destroyed by its own appointed guardians, and that without the religious core it persists only as a fragile shell. . . .  But this [renewal] means, as you say, rejecting the premise of modern life, that God is dead, and starting all over again, seeking for the living God, and hoping to be visited by his grace.  If people are prepared to live the religious life, then their example will once again make this course available to the mass of mankind, and there will be hope.  At the same time, we must constantly fight those who are trying to destroy the memory of the spiritual way of life, and assailing all those things in which that memory is contained.  In particular we should exercise our aesthetic choices in art devoted to the ideals of beauty and order, and refrain from the kind of desecration that has become the norm in modern art schools.  (Dominicana 55.2 [Winter 2012], 65)

For Scruton, art represents or contains the memory of a spiritual way of life: it is the embodiment or echo of some experience, some way of seeing or hearing, that has happened deep within the artist’s mind and heart, and, as a result, it can become the activating occasion for such an experience in the mind and heart of another. The great work of art gives the viewer new eyes, the listener new ears. It is as if every work of art is a mnemonic device that demands of us the recollection of some truth or mystery we have transiently encountered in life—and art will evoke or assist this recollection more or less depending on its inherent “goodness of form” (to use a phrase from St. Pius X’s motu proprio Tra le Sollecitudini).

Scruton’s insight finds support in an observation made by St. Thomas Aquinas:

In the emergence of artworks from art, a twofold coming forth may be considered: first, that of the very art from the artist, which he discovers in his own heart; and secondly, the emergence of the works of art from the art thus discovered.  (In egressu artificiatorum ab arte est considerare duplicem processum; scilicet ipsius artis ab artifice, quam de corde suo adinvenit; et secundo processum artificiatorum ab ipsa arte inventa.)  In I Sent., d. 32, a. 3, ad 2

So, art has a twofold birth: the first is an interior origination of the work, which, being from the artist’s heart, is akin to his nature, his character, his soul; the second is the outward emergence of that work into the world where it can be seen or touched or heard by others, and can gently but powerfully mold them. The work of art is born in the heart, and is shaped according to the heart’s total formation—psychological, cultural, spiritual.

Without denying the crucial role of trained skill and an unpredictable factor of genius, Scruton and Aquinas alike suggest that art is an unfailing barometer of a person’s worldview and of an age’s aspirations and ideals. This is no less true of music than of any other art; indeed, it may be most of all true of music, which has a more intimate connection with the human heart, and more immediately moves and moulds its listeners and singers. Hence, what we need most of all today is a renaissance of music that will challenge, elevate, expand, and refine our powers of spiritual perception and bolster our ability to live a godly life in the midst of the world’s corruption—the most subtle form of which is a self-satisfied mediocrity that aspires to nothing great or difficult, an utter lack of magnanimity.

Pope Benedict XVI brought to the Church a vivid faith in, and wonderment at, the awesomeness of Christ Jesus—and so, the awesomeness of the Holy Eucharist that deserves our adoration, our total dedication of all powers of body and soul, and the very best that we can give. Like John the Baptist, he was a voice crying out in the wilderness of the contemporary Church, preparing the way of the Lord. It is time for us to heed the call to repentance and artistic conversion as we prepare to receive Christ anew in our hearts, in our churches, in our liturgies. Only in this way will Christians be able to transform the world; otherwise, we ourselves will keep on being changed more and more into its image.

Why Reform? Part two of Notre Dame Interview

Universality is extremely important because we don’t want music segmented by demographics if we can avoid it: there shouldn’t be one kind of music for the youth, one for the old people, and one for the boomers. Whatever kind of music that goes on at Mass, it should be obvious to everybody that it is holy and beautiful. And my hope is that once people start singing this kind of music [chant] they will understand that there is a structural and stylistic integrity to it. This will also lead them into a richer experience with the Latin, but that will only come in time. Once you break that language barrier, then this whole world opens up to you and you have put together the whole Catholic musical universe.

Read entire interview

What's New Around Here?

It's been almost 30 days since the editorial transition on NLM, from the masterful and stable hands of Shawn Tribe to hands of legacy writers here along with some new faces.

Of course I had prepared for the inevitable complaints that NLM has collapsed, that its glory days are gone, that the new team is dragging it down, that the magnificent features of x, y, and z have been replaced by the regrettable tendencies of x, y, and z. And, it's true, there have been some complaints along those lines. Such is to be expected. At the same time, we've received many notes of congratulations from people, and many expressions of relief from long-time readers that we are retaining prior forms insofar as this is possible.

And yet, it is also true that some things will never be the same. That is a given with any transition. My own focus is of course the music of the liturgy. It's not just a focus; it is an obsession, and now readers are being asked to share in that (sorry!). My "beat" tends to be the "reform of the reform," which I do not find incompatible with a deep appreciation for the old form of the Roman Rite. We live in a multi-form world and this blog hopes to keep a broad focus.

We've added some voices to the mix that help fill out the picture. I will discuss them below.

Let me say a public word of thanks to Richard Chonak, the code slinger who made the transition possible. In a beautiful way, he has fixed up so many pieces of this site. You probably don't notice them. But if you look at the left sidebar, you will see that every resource is now linked to a website. The vendors on the right sidebar have been assisted with graphics and all links are correct. Richard also fixed some 400 links in legacy postings that were dead or misdirected. How he managed this I will never understand. Other aspects of site functionality have been dramatically improved.

We changed some functionality of the comment boxes. The window for commenting has been dramatically opened, from its previous 3 days to 90 days or longer. We fully expect that this change will lead to more roiling activity in the comment boxes. That's good. Our hope is that this will generate more light than heat, but we can't be sure.

We've added an option for email subscriptions, free of charge. You can see the sign-up box on the right-hand column. Put in your address and you will get one notification each day. That's a very helpful feature, and many readers seem to agree based on the vast sign ups.

As for new voices, we've added Jennifer Donelson of Sacred Music and Juventutem. She is a young scholar with vast knowledge, and a serious frame of mind.

You have already noticed the hand of Charles Cole at work here. He is the organist, choirmaster, and liturgist who is so active in the UK liturgical world. I've admired the passion with which he has taken on this task. His love of getting the word out is very apparent.

You have also met our intern here, Ben Yanke, a young and ridiculously enthusiastic musician and liturgy scholar who has done yeoman's work to accomplishing essential tasks.

Also, today we add Peter Kwasniewski of Wyoming Catholic College. I've long admired his careful approach to scholarship and vast range of knowledge on philosophy and theology.

It is an honor to have these people here on NLM.

You will notice that the posting volume has dramatically increased. Maybe you find that overwhelming. Even so, I've generally operated under the assumption that you can't have too much information on such an important topic as this. I'm pleased to report that traffic on the site has been responsive to this increased volume of posting.

Finally, my special thanks to Gregory DiPippo, whom I met for the first time last week in Rome! He has been super involved in NLM for many years, and he has provided all of us guidance and helpful judgement on essential matters.

As always, we welcome your counsel and advice. And we thank you especially for reading and paying attention to what's going on around here. The world of Catholic liturgy continues to be such an exciting place, with so many points of view and such high stakes as well. The goal of NLM is to make a substantial contribution to this world of ideas and praxis.

The National Youth Choir

This annual teaching conference for the National Catholic Youth Choir is coming up. Have a listen and look.

Tucker on: Something new at the Sacred Music Colloquium

We are doing something different this year at the Sacred Music Colloquium XXII,  held at the remarkable Cathedral of the  Madeleine in Salt Lake City, Utah, June 25-July 1, 2012.

Too often, liturgical music has been regarded as the preserve of specialists. If you are not a musician, it is often thought that you have nothing to do with it: no need for knowledge or training. This attitude creates serious problems because decision makers in parish life need to know about the musical demands of the Roman Rite, just as musicians need to know more about the liturgy than just its musical aspects.

When putting together the structure of this program, we decided to take on this canard that music is for musicians only, and make the Colloquium something anyone interested in Catholic liturgy (or just Catholicism generally!) would be happy to attend. You do not need to  regard yourself as a singer or even a musician. There are  plenty of Gregorian choirs for first-time singers, and sessions are  available for those who opt not to sing in a polyphonic choirs - but you don't have to be able to read music at all. There  will be opportunities for both professional musicians and non-musicians who are just interested in the well-being of music at liturgy.

The hope is that this change will broaden the scope and increase the attendance, perhaps even removing completely that intimidation factor that has created artificial barriers between the loft, the nave, and the sanctuary. 

The venue of the Cathedral in Salt Lake is beautiful beyond  description. Historically significant as well as aesthetically  magnificent, the Cathedral of the Madeleine ranks among the finest  locations ever made available for the Sacred Music Colloquium, which has  grown in size in scope every year for six years.

• Register now
• The Schedule for Colloquium XXII
• Register for the Little America Hotel
• Colloquium XXII Chant Course Descriptions
• Individuals and organizations interested in sponsoring the Colloquium with full page ad in the Colloquium packet, write programs@musicasacra.com.

The year 2012 promises to be the grandest ever with new  opportunities for learning, singing, listening, and interacting with the  best minds and musicians in the Catholic world today. The Cathedral  Choir School has been wonderfully accommodating and opened up the full  use of its facilities for the Colloquium.

You will have the opportunity to see how the Choir School functions,  experience the amazing acoustic of the Cathedral, study under the best  conductors and intellectuals in the entire Catholic music world, and  form new friendships that you will value for years to come.

The primary focus of the Colloquium is instruction and experience in  chant and the Catholic sacred music tradition, participation in chant  choirs, daily and nightly lectures and performances and daily  celebrations of liturgies in both English and Latin. You are there not  merely as an attendee but as an integral part of the greatest music you  will ever experience. It will will touch your heart and thrill your  artistic imagination.

Attendance is open to anyone interested in improving the quality of  music in Catholic worship. Professional musicians will appreciate the  rigor, while enthusiastic volunteer singers and beginners new to the  chant tradition will enjoy the opportunity to study under an expert  faculty. Those who choose not to sing at all but merely want to learn  will find a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to absorb the full ethos of a  world of the best liturgical music.

Do you want to make this trip your family vacation? There are so many  things so see and do in the Salt Lake City area.

Once registered, there is no required sign up for individual choirs,  scholas, or breakout sessions. Attend as suits your needs.

SOME COLLOQUIUM HIGHLIGHTS:

• Extensive training in Gregorian chant under a diverse and world-class faculty,  with choices of a chant class for beginners, and intermediate and and  advanced chant classes;
• Morning and afternoon sessions all week with lectures and workshops  with the best of the best thinkers and doers in the world of Catholic  music;
• Optional choral experience with one of four large choirs singing  sacred music of the masters such as Palestrina, Vierne, Bruckner,  Victoria, Byrd, Tallis, Josquin, and many others;
• Daily liturgies with careful attention to officially prescribed musical settings;
• Experience in singing or just listening to Mass settings, motets, chants, and responses;
• Residency in a full service hotel;
• Two gala dinners with top lecturers and events;
• Training in English chant from newly published works;
• Training in vocal production and technique;
•  Conducting practicum;
• Training for Priests in the sung Mass;
• Pedagogy demonstrations;
• Composers’ Forum;
• Seminars on parish music management, integrating sung parts of the  liturgy, polyphonic repertoire for beginning and more established  choirs;
• All music, including prepared packets of chant and polyphony, as part of registration.

LOCATION

Salt  Lake City is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with some  of the finest dining, mountainous views, and nicest people anywhere.  Under the leadership of the Right Reverend Lawrence Scanlan (1843 –  1915), the first bishop of Salt Lake, the construction of The Cathedral  of the Madeleine was begun in the year 1900 and completed in 1909. On  August 15 of that year, the cathedral was dedicated by Cardinal James  Gibbons of Baltimore. The architects were Carl M. Newhausen and Bernard  O. Mecklenburg.The exterior of the cathedral remains substantially the same today as  it was in 1909. The interior of the cathedral was largely created under  the leadership of The Right Reverend Joseph S. Glass, who became Bishop  of Salt Lake in 1915. A man of refined taste and strong artistic  sensibility, Bishop Glass enlisted the aid of John Theodore Comes, one  of the leading architects in America at the time, to undertake  beautification of the original plain interior. The Comes interior, begun  in 1917, was inspired in great part by the Spanish Gothic of the late  Middle Ages. the colorful murals were added at that time, as was the  dramatic polychrome evident throughout the building. The ornate reredos  shrine of St. Mary Magdalen and the various shrines were notable  features of the Comes renovation. Under the leadership of The Most Reverend William K. Weigand, who was  appointed bishop of Salt Lake City in 1980, a much needed restoration  of the interior, which had suffered the effects of dirt and pollution in  the intervening decades, was planned and executed. The results are on  full display today in breathtaking beauty.

FACULTY

• Mary Jane Ballou, Cantorae St. Augustine
• Wilko Brouwers, Monterverdi Choir, the Netherlands
• Dr. Horst Buchholz, St. Louis Cathedral
• Charles Cole, Westminster Cathedral; Brompton Oratory
• Charles Culbreth, Chant Cafe
• Rudy de Vos, Oakland Cathedral
• Aristotle Esguerra, Cantemusdomino.net
• Dr. Paul Ford, St. John Seminary; Camarillo, CA
• Gregory Glenn, Cathedral of the Madeleine
• David J. Hughes, St. Mary, Norwalk, CT
• Dr. Ann Labounsky, Duquesne University
• Dr. Mee Ae Nam, Eastern Michigan University
• Kathleen Pluth, St. Louis Church, Alexandria, VA
• Dr. William Mahrt, CMAA President, Stanford University
• Dr.Jason McFarland, Assistant Editor, ICEL
• Jeffrey Morse, St Stephen, the First Martyr Church, Sacramento, California
• Arlene Oost-Zinner, CMAA Programs Director; St. Cecilia Schola
• Jeffrey Ostrowski, Corpus Christi Watershed
• Sister Marie Agatha Ozah, Ph.D., Duquesne University
• Rev. Robert Pasley, CMAA Chaplain; Pastor, MaterEccelsiae, Berlin, NJ
• Dr. Kurt Poterack, Christendom College
• Jonathan Ryan, Organist; Jordan Prize Winner
• Dr. Edward Schaefer, University of Florida
• Dr. Susan Treacy, Ave Maria University
• Jeffrey Tucker, Chant Cafe, CMAA Director of Publications
• Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth, Executive Director, ICEL
• Dr. Paul Weber, Franciscan University of Steubenville

UNDERGRADUATE OR GRADUATE CREDIT OPTIONS

The Mary Pappert School of Music at Duquesne University   will be extending the option of two hours of undergraduate or graduate  credit to interested Colloquium participants. Dr. Ann Labounsky, chair  of Sacred Music at Duquesne University and internationally known  organist, will be your faculty adviser. Registration and payment  information for undergraduate or graduate credit is provided by Duquesne  Universtiy and payable to Duquesne University. Summer Course Registration Sheet 2012.  If you are interested in obtaining two undergraduate credits, you must  first file a formal application with Duquesne University. For more  details about the application process, please contact Director of Music  Admissions, Troy Centofanto, at musicadmissions@duq.edu  Note that registering for credit at Duquesne is supplemental to  registering for the program with the CMAA through the registration  process outlined below. Any questions concerning Duquesne’s policies  should be directed to Mr. Steve Groves at 1.412.396.6083 or groves108@duq.edu

REGISTER NOW

The Next Step for Reformers

We’ve sailed through the most substantial changed in the Catholic Mass in 40 years, and finally corrected a very flawed problem at the core of the experience of Mass goers, one that destabilized several generations of the faithful and created a massive disconnect between our practice and our tradition. At last we have a translation that is faithful to the Latin original, theologically serious, and aesthetically liturgical.

To those who have despaired that nothing will ever improve, those who have believed decline is somehow written into the fabric of our times, take notice: a dramatic improvement has in fact happened, seemingly against all odds. Authentic progress is possible with work and prayer!

With the basic structure in place - what can you do so long as the language of the liturgy is not right? - the question arises concerning the next step. What is stage two of the reform? The music issue is most certainly next on the list. Aside from the text, this is the issue that deals most substantially with the core of what we experience at liturgy. The core question is whether the music at liturgy is there to provide popular entertainment and inspiration or whether it is there to honor God by giving a beautiful and solemn voice to the liturgical texts themselves.

The Vatican seems to be alert to this issue. Early in the fall of 2011, Pope Benedict issued a motu proprio that reorganized the Congregation for Divine Worship. To what end, no one knew for sure. Now it has been reported that the Congregation will establish a new "Liturgical Art and Sacred Music Commission” that will begin to take up the music question. Adam Bartlett has linked the two events and speculated that this was the reason for the shakeup, to finally do something about the problem that everyone knows exists but few have the willingness to confront in any kind of legislative way.

We can hope for much more than the usual generalized declarations that Gregorian chant should have first place at Mass, that not all music is appropriate at Mass, and that the style of music should be an extension and development of the chant genre. Those points are excellent ones, to be sure, but they have been made again and again for decades, even centuries, but nothing really changes. They are on the verge of becoming platitudes, slogans without real operative meaning. There are several reasons for this: they are too vague and subject to interpretation, people do not really know what it means to give chant pride of place, and it is impossible to develop and extend something you do not know anything about in the first place.

What the commission really needs to take on is the issue of the Mass texts themselves. Can we freely dispense with them and replace them with texts of our own composition and choosing? Or must we defer to the liturgy as we have received it and ennoble that liturgy with music appropriate to the task? This is the real question. To put the matter plainly, the Vatican needs to rewrite its own legislation as regards music. It must make the propers of the Mass the mandatory sung text. Mandatory. No exceptions. It must absolutely forbid them to be replaced by something else. This change in the legislation alone would do far more than yet another cautious statement about the lasting value of the Church’s treasury of sacred music.

To review the history here, the idea that the propers of the Mass can be displaced has absolutely no precedent in the history of our faith. I can hear the critic now attempting to correct me on the point: “before the Second Vatican Council, we never sang the propers; at Mass, we sang various hymns at the entrance, offertory, and communion, and it is no different today.”

That’s true enough but here is the major difference. When the people were singing hymns in preconciliar times, the celebrant was saying the propers of the Mass. He said the entrance antiphon, the communion proper, and so on. They were not neglected completely; they were part of the Mass but at low Mass, they were restricted to the priest alone.

There can be no question that a major ambition of the liturgical reform was to do something about the problem that the low Mass had become the primary form of the Mass that nearly all Catholics experienced week to week. The goal - and this comes through in the writings of the liturgical movement dating back to the early part of the 20th century - was to raise the bar and make every Mass a sung Mass. The Mass was no longer to be the private preserve of the celebrant but rather those prayers and those propers were to be publicly shared and made part of the audible experience of the Mass for everyone..

For this reason, it really was a catastrophic concession that the propers of the Mass can be replaced by the other songs that we alone decide are appropriate substitutes. The concession was made as an afterthought, the option four that was thrown in to deal with the unusual contingency, but it proved to be a moral hazard of the worst sort. It quickly became the norm, and suddenly we found ourselves in an even worse position than we were before the Council convened. Not only were the propers not sung, they were not said either. They completely dropped out of the picture.

Many people have pointed out that the new edition of the flagship hymnal of the GIA, called Worship, contains for the first time an index item that draws attention to the entrance antiphon for Mass. People have sent this to me and said it represents progress. I suppose it does. But consider the irony. A mainstream book of some 1000 pages that purports to offer music for the Mass has a few inches in the way back that actually addresses the sung proper of the Mass - and this is cause for celebration? It’s incredible to think that this is what it has come down to.

If you want to see a vision of the future, take a look at Jeffrey Ostrowski’s Vatican II Hymnal. Here we have one book that is all about music and all about the liturgy, a book in which the two are not separate but a united whole. The propers of the Mass are there in English and Latin, along with the readings and plenty of music for the whole of Mass. It also provides some traditional hymnody but clearly as supplemental material designed to enhance our experience at a Catholic people and give us additional music with which to praise God. The balance is correct here. The title itself sums up the point: this is much closer to what the Council fathers envisioned.

I’ve not previously mentioned another visionary project by Adam Bartlett, the Lumen Christi Missal. What I appreciate most about this book is the clarity of vision, which comes through in the stunningly beautiful typesetting. As I looked at the first draft, I thought: this is so advanced, so effervescent, so solid. I stammered a bit at realizing what I was seeing here. It offers a serious challenge to the way we think of the sung liturgical structure. It gives us readings, the text of the antiphons of the Graduale Romanum and Roman Missal, musical settings of the Mass ordinary, Psalms (including weekday Psalms), plus weekly antiphons from the Missal and seasonal antiphons (primarily from the Graduale Romanum, but also from the Missal and Graduale Simplex) for entrance, offertory, and communion. These antiphons are through-composed with the idea that the assembly can participate in singing them if the propers are not sung in their fullness by the schola. There are no occasional hymns; 100% of this book is drawn from the liturgical text.

In some way, I would say that Adam’s book is really the first music book that takes seriously the ordinary form of Mass in English as a ritual of the Catholic faith with a voice all its own, and it is a voice that it is serious, substantial, and special. There is not a hint of nostalgia in this work (not that nostalgia is always bad); rather, we see here a settling down of a uniquely conciliar vision for how the liturgy is to be conducted in light of both tradition and the need for development. How many parishes will be bold and (dare I say) progressive enough to embrace this project? Already, there are many people who have signed up to receive notification when the project is complete. Perhaps it will end up in 2% or 5% of the best parishes. Fine. That’s a great beginning. I predict that this could be the beginning of something wonderful in our future.

In any case, these are two of many such projects underway. They are in in their infancy, and it will be some time before we begin to see them used more broadly. They all point the way forward. Gregorian chant, yes, but with a practical and realizable strategy going forward. These books move us beyond slogans toward real practice. As the Vatican commission fires up its work toward a musical reform, these books need to be widely circulated as models for how to tackle stage two of the reform of the reform.

Tucker on: The Future of Catholic Music Is Bright

The new English Missal is being delivered this week. The changes for the people improve accuracy and poetry but they are minimal. The changes for the celebrant are extensive and epic. The implications for music are far reaching. Indeed, this Missal marks a new epoch for the Roman Rite. It is a vast improvement over anything experienced by anyone under the age of 60, and it is going to change the religious life of millions in the process, not immediately but gradually over time.

The language itself is a dramatic upgrade, much closer to the Latin, and much more formal and liturgical in its tone. The music of the Mass is embedded in the text as integral to the Missal’s presentation of the Mass, and the reports of the sheer dignity and beauty of the Missal music have been sensational so far.

This alone is a good reason to be optimistic about the future of Church music. But even if when Advent comes, you are underwhelmed by what you hear at your local parish, and it seems like the same old thing as it ever was, know that there are forces at work today in the Church and in the world that are moving toward change.

There is theological improvement all around, a sounder sense of purpose among the clergy, and young generation of priests that is very alert to the liturgical question, and of course the changes made in the pontificate of Benedict XVI are having an effect. All of this will be heard in the music you experience in the Catholic liturgy of the future.

But there is another dramatic change in the making. It comes down to this: new communication technologies have provided new opportunities for liturgical musicians to share with each other and learn from each other, and this creates the conditions for continual improvement going forward.

Composer Charles Culbreth pointed out that a quick arrangement that he wrote for a chanted Gloria is now being used in Canada by people he has never met. This gave him a real kick, and he noted that this would have been impossible back in the day. Working from his laptop computer, and without even leaving his desk, he can be a provider of liturgical music for the whole world. The supply and the demand once lived in isolation. Now they can come together.

Another example. It was only six years ago when the Liber Usualis went up online for the first time. It was the first major book of Gregorian chant to achieve that universal and limitless level of distribution that the Internet makes possible.

How well I recall the hysteria! There were threats of lawsuits. People said that I was going to bring the world crashing down on my head. I had anonymous emails telling me that because the “ictus” (if you don’t know, never mind) is a copyrighted marking added by Solesmes that Interpol was going to come to my house and drag me away in a burlap sack. (I called the Library of Congress to ask if a tiny tick above a square note could really lead to legal penalties, and the lady on the phone couldn’t stop laughing.)

None of it happened (and I knew this was not going to happen because I had done about twelve months of homework before going live). Instead, vast swaths of the Catholic world had its first look at the amazing reality: the Church has assigned specific music for all liturgical action that takes place throughout the year.

We don’t have to make up music every week. Every feast, every Sunday, every prayer throughout the day had an assigned song and Psalm attached to it. The Liber Usualis, a brilliant book that served the Church well for a century before a generation of know nothings gathered them all up and threw them in the dumpster, was our own Dead Sea Scroll, the text now digitized that opened up a new window to our history as worshipping Catholics.

That was just the beginning. Hundreds of books followed. Then there were new opportunities. People made shirts of the chants, and large-scale poster to enable an old-fashioned method of singing. There were iPhone and iPad applications produced for profit. And then individuals starting making recordings of their versions of the chant and posting them on audio and vidoe. Then tutorials went online, and then databases of chant, and then other aids to make the music of the faith ever more accessible.

People who only knew of the chant through legend were suddenly surrounded by it and they imagined for the first time that they might be able to play a part in its revival. They flocked to workshops, seminars, and colloquia. Scholas were founded up all over the country, from the smallest rural parish to the biggest big-city Cathedral. It was a beautiful scene, and, if you think about it, it all happened very quickly.

Then there were new tools created to enable people to create their own chant editions. At first, this involved recreations. But over time, it became obvious that more was needed. The vernacular had come to the Catholic liturgy in 1965, and yet there was a gigantic shortage of chant music in English. The entire liturgical year was crying out to be translated into song! And these efforts began in earnest.

People who had been quietly working for decades along suddenly emerged out into the open, and their work put online. People like Fr. Columba Kelly and Fr. Samuel Weber became overnight heroes, as the corpus of their work was given away for free.

The International Commission on English in the Liturgy was watching all this very closely, and, when it came time to produce music for the new Missal, a visionary there had the idea of putting that music online and giving it away for free. And this was done - and it was something truly revolutionary and incredible. The methods that were used by the folk musicians of the 1960s - distributing free of charge and uses any and every technology possible to evangelize - were now being used by the establishment to promote truly beautiful renderings of the Church’s own corpus of work.

In the latest steps in this direction, and based on the discovery that most of the Church’s most beautiful hymnody was legally in the public domain, new websites started appearing to distributed hymns as well. Now we are even seeing masterful hymnals being produced on single desktops and being distributed through digital channels.

And keep in mind that this is all in the last five years. Ten years ago, such things would have been unthinkable. This truly is a new world and it is refashioning the Church that is ever old and ever new.

This is all glorious but this is not just a story of the triumphant of one side of the debate above music. Just as crucial is that everyone involved in this world has left their respective isolated sectors and started talking to each other and thereby drawing from each other's experience to improve what they are doing.

Think of all the material progress that came to the world in the mass migrations out of the countryside and into the city. Since the early middle ages, this has been a trend that coincided with the rise of new levels of prosperity. This not because the city automatically makes wealth. It is because people in the city can talk, learn, share, and test new ideas against old ones. Ideas flourish in the city because there is a larger pool of thoughts that everyone can draw from and apply. The end of intellectual isolation is the beginning of progress.

In the digital age, all Catholic musicians have moved to the city. We are newly aware that there is a huge Church out there and we are all desperately in need of stimulating conversation so that we can do a better job at what we do. Praise musicians have found themselves talking to chant experts and being forced to come to terms with Church legislation and history, as well as the demands of the liturgy for decorum and dignity. Chant musicians have realized that if they wanted to make progress they had to do more than hold implacably strict poses; they had to speak to the whole Church in the modern world and adapt their message and their presentations of the music in light of current realities.

In the course of all of this, we have made new discoveries of our relative ignorance of this huge area of the faith, and found that we need to draw on the insights and experiences of everyone else. We have found new opportunities to learn and to listen to each other. The chant expert has realized that perhaps the guitar strummer is on to something with his or her desire for the music at Mass to connect with people in a meaningful way. The strummer has realized that the text of the Mass does indeed matter and that style is not something wholly arbitrary and external to the liturgical structure.

All this talking and communicating has been good for us all, personally and spiritually. It has led to more tolerance, more civility, more humility. We no longer need to proceed forth with the secret desire to destroy each other; we have a much greater appreciation of our mutual dependence on every point of view in the course of finding our way toward the ideals that the Church has laid out for us.

Back in the 1960s, Msgr. Francis P. Schmitt would often express profound frustration that serious chant musicians spent more time arguing with each other over rhythm theories and other minutia than they did actually working toward their larger goals. Msgr. Richard Schuler often echoed this concern.

They were absolutely right about this. As the musicians argued with each other, their world was falling apart around them. It’s almost as if they could not see the big picture for the focus on their own tiny slice of life. The only way this could have happened is for their communication and their awareness to have been limited. They had sealed themselves off from the larger Church and world, thinking that all would be well so long as they burrowed down and kept propounding the teaching. Meanwhile, everyone else moved on.

A similar kind of myopia affected the musical establishment as it came to be in the 1980s and1990s. The big publishers kept producing their copyrighted manuscripts and collecting their royalties while figuring that their was no credible opposition to the domination of the liturgy by pop music of their own creation. They fooled themselves into believing that anyone who complains about what had happened to Catholic music was surely some old codger who will be dead in a few years. Unknowingly, they too had sealed themselves up into a tiny sector that was sealed off from larger trends in the Church and the world.

Now they wake up to a new world in which their paradigm is being seriously questioned by Catholic thinkers and musicians of all ages and at all levels of the Church. At first they bristled. But now they are listening. And this is the first stop to genuine learning and improvement. In fact, we now live in a world in which Catholic musicians from all over the world are listening, sharing, learning, improving.

We all need to do this. This does not mean that all points of view will be compromised to become a giant opinion blob or that everyone must avoid arguments and differences. Communication can also mean sharpening a point of view, improving in in light of criticism, refining an intellectual point of view or a practice in light of objections that come our way. I know that my own convictions concerning chant have only intensified as I’ve tangled with its opponents, and, in this sense, every interlocutor has been my benefactor.

In the end, we musicians must all strive to be servants of the liturgy and its divine purpose. No one person has the one correct way that applies to every cultural context, every parish, every person in the pew. We must stay engaged, talk to each other, test our dogmas and theories against practical realities, be open to new approaches, and maintain the broadness of mind that keeps us all thinking about the future.

We’ve never been presented with better opportunities to share. This is why I’m optimistic about the future of Catholic music. May we all continue to use communication and openness to ward off pride, myopia, and sectarianism, those great killers of progress. With broadness of mind and the continued willingness to seek truth and work for it, the future of Catholic music is bright.

The Integration of Liturgy and Music

I'm pleased to be returning as an active writer at the New Liturgical Movement site after more than a year of focus on our efforts at the ChantCafe.com. I hope to cultivate both going forward. NLM has a broad liturgical focus whereas the ChantCafe has a very specific interest in music as it applies to liturgy. Both sites have made huge contributions to our times of dramatic transition in the Catholic Church.

The more I understand about this entire topic, the more it seems that music and liturgy they are really inseparable; the mark of a truly mature musician in the Catholic Church is the understanding that it isn't really about the music after all but rather the integral contribution that music makes to the overall ritual.

The day after Shawn and I had visited about this topic and renewing the musical focus in this venue, the shocking news came that László Dobszay had died. I was stunned by this, and I'm sure many others feel the same way. He was a visionary, a genius, a truly innovative and brilliant thinker who understood the Roman Rite like few other living people. He was a mentor to me through his writings and his drive. He was also a very dear man.

The presence of a mind like this in the world makes a person like me absolutely afraid to write anything at all, simply because he possessed universal knowledge of a topic that I can only hope to understand in fragments. But rather than look down on what I wrote or tell me that I should stop until I had mastered what I need to know, he was always incredibly encouraging, enthusiastic, gentle, helpful, and happy to see that so many people in his last years had taken up his cause.

He must have felt like a lone warrior for all those prior decades. A champion of Dobszay's work has been Fr. Robert Skeris, who worked to bring Dobszay's writing to an English audience. When I first read the Skeris-edited book The Bugnini Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform, I was absolutely stunned. It seemed to bring everything together for me. Here was a severe critic of the structure and rubrics of what is known as the ordinary form today who was by no means an uncritical champion of the older form of Mass. Neither politics nor nostalgia interested him.

He was passionate about the truth above all else. And the two truths that this book drove home were 1) the Roman Rite is intended to be a sung liturgy, and 2) the propers of the Mass are the source text for what is to be sung by the choir. A reform that he championed was once considered outrageous: he wanted the permission to replace Mass propers with some other text to be completely repealed. I've come around to this view. So have many, many others. In fact, it is a rather common view now, and one that even finds support in the new translation of the General Instruction on the Roman Missal.

Of course he was a master in understanding the Gregorian tradition, and a true champion of the universal language of the Roman ritual. However, he was also nearly alone, for many years, in being an advocate of sung vernacular propers in the ordinary form. For years, I couldn't understand his thinking here. Why vernacular? Well, Dobszay saw that there was a step missing in the achievement of the ideal if we expect to take a leap from the prevailing practice of pop songs with random text to Latin chant from the Graduale Romanum. That step was to sing the Mass texts in the vernacular according to a chant-based idiom drawn from our long musical tradition.

He turns out to be incredibly correct on this point. In fact, he was the true inspiration behind the Simple English Propers book that has permitted regular parishes to start singing chant for the first time. This book and so many others are part of his legacy that he left in this world. In fact, I would even suggest that the new translation of the Roman Missal that is implemented this Advent owes much to his influence.

Accompaniments Pertaining to Parish Book of Chant

A nice beginning to accompaniments for the Parish Book of Chant.

The Schola of the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception and the Parish Book of Chant

Jeffrey Tucker writes:

We were thrilled to receive the following images in the mail - a thank you from The Seminary of the Immaculate Conception to the Church Music Association of America, which donated ten copies of the Parish Book of Chant to the Seminary.

PBC news

Jeffrey Tucker writes:

I note here that some reseller is cleaning up, charging a $6 premium over retail for the Parish Book of Chant. It's pretty weird for a new book to go up in price over its retail -- a good sign I would say. But I must tell you (just because you are an NLM reader) that the stock from the first print run is getting very low -- actually, very very. We are working on a reprint but it could be as long as six weeks before it is available. If you need it or want it now, you need to move on this, sans premium.

Tucker on: Events in Sacred Music

For those of you in Southern, California, time to rearrange your schedules for a chant workshop that is coming up soon. And for those who are hoping to head to Chicago for the Sacred Music Colloquium and/or Chant Intensive, note that the deadline is approaching. Here is a list of these and other events (and for old times's sake consider that this is an unbelievable list and unthinkable, say, 10 years ago):

• Gregorian Chant Workshop: an introduction to sung prayer, Saturday, May 17, Oceanside, California, with Mary Ann Carr and Fr. Stephanos Pedrano, O.S.B.
• At the Lamb’s High Feast: A Liturgical Seminar on Music and Theology, June 7, 2008, Kalamazoo, Michigan, with Fr. J.T. Zuhlsdorf and Jeffrey Tucker.
• CMAA Chant Intensive, with Scott Turkington, June 9-13, 2008, Loyola University, Chicago.
• Sacred Music Colloquium, Sponsored by the Church Music Association of America, June 16-22, 2008, Loyola University, Chicago.
• Chant Study Tour, Sponsored by Fr. Robert Skeris, July 21-August 1, 2008, Switzerland, Italy, Germany.
• Sacred Music Workshop, Costa Mesa, California. June 2008, Dean Applegate, director. Contact Bob Grant, Director of Music & Liturgy, Organist & Choirmaster, St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, 1015 Baker Street Costa Mesa, CA 92626, www.sjboc.org, /, 714 540 2214 - church office, 714 557 0761 - music office, 714 540 5902.
• Sacred Music Workshop, July 10-12, Archdiocese of Kansas City, KS. B. Andrew Mills, director.
• Mid-western Chant Workshop, July 10-12, 2008, Directed by Andrew Mills, Benedictine College, Atchison, Kansas.
  
• Conductors Seminar sponsored by Pueri Cantores, Mount St. Mary’s College, August 2-4, 2008, Los Angeles, CA.
• Pope Benedict XVI and the Sacred Liturgy, St. Augustine Liturgical Atelier of Hungary, August 21-24, 2009, Budapest, Hungary. Speakers: Conrad, S. FSSP; Dobszay, L.; Földváry, M. I.; Hemming, L. P.; Hoping, H.; Kolinski, D. CJC; Kocik, Th. M.; Kubilius, M. (AD FONTES); Pristas, L.; Reid, A.; Rihmer, Z.; Schmitz, R. M. ICRSS; Skeris, R.A.; Tanoüarn, Guillaume de IBP; Ullmann, P. Á. OPraem (StAugustie Liturgical Atelier).


• Sacred Music Workshop, McLean, Virginia. Oct. 17-18, 2008. Scott Turkington, director.