Missa Cantata in a Medieval Church in Finland

On Wednesday of last week, the feast of St Catherine of Alexandria, the Catholic community in Karis (Karjaa), Finland (about 48 miles west of Helsinki), celebrated a Missa cantata in the traditional rite on the patronal feast day of a local church dedicated to her; it was originally built in 1470, and retains many of its medieval decorations. It has been a long time since we’ve shown anything from Finland, and so we are happy to share Mr Thế Anh’s pictures of the Mass, which was celebrated by Fr Anders Hamberg, and sung by the Schola Verbi Dei Sono from Helsinki, led by Markus Makelä, with the participation of the Schola Gregoriana Aboensis from Turku. Feliciter!

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Progressive Solemnity: Traditional Interpretations and Methods

Solemn Mass: the ancient norm and exemplar of the Roman Rite

In the world of the reformed liturgy, one encounters a concept of “progressive solemnity” that has little to do with the Latin liturgical tradition. Basically, the idea is this: start with a spoken Mass as your baseline, and then add things on to it ad libitum: for an ordinary day, sing the “presidential” parts; on a feast, add the propers; on a very special day, bring on the incense and chant the Introit, etc.

In practice, at least in my experience, it ends up being a random series of steps: on weekdays we sing the Alleluia but nothing else; on feasts, we sing the Gloria and the Alleluia; on Sundays we do the four-hymn sandwich and the celebrant sings his parts. Since there is much confusion about what rubrics, if any, govern these sorts of decisions, just about any mix-n-match combination can happen. [1]

With the traditional Roman rite, this confusion is simply not possible: a Mass is either a Low Mass or a Missa cantata or a Missa solemnis, etc., and each has strict requirements about what is to be sung (or not sung). As a result, followers of the traditional rite tend to use the forms of Mass as a way of distinguishing calendrical solemnity: ferias or low-ranking feasts will be Low Masses; high-ranking feasts are Missae Cantatae; Sundays and Holy Days are Solemn High Masses; and, on the most special occasions, a bishop may be invited in for a Pontifical High Mass.

While this is understandable for practical reasons (bishops are not commonly available to pontificate, and even a deacon and subdeacon can be hard to come by), we should recognize that it is not the primary way in which the liturgical tradition of the Church distinguishes degrees of solemnity. In a church sufficiently well equipped with ministers, such as a monastic community or a cathedral with canons, the liturgy will be sung every day; it could be solemn every day. The normative — in the sense of fundamental and exemplary — form of liturgy will always be the chanted rite in the presence of the bishop or abbot, or the nearest thing to it, the Missa solemnis.

On one of my visits to the Benedictine monastery of Norcia, I remember how beautiful it was to attend several solemn Masses in a week. It showed me that this can indeed be a norm rather than an exception. Moreover, since they were so skilled in the liturgy and the chant, and there was no homily, solemn Mass took less than an hour. Each day nevertheless had a distinctive feel to it because of the intelligent use of a plethora of other marks for distinguishing levels of feasts that Catholic tradition has developed over the centuries. In other words, taking the solemn form as normative does not mean placing everything at the same level of solemnity. The solemnity is distinguished rather by the accidents, the manner or mode in which the elements of the liturgy are configured.

Gradations in Gregorian Chant

While every liturgy should ideally be chanted, there are notable distinctions within the repertoire of chant itself. Fr. Dominique Delalande, O.P., observes:

It is too obvious to be denied that a celebration sung in the Gregorian manner is more solemn than a celebration which is merely recited; but this statement is especially true in the modern perspective of a celebration which is habitually recited. The ancients had provided melodies for the most modest celebrations of the liturgical year, and these melodies were no less carefully worked out than those of the great feasts. For them the chant was, before all else, a means of giving to liturgical prayer a fullness of religious and contemplative value, whatever might be the solemnity of the day. Such should also be our sole preoccupation in singing. As long as people look upon the Gregorian chant solely as a means of solemnising the celebration, there will be the danger of making it deviate from its true path, which is more interior. [2]

Put differently, Fr. Delalande is saying that the chant is integral to the expression of the liturgy, not a mere ornament tacked on, like a bow on a Christmas present, and that we do well to utilize the different spheres of chant rather than merely toggling back and forth between recited and sung.

Ordinary. For example, the Mass Ordinary given in the Liber Usualis for ferias is short and simple, while the Ordinaries suggested for Solemn Feasts (Mass II, Kyrie fons bonitatis, or Mass III, Kyrie Deus sempiterne) are melodically elaborate and grand in scope. Five Ordinaries (III–VIII), of varying complexity and length, are suggested for Doubles. Simpler feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, e.g., the Holy Name on September 12, might use Ordinary X, while loftier feasts such as the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption could use the great Mass IX, Cum jubilo.

Creed. Similarly, the Liber makes available six settings of the Creed (and still others are in circulation), which vary considerably in their ornateness or “tonality.” Once again, the choice of a Creed melody can reflect something of the nature of the feast or occasion.

Preface. The missal offers three tones for the Prefaces: simple, solemn, and more solemn (solemnior). For a ferial Mass, a Requiem, or a lesser feast, the simple tone should be used; for a higher-ranking feast, such as that of an apostle or doctor, the solemn tone could be used; for the highest feasts, such as Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Conception, or the Assumption, the more solemn tone would be highly appropriate. (In some versions of the anecdote, Mozart is said to have claimed that he would gladly exchange all his music for the fame of having composed the Preface tone. If he said this, he would doubtless have been thinking of the more solemn tone, which is indeed of rare beauty.)

Propers. The Proper chants should be sung in full in any case, but for a special occasion with incense and more ceremonial, a verse from the Offertoriale Triplex might be used, and at Communion time, verses and a doxology to go with the antiphon.

Beyond the chant, there are other obvious and subtle ways to elevate or lower the solemnity of a particular day on the calendar, so that ferias do not seem the equal of feasts of saints, and feasts of saints the equal of feasts of Our Lady, and these, in turn, those of Our Lord. It is true that many of the following presuppose a well-stocked sacristy the contents of which have been assembled over a period of time by people with good taste who understand that there is a symbolic value in having more than one kind of any given item.

In the Realm of Sight 

Since, as Aristotle says, the sense of sight is the one that gives us the most information about things, it is not surprising that the largest number of modes for signaling solemnity pertain to the visual domain.

(Photo courtesy of Liturgical Arts Journal)

1. Copes, chasubles, dalmatics, tunicles. It is obvious that plainer vestments should be used for ferias, more decorative ones for feasts, and over-the-top ones for solemnities. There are churches that have special sets used only at Christmas and/or Easter, or for a patronal feastday, etc.

2. Other vestments. For a feria, the alb can be plain; for a feast, it can be patterned; for a solemnity, with lacework. When worn with a Roman chasuble, the design of the alb becomes an important aesthetic element in itself. Similarly, the surplices of acolytes can be plain white or with worked bordered; the cassocks can be black throughout the year but red for Christmastide and Paschaltide.

3. Chalice, paten, and other vessels. It is obvious that these can be of simple or ornate design; in gold or silver or a combination thereof; with or without stones; taller or more squat, Romanesque, Gothic, or Baroque; engraved or plain; etc. This is one detail that is particularly noticed by the faithful, because of the custom of gazing upon the chalice as it is elevated and praying: “My Lord and my God!”

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Why Do We Sing Liturgical Texts?

In all religions of the world, we find the chanting of sacred texts. Such a surprising convergence suggests that there is a natural connection between the worship of the divine and singing the texts involved in the rites — that is, a connection based on the nature of man, of song, and of word.

The Philosophy of Singing Religious Texts

This universal practice derives from an intuitive sense that holy things and the holy sentiments that go along with them should not be talked about as ordinary everyday things are, but elevated to a higher level through melodious modulation—or submerged into silence. Authentic rituals, therefore, tend to alternate between silences (either for meditation or during a symbolic action) and chanting (which may or may not be accompanied by some other action).

Acts of public worship are rendered more solemn, and their content more appealing and memorable, by the singing of clergy, cantors, choir, and congregation. Moreover, the contrast between singing (human expression at its highest) and silence (a deliberate “apophatic” withholding of discourse) is more striking than the contrast between speaking and not speaking. The former is like the rise and fall of ocean waves, while the latter seems more like switching a lightbulb on and off.

Speech is primarily discursive and instructional, aimed at a listener, while song, which more easily and naturally unites many singers into one body, is capable of being in addition the bearer of feelings and of meanings that go beyond what words can convey, greatly augmenting the penetrating power of the words themselves. We find this especially in the melismas of chant, the lengthy melodic elaborations on a single syllable that give voice to inner emotions and aspirations that words cannot fully express.

No one has commented more insightfully than the philosopher of music Victor Zuckerkandl on the almost mystical power of song to unite singers with each other, and the subject with the object. In his book Man the Musician, published by Princeton University Press in 1973, he writes:

Music is appropriate, is helpful, where self-abandon is intended or required — where the self goes beyond itself, where subject and object come together. Tones seem to provide the bridge that makes it possible, or at least makes it easier, to cross the boundary separating the two. (24–25)

The spoken word presupposes “the other,” the person or persons to whom it is addressed; the one speaking and the one spoken to are turned toward each other; the word goes out from one to the other, creating a situation in which the two are facing each other as distinct, separate individuals. Wherever there is talk, there is a “he-not-I” on the one hand and his counterpart, an “I-not-he,” on the other. This is why the word is not the natural expression of the group. ...
       [S]inging is the natural and appropriate expression of the group, of the togetherness of individuals within the group. If this is the case, we may assume that tones — singing — essentially express not the individual but the group; more accurately, the individual in so far as he is a member, of the group; still more accurately, the individual in so far as his relation to the others is not one of “facing them” but one of togetherness.
       Whereas words turn people toward each other, as it were, make them look at each other, tones turn them all in the same direction: everyone follows the tones on their way out and on their way back. The moment tones resound, the situation where one party faces another is transmuted into a situation of togetherness, the many distinct individuals into the one group. (27–29)

And finally:

If his words are not merely spoken but sung, they build a living bridge that links him with the things referred to by the words, that transmutes distinction and separation into togetherness. By means of the tones, the speaker goes out to the things, brings the things from outside within himself, so that they are no longer “the other,” something alien that he is not, but the other and his own in one. …
       The singer remains what he is, but his self is enlarged, his vital range is extended: being what he is he can now, without losing his identity, be with what he is not; and the other, being what it is, can, without losing its identity, be with him. (29–30)

Ultimately, it comes down to this: we sing when we are at one, or wish to be at one, with our activity or the object of our activity. This is true when we are in love with another person. It is most of all true when we are in love with God. That is the origin of the incomparably great music of the Catholic tradition. St. Augustine says: “Only the lover sings.” We sing… and we whisper… and we fall silent.

In the course of this discussion, Zuckerkandl makes a point that reminds me painfully of years of growing up in the Novus Ordo with congregations reciting together the Gloria or the “Holy, Holy, Holy”:

Can one imagine that people come together to speak songs? One can, but only as a logical possibility; in real life this would be absurd. It would turn something natural into something utterly unnatural. (25)

The recitation of normatively sung texts at a Low Mass “works” only because the priest alone is saying the texts, and doing so at the altar, ad orientem. [1] He is not addressing the words of the song to anyone except God. They thereby acquire a ritual status comparable to that of the recited Canon. The speaking of sung texts is not liturgically ideal; really this form of Mass developed for the personal devotion of the priest when celebrating at a side altar with a clerk. Nevertheless, to have a large church packed with people and then to say the songs rather than sing them should strike everyone as odd. But we may leave this point aside for the nonce, as I have taken it up elsewhere.

Practical Reasons for Singing Texts

There are also practical reasons for singing. As experience proves, texts that are sung or chanted with correct elocution are heard with greater clarity and forcefulness in a large assembly of people than texts that are read aloud or even shouted. The music has a way of carrying the words and making them penetrate the listeners’ ears and souls. In ancient times, epic and lyric poetry, and even parts of political speeches, were chanted for this very reason.

Electrical amplification was unnecessary when architects sought to build spaces that resonated properly and liturgical ministers learned how to sing out. A well-built church with well-trained singers has absolutely no need of artificial amplification. Moreover, not everything in the liturgy has to be heard by everyone, contrary to one of the key assumptions behind the wreckovation of our rites.

It is hard to imagine a modern-day airport managing without speakers for announcements. It is, in contrast, a tragedy when the same technical, pragmatic, impersonal, and unfocused type of sound-production invades churches. In a church, the microphone kills the intimacy, humility, locality, and directionality of the human voice. The voice now becomes that of a placeless giant, a Big Brother larger than life, coming from everywhere and nowhere, dominating and subduing the listener. Putting mics and speakers in a church does not enhance a natural process; it subverts it. There is no continuum between the unaided voice and the artificially amplified voice: they are two separate phenomena, with altogether different phenomenologies.

When ritual texts are adorned with fitting music, their message “carries,” both physically and spiritually.

Gregorian Chant as the Ideal of Sung Text

The eight characteristics of Gregorian chant are:

• primacy of the word
• free rhythm
• unison singing
• unaccompanied vocalization
• modality
• anonymity
• emotional moderation
• unambiguous sacrality

(I have discussed these in greater detail here.)

These characteristics, taken together, show that chant is not only a little bit different from other types of vocal music, but radically and profoundly different. [2] It is liturgical music through and through, existing solely for divine worship, perfectly suited to its verbal, sacred nature, and well suited to aid the faithful who associate it with that worship and who find it both beautiful and strange, as God Himself is.

We can see better now, why chant is a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy, why it gives a nobler form to the celebration, and why it is specially suited to the Roman Rite and deserves the foremost place within it—all of which was asserted without ambiguity in Sacrosanctum Concilium.

When performed in an edifying manner, chant in and of itself “accords with the spirit of the liturgical action,” which cannot be assumed for any other piece of music. In other words, chant furnishes the very definition of what it means to “accord with the spirit of the liturgical action,” and other musical works must line up to be evaluated, as it were, by this supreme criterion — as Pope St Pius X had said in his motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini: “It is fully legitimate to lay down the following rule: the more closely a composition for church approaches in its movement, inspiration, and savor the Gregorian form, the more sacred and liturgical it becomes; and the more out of harmony it is with that supreme model, the less worthy it is of the temple.”

NOTES

[1] This has come to be my principal objection to the dialogue Mass, at least inasmuch as it involves reciting those texts that would normally be sung.

[2] It’s often been remarked that the potent connection between chant and Catholicism is well exploited by Hollywood movie directors, who, whenever they want to evoke a “Catholic atmosphere,” make sure there is some chant wafting in the background. If only today’s clergy had half as much “business sense”!

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for information, articles, sacred music, and Os Justi Press.

Rorate Mass at Holy Ghost, Tiverton R.I., December 9th

Early risers in the East Bay area of Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, and other locals who, in the quasi-penitential spirit of Advent, are willing to rouse themselves before dawn on a Saturday morning, may wish to attend this “Rorate Mass” at Holy Ghost Church in Tiverton, Rhode Island — a Missa cantata celebrated by Father Jay Finelli (the “iPadre”). (Holy Ghost Parish has been the subject of NLM posts several times, most recently HERE). Tapers and Mass propers will be provided. Coffee and doughnuts will be available in the church hall immediately after Mass. The church is located at 316 Judson Street in Tiverton, Rhode Island.

Homogeneity vs. Hierarchy: On the Treatment of Verbal Moments

Chanting the Epistle

In discussions of problems with the Novus Ordo Missae, its advocates will frequently say that its opponents are always assuming the “worst practices,” that is, the panoply of liturgical abuses so prevalent that they almost constitute an unspoken set of rubrics as rigidly required as that of any Latin altar missal. This is a fair point. As Cardinal Sarah has tirelessly pointed out, the Novus Ordo allows for many of the elements that Catholics devoted to the Church’s Latin liturgical tradition value: first and foremost, the ad orientem stance, which is presupposed in the very rubrics of the Missal of Paul VI; the use of Latin, Gregorian chant, the Roman Canon, incense, and beautiful vestments and vessels; a prominent place for silence; only men in the sanctuary, and always liturgically vested. True as all of this may be — and we must protest, with Martin Mosebach, that it is a profound problem for such elements to be merely allowed and not required — we are nevertheless confronted in the Novus Ordo with elements of rupture that no “hermeneutic of continuity” can heal or overcome. This post will consider one of the most obvious of these, namely, how what I shall call “verbal moments” are treated in terms of their spatial and positional differentiation.

Think about a Sunday Mass in the Ordinary Form: the first reading, the psalm, the second reading, the Gospel, the homily, and the prayer of the faithful are usually all recited, all at the same place (the ambo), always versus populum in just the same way. The Eucharistic Prayer, high point of the liturgy, is also recited from the nearby altar, versus populum, in the same voice as the Gospel is read. A huge swath of the liturgy is being performed in exactly the same manner: read aloud, in the vernacular; read towards the people; read from more or less the same place; read in the same auditorium voice. It has the effect of evening everything to the same level. There is no ascent; there is only succession. It is reminiscent of Newton’s notion of time as equably flowing at the same pace. One moment of time is the same as any other. The liturgy becomes a homogenous block of undifferentiated verbiage. It is almost a demonstration of how much greater time can be than space — as in waiting in a doctor’s or a dentist’s office.

How different, I reflected, is the traditional Roman liturgy, in the way it has developed over the centuries![1] Acknowledging the ceremonial differences between Low Mass, High Mass, Solemn High Mass, and Pontifical Mass, there is a commonality of approach whereby one can see the “genetic derivation” of the later simpler forms from the earlier and more elaborate forms.[2]

Chanting the Gospel at a Missa cantata

Chanting the Gospel at a Missa solemnis

In the Low Mass as well as in the Missa Cantata, the priest begins at the foot of the altar, where he tarries to prepare himself for the arduous ascent. He works his way up to the altar to kiss it, and commences the Introit at the southern side. All throughout the liturgy he is weaving back and forth, like a figure-skater tracing out a pattern. He reads or chants the Epistle on the side that represents the faithful — the Mediterranean south, where the Faith was first planted. The Gradual and Alleluia are chanted by the Schola somewhere else in the church, usually in a choir loft or side chapel. After these interlectional chants, the priest crosses over to read or chant the Gospel towards the side that represents the unconverted pagan world — the cold and barbaric north, where many fought to plant the Faith. He leaves the altar for the ambo, where he will explicate the Word of God to the people. When he is finished, he returns to the altar, kisses it in reverence, asks the people to join him in prayer, and enters into the heart of the Mass with the Offertory. From this point onwards, apart from a momentary excursion to the south, he is firmly fixed at the middle of the altar for the oblation of the Victim, offered to the East, facing the same way the people are. All are caught up in the same orientation — to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The Solemn High Mass expresses all of this differentiation of “verbal moments” even more dramatically, when the subdeacon chants the Epistle, the deacon chants the Gospel, and the priest, after the homily, offers the Holy Sacrifice.

What we see here in the original Roman rite is the tracing out of a sacred geography, whereby the “verbal moments” in the Mass are hierarchically and symbolically ordered. The Epistle at the south, the Gospel towards the north, the homily towards the people, and the Canon towards the Lord demonstrate in a bodily way, with the vividness of the immediately sensible, the differentiation and articulation of liturgical acts. The multiple qualities of each “verbal moment,” whether proclaimed aloud or whispered sotto voce, gives to each its own profile, a dignity that corresponds to its function:

subdeacon	Epistle	“southerly”	epistle tone
schola	Gradual	elsewhere	melismatic tone
deacon	Gospel	northwards	Gospel tone	incense, candles
priest	homily	westwards	plain speech
priest	Canon	eastwards	silence	incense, candles, bells

The Epistle can be fully and simply the Epistle, and retains its dignity as the sacrament of the Word by not being announced to the people as if it were merely instructional. The homily, as instructional, is rightly directed to the people. Last and best of all, “in the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4), comes the Canon of the Mass, “the dispensation of the mystery which hath been hidden from eternity in God” (Eph 3:9), which is uttered in silence, as the Word was made flesh in silence (Dum medium silentium), with nothing of the priest’s individual face or voice edging into the perfect embodiment of the suffering and glorified Christ. There is an arc of spiritual progression from one moment of the liturgy to the next. We are caught up in pilgrimage. We sense ourselves to be nearing a destination, one stage of a journey after another, towards the Promised Land. Rather than one thing after another, as in a modern agenda, each step is qualitatively different — a fact impressed on us unmistakably by the use of space, posture, orientation, chant tone, and voice level.

Preaching the homily

In contrast, we see in the reformed rite an anti-hierarchical egalitarianism that levels, equalizes, homogenizes, verbalizes, and externalizes. With it comes the loss of any order of acts of intimacy — the varied series of communications from outward to inward, from echo to source, from shadow to light, from memory to reality, from word to flesh. The monotony of “out loud, versus populum” makes the entire experience uniform, contiguous, blurred, unimpressive, and unmemorable; it sends a message that all of this is book learning, directed to this congregation, in keeping with congregationalist theology. It is far different with the unreformed rite, in which hierarchy is the very soul of the liturgical event. Everything that is to be done must be done in its due (distinctive) place, making full use of compass points, background and foreground, levels of voice, contour of tones. It places heterogenous utterances at different levels, in complex relationships, driving always towards internalization of meaning, and this it does precisely through the senses, so that we see and hear and even smell the stages of the journey. The liturgy is in motion, driving towards a destination, and we are privileged to be carried along with it.

As mentioned above, hierarchical differentiation, sacred geography, and progressive motion are carried to their fullest extent in the distinctive roles and places allotted to priest, deacon, and subdeacon in the Missa solemnis or Solemn High Mass. The subdeacon’s chanting of the Epistle; the deacon’s chanting of the Gospel, using a book held by the subdeacon, flanked by acolytes bearing torches and incense; the priest’s preaching aloud and then praying in silence at the Canon, not to mention the priest’s blessing of the deacon and the latter’s return to the priest after chanting the Gospel — all of these articulations of liturgical action show a profound awareness of the language of the body and the bodiliness of language, so that we never have the feeling of being trapped in tedious talk, but are borne from one station to the next, as if we were following the Lord through the desert to the Jordan, from the Jordan to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to the heavenly sanctuary. He moves in us and among us; His ministers move; we move with Him and with them.

As is so often the case, I feel inadequate to express what I have experienced, but I take consolation in knowing that those who assist at the traditional Mass will grasp that of which I speak — and in hoping that those who have not yet had the happiness of assisting at it may be moved to seek it out, so that they, too, may join the same pilgrimage. “And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Lk 9:51).

Silently offering the Divine Victim

NOTES

[1] I say “as it has developed,” because the locations from which certain parts of the liturgy are conducted have changed over the centuries, as the architectural layout of the church and especially its sanctuary and ambo underwent various modifications. Nevertheless, every age of the Church shows us a keen awareness of the spatiality of liturgical actions, and the fittingness of assigning different moments to different places in the building, different ministers, and distinctive stances and tones.

[2] I say this deliberately because, as in the history of human languages, so in the history of liturgy, the idea of evolution from simpler to more complex is only partially true. We can find many examples where ancient forms are more complex or elaborate than later forms. Just as classical Greek is more complex than classical Latin, Latin than Italian, and 19th-century Italian than 21st-century Italian, so too is the pontifical liturgy of the Middle Ages more complex than the Missa solemnis, the Missa cantata, and the Missa recitata.

Death by Dullness: Prioritizing Speech over Silence and Song

A friend and I were talking recently about the difference between sight in the liturgy and sound. If a liturgy looks silly, as it invariably does when the priest is facing the people but addressing God, one can always close one’s eyes and retreat into the interior castle (or at least make the attempt). But if there is endless blather and/or loud muzak, one cannot close one’s ears — and it would be rude to plug them with one’s fingers or reach for the wax earplugs. Put simply, the sound of the liturgy is more unavoidable and more determinative than the sight of it.

The modern liturgy is pretty much designed to be a non-stop talkie from start to finish. Either the priest is talking or the lectors are talking or the people are making responses or songs are being sung. There is nary a moment to absorb what has been uttered, to reflect on what has been sung, or to prepare for the next step, whatever it might be. One feels like the unfortunate pupil of an overbearing governess who never stops lecturing him about how he must tie his shoes, wash his face, do his long division, and write in his copybook with a regular cursive.

Let us face it: a recited vernacular Mass, with the priest going on and on and on in a rambling monotone, can have a soul-deadening effect. Because everything is said aloud and facing the people, it is the opposite of a traditional Low Mass, which is said quietly and facing the Lord. Because there is so little singing and so little silence, it is also the opposite of a traditional High Mass. At the Novus Ordo Neither-High-Nor-Low Mass, one drowns in an ocean of dull verbiage. No wonder the Church is dying: how could it survive such waves of boredom, worse in their own way than any iconoclasm?

Young Catholics who are serious about their faith crave the silence and spaciousness of the traditional liturgy, the way it moves slowly, breathes, opens out, respects and demands one’s own prayer, made in one’s own way and at one’s own pace. It is so liberating to attend a Mass where the focus is somewhere else, beyond, and you catch up as you can, without being addressed or cajoled. It is merciful to our weaknesses and yet plays to our strengths.

Priests, dear priests who must celebrate the Ordinary Form: please, please do everything you can to avoid this death by verbosity! Pray the Roman Canon sotto voce, so that it is just barely audible and preserves its dignity, rather than being announced like the daily news so that it loses its sacrality. Make sure you are chanting as much of the Mass as you can, and that a choir or schola is chanting the Ordinary and the Propers. Make sure there is silence. Only in these ways can the Ordinary Form avoid being a form of torture to the ears of body and soul.

* * *

With fifty years of sonic saturation behind us, we can appreciate far better the age-old wisdom of Holy Mother Church, who bid that her High Mass be sung from start to finish and her Low Mass be as quiet as a whisper.[1] In a solemn Mass or a Missa cantata, almost everything is either chanted or done in silence; only the Confiteor before Communion (if there is one) and the “Domine, non sum dignus” are spoken. This means about 99% of the liturgy’s audible words are chanted. In a Low Mass or a Missa recitata, everything is spoken by the celebrant sotto voce or silently, so that it is perfectly obvious to worshipers that the priest is speaking intimately to the Lord, not addressing a message to them. As a result, it is far easier for the laity themselves to pray — they are borne along the river of prayer that flows from the priest’s lips. Thus, tradition presents us with the marvelous spectacle of two forms of worship, one of which alternates ecstatically between song and silence, while the other is absorbed in a colloquy of love that dares not profane itself with the voice of everyday speech. Both are admirably suited to foster prayer: the prayer of the community, the prayer of contemplation, the prayer of the heart.

With the Novus Ordo, all this has been banished. Where have the chanted propers, the chanted Ordinary, the chanted priestly prayers, gone? Where has the profound silence gone? In a typical weekday celebration, 95% of the liturgy is spoken out loud, towards the people as an audience. It is talk, talk, talk, a wearisome march through texts that are not even particularly notable for their literary qualities (unlike, in this respect, the Anglican Ordinariate liturgy, which is free to draw upon some of the best English prose ever put on paper). No wonder it has so little impact on the soul: it neither creates the space required for assimilation nor exults and woos with the song of the divine lover. It is, as it were, neither cold nor hot, neither speechless nor lyrical; it is lukewarm — and we know what happens to the lukewarm.

Song is the realm of the lover, the mourner, and the bacchante, of heightened experience, of exultation and nobility, of beauty finding its voice. Silence is the realm of mystics in the grip of ineffability, genius concentrating on a problem, poets reminiscing and reaching for a word, the simple man confronted with realities vastly greater than himself, like love and death. Speech, for its part, is the realm of the ordinary, the matter-of-fact, the realm of commerce and politics. This is why both sung liturgy and silent liturgy are glorious, effective, and rich, each in its own way, while spoken liturgy is pale, feeble, and impoverished, a failure off the blocks. We are looking at a phenomenological difference that goes to the very heart of worship — what we are doing, towards whom, by whom, and why.

There are ironclad laws of psychology that warn us against the naïve belief that our theories correspond to reality, and never is this more true than in the transition from liturgical theory to contemporary praxis. The Novus Ordo era has witnessed gigantic scholarly defenses that sprawl across many volumes of text, but none of this matters in the least for the actual experience of worship. No matter how many books of theory are written, the fundamental mode of a liturgy conveys a message more obvious than any explanation. The person who enters a church and is caught up in the music and ceremonial of a High Mass or challenged to silent prayer by a Low Mass, both of which are obviously directed away from him towards the numinous Other, is experiencing divine worship, pure and simple. The person who enters a church and is literally confronted by a speaker emitting copious quantities of speech is experiencing a self-help seminar, regardless of whom the text is addressed to.

We can recognize here the prescience of Marshall McLuhan, who, intuiting that the medium somehow is the message, knew that bringing microphones and speakers into churches could have no other effect than to undermine the liturgy. The medium of the Mass is its first and abiding message to the faithful, within which everything else finds its place, acquires its color or tone. Liturgical song ennobles all that it touches, turning the wood of words into the gold of glory. Silence endows all that it envelopes with a spirit of tranquility and a transcendence of orientation that allows words to keep their primordial freshness, as if they were coins never worn by constant handling. Of the three sisters, speech is the mode that risks profanation and buffoonery. Is it not famously awkward to speak at the most terrifying or wondrous moments, in an intimate embrace before or after a long parting, in a time of excruciating crisis, insoluble anguish, or unexpected victory, when one is face to face with the inscrutable, the inexorable, the immeasurable? Speech can do nothing in these situations except make a fool of itself or bring discredit to its subject. Far better to sink into silence or find a music that, with uncanny modulations, goes beyond the realm of speech into that which is intuited, felt, or mused on. This is just what traditional liturgy does: it sinks gratefully and calmly into silence, or it finds a chant that conveys the inner “visage” of the words in a manner subtle and penetrating.

The most perfect exemplification of this dialectic of music and silence is the traditional Solemn High Mass, of which the Missa cantata is an echo. The new liturgical movement should be striving for nothing less than a Solemn High Mass every Sunday in every parish. I realize that this goal is far, very far away, but it must be our goal.

Priests who know neither the peace of the Low Mass nor the glory of the High Mass[2]: what are you waiting for? Learn to celebrate the Low Mass, and after that, learn the Missa cantata so that you can introduce it to your people! Catholics are starving for real liturgy — liturgy in which the silences and the music make integral sense, rather than seeming like random add-ons supplied by aging hippies or unguided volunteers. Speech has been bossing around her sisters far too long. It is time for liturgical silence and liturgical song to take their proper places in the life of the Church, for the life of the world.


NOTES

[1] A reader may wonder what I think about the Dialogue Mass, the question that divides father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, etc. I think there is a peculiar beauty and power in a Low Mass that is whispered by the priest at the side altar early in the morning, and that this should never disappear from the life of the Church. I have also seen the Dialogue Mass work well in a situation where there is a congregation conversant with the Latin responses and eager to make them with the servers. Even in a Dialogue Mass there is plenty of silence; it does not (or at least need not) lose the prayerfulness characteristic of this classical liturgy. It seems to me that a dogmatic position for or against the Dialogue Mass is something that should be avoided like the plague.

[2] See my article "The Problem of the Dominant Low Mass and the Rare High Mass."

“Missa Dulcis Amica Dei,” St. Louis Church, Pittsford, New York

Saint Louis parish in Pittsford, New York (Diocese of Rochester), highlighted the musical legacy of its patron saint with a patronal feast-day Missa Cantata on August 25th, featuring music from the Sainte-Chapelle, the shrine built by St. Louis IX to house the Crown of Thorns and a piece of the True Cross. A schola led by Dr. Aaron James sang the “Missa Dulcis amica Dei” by Pierre Certon, the master of the choristers at Sainte-Chapelle from 1536 to 1572. The music was newly transcribed from its sixteenth-century sources for this occasion. Father Peter Mottola, parochial vicar, was the celebrant.

The Problem of the Dominant Low Mass and the Rare High Mass

Cantabiles mihi erant justificationes tuae in loco peregrinationis meae. Thy justifications were the subject of my song, in the place of my pilgrimage. – Psalm 118:54

If one wished to characterize the Low Mass in a single word, that word might be PEACE. And if one were searching for a word to describe the High Mass, it might be GLORY. These are the two facets of the mystery proclaimed in the song of the angels: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will” (Lk 2:14). God on high deserves to receive the homage of what is most beautiful and most sublime, which we see in a Missa cantata, even more in a Solemn High Mass, and most of all in a Pontifical Mass. It is no less true that the Son of God entered our midst as the Son of Man, with a quiet humility reflected in the quiet prayer and noble simplicity of the Low Mass.[1] Whether high or low, full of splendor or full of silence, the traditional Mass puts one in a state of prayerful attentiveness and leaves one in a state of simple adoration.[2]

Contemplation is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. “I look at him and he looks at me”: this is what a certain peasant of Ars in the time of his holy curé used to say while praying before the tabernacle. . . . Contemplation also turns its gaze on the mysteries of the life of Christ. Thus it learns the “interior knowledge of our Lord,” the more to love him and follow him. (Catechism, 2715)

Sung Mass was — and, in a certain sense, still is — the normative liturgy of the Roman Rite. Even as Byzantine liturgies are sung as a rule, so too was the Roman liturgy, once upon a time; its sung form long antedated the development of the recited Mass, and it is still the ideal when circumstances warrant, as far as the Magisterium is concerned.[3]

Unfortunately, the Low-Mass-as-norm mentality is very strong and holds people in its grip. A friend wrote to me that in her local TLM community, about 40 attend the Sunday High Mass, whereas the Low Mass is packed with faithful. They like the fact that it’s earlier in the morning, offers quiet time for praying privately, and doesn’t last too long. This reaction, in turn, could signify several things.

First, it cannot be denied that people of the Western world (perhaps especially Americans) tend to be impatient with ceremonial or religious ritual and would rather fulfill their obligation as efficiently as possible. Sung in full from the Liber Usualis, the great interlectional chants — I refer to the Gradual and Alleluia, or Gradual and Tract, or Paschal double Alleluia — would undoubtedly seem like a sojourn in Purgatory for some. The sung Mass is a feast for the senses and the spirit, but it definitely requires more work to pull it off and more leisure to appreciate it, and busy Americans are often unwilling to invest either the extra work or the larger leisure.

A second and related problem is the atrocious lack of musical education among clergy and laity, which discourages the attempt to sing the Mass. It may sometimes be true that the musical resources are simply lacking. But most of the time, the problem is a combination of unreasonable expectations and people who are a bit lazy. The chanted Mass does not have to sound professionally recordable. It is enough that all that should be sung is sung, with the correct texts and approximately the right melodies.

Third and most deeply, the clinging to Low Mass is a sign of human beings starved and starving for silence and a kind of solitude. Many are attracted to the traditional Latin Mass precisely because it is, and comes across as, an unhurried, earnest, intimate encounter with God, like Moses before the burning bush, a form of worship that is totally given over to Him and induces in the worshiper a filial fear, a hushed reverence before the Lord of heaven and earth. The very posture of the priest and the long moments of silence emphasize that this is all about Him, not about you, except inasmuch as you belong to Him. Indeed, this form of the Mass is so theocentric that it seems, in a manner of speaking, not to care what you think or feel — which is a tremendously liberating thing. How freeing it is to enter a church, kneel, and get swept away in the great prayer of the Eternal High Priest, an offering that is so much greater and loftier than you and your wretchedness, yet to which you are still invited to contribute your widow’s mite, knowing that Christ will accept it and multiply it!

All of this is provided by both the traditional Low Mass and the High Mass, but not by a reformed liturgy that seeks above all to establish contact with the congregation at hand and to mobilize it for action. There, the individual worshiper is put on the spot, made the object of appeals and the subject of demands, and hurried along to communion time, while being habituated to feeling comfortable around the sacred. There is little if any habituation in the fear and wonder that should be our dispositions towards the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. 

One cannot help wondering, therefore, if those who, even on Sundays and Holy Days, strongly prefer the Low Mass and might feel a lack of enthusiasm for the High Mass may possibly not be praying enough outside of Mass, with the result that the Low Mass becomes a daily or weekly vitaminized dose of prayer, potent enough to make up for a way of life that is not sufficiently nutritious. In the life of one who is bound to the Lord by various cords of love — for instance, Lauds or Vespers or other shorter hours of the Divine Office, lectio divina, spiritual reading, Eucharistic Adoration, or the Rosary, to name the most notable — the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is free to be truly what it is: a pinnacle, the fons et culmen vitae Christianae, a time for “pulling out all the stops.”

As we know, the “four-hymn sandwich” that dominates almost all Ordinary Form parishes today is not a new invention of the rebellious 1960s but derives from the permission to sing vernacular hymns at Low Masses in the decades preceding Vatican II. In order to solve this problem of communal sentimentalism, which stood in tension with the liturgy’s public, formal, objective character and with the people’s genuine participation in the liturgy as given,[4] the Council itself called for the use of Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, and newly-composed music that would look to these great models and emulate their qualities. Tragically, we remained in the rut of the four-hymn sandwich, except that the schmaltzy Victorian style of yore was replaced by a pseudo-folk or light-rock style. No formal change occurred, merely a material substitution. All the underlying assumptions and expectations stayed the same, and the call to invest oneself in the liturgy as such, so that one could truly live a vita liturgica, went unheeded.

It is, of course, possible to outfit a Low Mass with music that possesses the proper qualities by singing chants (Adoro te, Ave verum corpus, etc.), picking the right organ music, and using tasteful hymns, but all this is still a far cry from the High Mass or the Solemn Mass, which is the liturgy-as-music and music-as-liturgy.

If today we do not take seriously enough the difference between singing the Mass and singing at Mass, or between an exalted public celebration and a pared-down private celebration, we will be in danger of replicating a new form of 1950s Catholicism that risks toppling down again like a house of cards through a failure to embrace the fullness of our liturgical tradition.[5] As much as possible,  the sacred liturgy needs to be celebrated in full, in its ritual and musical integrity, if we hope to see a revival worthy of our tradition and a lasting cure for the poisons of rationalism and utilitarianism that have crept into nearly every aspect of modern life. The liturgy must be seen not only as truth, but as the splendor of truth, the manifestation of God’s glory. 

My son was recently reading the life of St. Hugh of Lincoln and shared with me the following striking passage:

Hugh indeed never lost sight of the fact that a bishop is first and foremost the chief liturgical minister. He would never permit the least slovenliness in singing the Office. Once he was assisting at Mass with another bishop, Hugh de Nonant of Coventry. They were then to dine with the King. Not to delay the royal dinner, the Bishop of Coventry wanted a Low Mass and began to read the Introit of a Confessor, Os justi, in his speaking voice. Hugh would have none of it and began to chant the Introit with all the notes of the Proper. Like St. Dominic who sang his daily Mass, Hugh seems to have followed an excellent principle, the reverse unfortunately of that obtaining today: don’t say Mass if you can sing it. One can imagine his judgment of the numerous parishes where the Mass is not sung, even on Sundays and great feasts.[6]

This article is not intended to be an argument against weekday Low Masses or “private” Masses, which have their place and their own meditative beauty.[7] It is rather an appeal to elevate our communal worship on Sundays and Holy Days, so that we may observe these days in fitting solemnity, using all of our powers of body and soul, and drawing upon all the gifts of our faith.


NOTES

[1] Note that I say “noble simplicity,” which cannot be manifested by a stripped-down liturgy that has substituted the simplistic, the superficial, and the banal for the purity, intensity, and “thickness” of traditional liturgy, which nevertheless speaks more forcefully of the numinous and the ineffable, and in this way reaches souls at a deeper level more successfully.

[2] Of course, having to take care of little children can distract us, but even parents do get to pray occasionally at the traditional Mass and appreciate how it orders, quiets, and animates the soul.

[3] See my series: (1) “Song Befits the Lover”: Understanding the Place of Gregorian Chant in the Mass; (2) Why Gregorian Chant? And Why Sung by the People?; and (3) How We Should Sing—And Why People Don’t Sing. In one of its unguarded moments, namely, chapter 6 of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council even held up the chanted Latin Mass as the ideal, but don’t tell the liturgists: they don’t like to be reminded of that earlier phase in the Teilhardian evolution of cosmic consciousness. You may be labeled a leftover Baroque primate.

[4] See Guardini's fine insights on this matter.

[5] I am not saying that 1950s Catholicism was not stronger and healthier than the Catholicism of today. Denial of this would be idiotic. But I am concerned about certain regrettable habits or patterns already in place in the 1950s that provoked some of the radicalism, indifference, and apostasy that followed.

[6] From the delightful book Neglected Saints by E. I. Watkin (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1955), 63–64.

[7] See this article for an appreciation of the silent Low Mass.

St. Hugh of Lincoln (c. 1140-1200)

Pictures of a Dominican Mass in Minneapolis

This past Saturday, Fr. Dominic Holtz, OP, a professor at the Angelicum in Rome (Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas) celebrated a Dominican Rite Missa cantata for the feast of St Januarius and Companions at the Basilica of St Mary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our thanks once again to the ever-generous Tracy Dunne of Tracy Dunne Photography for sharing with us these photographs, which illustrate very nicely some of the ways in which the Dominican Mass differs from the Roman.

Note how the acolytes face in the same direction as the priest when standing next to the altar, as opposed to the Roman custom by which they face the priest. The same is seen a few photos below.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Immaculate Conception - Monza, Italy

Below, readers can find photos from an Italian December 8 where an EF Mass was celebrated on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

First Missa Cantata in 50 Years - Shrine of Our Lady Help of Christians, Wisconsin

Recently, the first Missa Cantata in 50 years was celebrated at the Shrine of Our Lady Help of Christians with the cooperation of the local ICKSP parish. In addition to the ordinary, several Kevin Allen pieces were sung by a schola of young women, alternating with the men's schola which sang the propers. The turnout was quite nice, at well over 100 present in the congregation, including many children and families.



Here are several pictures from the Mass:

Procession to the altar

Incensation of the altar during the Kyrie

Quite a good turnout

Homily

Communion procession

Sts. Peter and Paul - Imperial Beach, CA

On the feast of Sts Peter and Paul, a Missa Cantata was celebrated in Imperial Beach, CA. The Brothers of the Little Oratory in San Diego sang and served, along with the serving corps of St. Charles Catholic Church, with Fr. Burt Boudoin celebrating the mass.

Fr. Burt is the assistant priest at St. Charles, and is a priest committed to Roman orthodoxy who is well liked in his parish, and has been an excellent friend in tradition to the San Diego Oratorian secular brothers.

The full Gregorian propers, mass XIV (Jesu Redemptor), Credo IV, and the office hymn for Peter and Paul were all sung.