Christmas Octave of Sung and Solemn Masses in St. Louis — December 25 through January 1

In what may well be a first at the diocesan level, the Oratory of Sts. Gregory and Augustine in St. Louis, Missouri, will be offering Solemn High Mass or Missa Cantata every day of the Christmas octave, as indicated in the poster below.

These special Masses will be added to the normal schedule of low Masses at the oratory.

The sacred music will be sung by both the oratory choir and the Schola of St. Hugh. It will include ordinaries by Victoria and Byrd and little heard chant ordinaries III and V. Other selections include Palestrina, Marenzio, Bach, Daquin, and Handel.

The oratory has been functioning at St. Luke Parish in Richmond Heights since July 1, 2018.

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.

A Brief Dialogue on Liturgical Development and Corruption

The following dialogue occurs between a traditionalist and a Catholic of good will who has started attending the old Mass but is still trying to understand the traditionalist’s position.

Oliver: I've often hear you say, Charlie, that the Novus Ordo represents a huge rupture with the preceding liturgical tradition. But you never comment about other changes in the history of liturgy, like the development of the whispered low Mass, that also break with preceding tradition — I guess because traditionalists are okay with these things. So what’s the difference? When is a new direction not truly a rupture? Or is it a “development” if you happen to agree with it, and a “rupture” if you happen to dislike it?

Charles: Great question. I would say that developments come in two basic “flavors”: those that flow forth in harmony with something profoundly within the liturgy, like a flower from a tree, and those that are imposed from without in a mechanistic way, like a prosthetic limb.

Oliver: Could you illustrate your distinction in reference to the low Mass example?

Charles: The liturgy is certainly meant to be sung in its solemn form — you, of all people, know I’ve defended that many times. However, the mystery of the Mass also allows for and invites the priest to an intense mysticism of intercession, oblation, and communion. Thus, it is easy to see how, especially in monastic settings with an abundance of priests, the private daily Mass emerged in contradistinction to the conventual or parochial Mass. This need not be seen as a problem, unless it becomes the norm for communal Mass and edges out the sung liturgy.

Oliver: But how would you defend the proposition that this change was incidental and not substantive?

Charles: One might say that the same Mass exists at different levels of execution, like the difference between a Shakespeare play read quietly to oneself, the same play read aloud by a group of friends, and the play fully acted out in costume on the stage with props and so forth. It is the same play, but realized more or less fully according to its essence as a play. Any of those actualizations of the play are based on one and the same play. Think how different it would be if, instead of this, you had a modernized redaction of Shakespeare that purged Catholic references so as not to offend Protestants, changed the vocabulary to contemporary English, and changed the gender of the starring roles! In the latter case, even if the play was given the same title, it would no longer be the same reality — no matter how well you acted it out on stage.

Oliver: I see what you’re getting at. But here’s something that’s bothered me. How long does it take until something can be considered part of ecclesiastical tradition? If a parish has communion in the hand for 40 years, does this then become part of tradition? Imagine if — God forbid! — altar girls are the norm for the next hundred years. In the year 2118, can one look back and say “this is not and never has been ecclesiastical tradition,” or would one say “this is a tradition, but it’s bad and we should change it”?

Charles: Let’s take up the question of communion first. When the Latin Church shifted in the Middle Ages to communion under the species of bread alone, given on the tongue to faithful who are kneeling, it was for good reasons: it fosters a spirit of humility and adoration, and, on a practical level, is easier and safer. It is, in other words, completely in accord with the letter and spirit of the liturgical action, something that emerges from a deeper grasp of the mystery of the Holy Eucharist. Therefore, there could never be a compelling reason to undo this development, unless we wanted less safety, less humility, and less adoration. But that could only come from the devil.

In fact, Paul VI himself recognized that communion on the tongue was superior and reasserted it, although he then allowed the abuse of communion in the hand to sweep over the Church because he was an indecisive and confused shepherd — even his best decisions still have something of Hamlet mixed in with them, as when he called a commission to look into contraception, which raised false hopes among the progressives. But I digress…

Oliver: So you don’t buy the argument that it was good to restore communion in the hand because “it’s what used to be done in ancient times”?

The right way

Charles: This both begs the question — why did the custom change if it was so good to begin with? — and contradicts the teaching of Pope Pius XII that we should avoid antiquarianism, i.e., returning to an older practice just because it is older. When an early custom was universally left behind and another put in its place, we should see this as a recognition of a superior line of conduct.

Oliver: Would this apply to the Novus Ordo as well, since it was universally put in place of the old rite of Mass?

Charles: Of course not. First, thanks to the protection of the Holy Spirit, Paul VI, who wanted to abolish the old liturgy, never successfully abrogated it, as Pope Benedict XVI later acknowledged. So the old liturgy has always remained legitimate (and, indeed, it could never be otherwise). Moreover, while the Tridentine liturgical books were eventually received universally, the Novus Ordo was resisted from the beginning by an intrepid number of clergy and laity, and this refusal to accept the rupture has not faded away but has actually grown over the decades. In this way it is simply a fact that the Novus Ordo, while unfortunately the predominant rite, cannot be said to have supplanted and replaced the old rite, whereas communion on the tongue to kneeling faithful totally replaced any other manner of reception in the Middle Ages. Thus one cannot, in principle or in practice, make the argument that the more recent rite is superior to the more ancient rite. But one would have to say quite a bit more on this matter, and maybe we are drifting from the main point...

Oliver: Let me ask a general question. Why don’t you think there should be continual change in the liturgy — you know, different things for different ages and peoples?

Charles: I recognize that there can and will be small changes, like the addition of new feasts or saints to the calendar, or new prefaces, but not large-scale changes. Church history shows that development starts out at a more rapid pace and slows down increasingly as the liturgy reaches perfection. In a way, it is like molten lava that erupts from a fissure and gradually cools to become solid. In the same way, the liturgy gushed forth from the heart of Jesus on the Cross, and solidified over the centuries as holy men and women continued to pray it, showing great reverence to what they inherited from their predecessors.

Oliver: The Byzantine Divine Liturgy, for instance, has changed very little over the last several centuries, and the great majority of Eastern Christians see no need to change it, since it accomplishes so well what it exists for.

Charles: Exactly. The traditional Roman liturgy grew to its mature grandeur more slowly than did the Byzantine, but the same progressive solidification and the same conservative instinct can be seen in it. The Roman Canon was complete by the start of the seventh century; then most of the remaining ceremonies by the early Middle Ages; and finally the prayers at the foot of the altar and the Last Gospel in the late Middle Ages. At this point it no longer needed to evolve and could remain solid and stable for almost 500 years (from 1570 to 1962). Those who use it today see no need to “develop” it further; on the contrary, they unanimously wish to keep the Mass in its fullness, prior to the corruptions introduced by Pius XII after 1948.

Oliver: I know that some people compare the process you are describing to the way a human being develops. Do you think that analogy holds? It seems like one would run into the problem of aging and senility…

Charles: Rightly understood, this analogy works. A child changes tremendously on the way to adulthood, but the pace of change becomes less as time goes on. Everyone knows that one year of time means something very different in the first 10 years of life, the second 10 years, and the remaining decades. Time, for organic things, is not simple and undifferentiated. And if we were not fallen beings, we might remain adults at approximately age 33 for our entire lives. The liturgy grows to maturity and then remains at maturity, without fail, until the second coming of Christ. Hence, a strange custom that arises in the 20th or 21st century cannot lay claim to being a natural development but is more like a cancerous tumor in a body. It is like an infantilization, a rejection of maturity.

Oliver: But what do you make of my altar girl example? What if we had them for over a century?

All made up and nowhere to go

Charles: As St. Athanasius says, even if the whole world agreed that Christ was not God, the handful of Christians who still worshiped Him as God would be correct; they would be the Church. “They have the buildings, you have the Faith,” he famously said to the small band of anti-Arian Catholics. Similarly, even if we were to have altar girls for 200 years, they would always be an aberration of the Western liturgical tradition, and never an organic development. A machine is a machine; it will never turn into an organism. Schizophrenia will always be a disorder, no matter how long one has it. A man is a man and a woman a woman, regardless of what the confused gender-ideology of the day wants to say about it.

Oliver: That makes a lot of sense.

Charles: And by the way, you have to resist a lie that has gained a great deal of ground, namely that matters of liturgy are on a different plane than matters of doctrine. Someone might say, disputes about the divinity of Christ are one thing; disagreements about the liturgical discipline of altar servers is quite another. Don't lump together Arius and Bugnini, or Honorius and Paul VI. But in reality, every liturgical question stems from and resolves to a doctrinal question. Nothing we do in our worship is doctrinally neutral or irrelevant or inconsequential.

Oliver: That certainly seems true, if you just look at the shift in the beliefs of ordinary Catholics from preconciliar to postconciliar times. The next logical question, I guess, would be this: How do we know what stage of development the Church is in right now? I could imagine the faithful in the 15th century saying: “A strange custom that arises in the 15th century cannot lay claim to being a natural development but is more like a tumor.” And are not some innovations, such as the centralized tabernacle on the altar, considered to be a non-tumorous change even though it did not come about until rather late?

Charles: Perhaps the solution to this conundrum is to look at why people make the changes they make. In the 15th century — or, for that matter, any century — liturgy is developed in the direction of expansion. People add processions, litanies, extra prayers, repetitions. They do this out of devotion. It is rare that such things are pruned, though it does happen from time to time. However, what is absolutely unprecedented is for very many things to be cut back simultaneously and as a result of utilitarian, rationalist, and activist presuppositions, as occurred in the 1960s. So I think one can see a crucial difference between earlier phases of development, which involve positive growth, and the contrary motion of corruption, which is opposed to that growth and in fact tends to hate it and attack it iconoclastically — always a sign of the Evil One. When altars got bigger and grander, it was a development. When altars were jackhammered and dumped, it was a rupture.

Oliver: How is one to know that some change ought to be made?

Charles: Anything that belongs to the practical order will involve the exercise of the virtue of prudence: we are making a judgment about what it is prudent to change. But always with a tremendous, even fearful respect for all that has been received in tradition! That is why the Second Vatican Council, in one of its more sober statements, said: “There must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 23). The Council Fathers were mostly pastors of souls, and they knew that too much change at any time, for any reason, is a bad thing, as St. Thomas explains when discussing why even laws that are imperfect should not necessarily be replaced with better laws, because it weakens the confidence people have in habitually following laws in general.

Oliver: Of course, bringing back the old Latin liturgy is a change of custom for most Catholics, so it, too, could weaken their sense of ecclesial stability or trust. What do you say to that?

Charles: The only justification that can be given for such a big change is that the good of recovering liturgical tradition overwhelmingly outweighs the evil of disturbing people’s habits. Besides, churchmen since the Second Vatican Council have given us so many reasons to distrust their decisions that it’s rather silly at this point to suggest that we can be destabilized more than we have already been by all the doctrinal confusion, moral laxity, and liturgical chaos of the past five decades. The return of tradition means a return of dogma, holiness, and right worship — all stabilizing factors. It’s like going from anarchy to government, or from a starvation diet to a royal banquet. Only a cruel person would say: “The poor are so accustomed to malnutrition that we should just let them stay at that level, even though we are capable of providing them with abundant nutrition.”

Oliver: Your arguments make me wonder about the use and abuse of Church authority. Would you say there was a similar (although not nearly as bad) problem when the Council of Trent suppressed rites? It seems to me that after Trent the idea of what the liturgy is in relation to the Vatican undergoes a shift.

Charles: Yes, Trent, or perhaps I should say St. Pius V, does introduce a new dynamic. He did not abolish any rite older than 200 years, but the way the new missal was imposed showed a tendency to overreach.

Oliver: One can sympathize; it was a centralized response to the centrifugal force of Protestant experimentation and diversity.

Charles: For sure. I don’t deny that. But in 1570, for the first time in history, a pope took upon himself the role of officially promulgating a missal for the Latin rite Church. It’s quite striking, isn’t it, to think that Catholicism endured for 1,500 years with a rich liturgical tradition that had never been administered or validated by the Vatican?

Oliver: The only thing more striking, one could say, is that Paul VI was audacious enough to introduce a new missal, which Pius V would never have done, or even conceived of doing. His 1570 missal was, for all intents and purposes, the same as papal curial missals had been for centuries before.

Charles: You are provoking me, aren’t you, to take up the question of whether or not Paul VI’s manufactured liturgy can seriously be called the Roman Rite, and whether this talk of “two forms” can really be defended. That’s a longer conversation, for another day. But this much should give us pause: never in the history of the Catholic Church had there been a new missal, until 1969.

Oliver: Whatever the answer may be, it won’t change where I’ll be heading for church on Sunday. See you at the High Mass for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost!

Charles: You bet.

*          *          *

(NLM readers may be interested in another dialogue that took place one day between two other friends, Terence and William, on whether faithful Catholics are permitted to question the liturgical reform.)

Why the Communal Mass Should Be Sung

This article concerns the singing of the Ordinary Form of the Mass, but its main point pertains also to the desirability of sung Masses in the Extraordinary Form.

As is well known to historians of the liturgy, the normal practice for the first thousand years of undivided Christianity was to sing the Mass (i.e., High Mass). This practice remained and still remains the norm for Byzantine Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, who are required to sing the Divine Liturgy. The development of a recited or ‘Low’ Mass in the West as a devotional exercise for individual priests had a trickle-down effect into many parishes, so that by the era of St. Pius X, the Low Mass was the manner in which most Catholics encountered the liturgy most of the time. Pope Pius X launched a movement to recover not only Gregorian chant and polyphony in general, but the High Mass in particular. To this pope is attributed the advice: “Don’t pray at Holy Mass, but pray the Holy Mass.” In 1969, the Vatican journal Notitiae adapted this advice: “[Liturgical] singing means singing the Mass, not just singing during Mass.”[1]

The Second Vatican Council expressly linked its teaching to that of St. Pius X when it taught: “Liturgical worship is given a more noble form when the divine offices are celebrated solemnly in song, with the assistance of sacred ministers and the active participation of the people” (SC 113). The implication is that Catholics should aspire to give worship a more noble form by celebrating it in song — in other words, that the sung Mass should once more attain prominence. This implication was drawn out clearly by the Sacred Congregation of Rites just a few years later, in the Instruction Musicam Sacram (March 5, 1967), which had its 50th anniversary last week:

Liturgical worship is given a more noble form when it is celebrated in song, with the ministers of each degree fulfilling their ministry and the people participating in it. Indeed, through this form, prayer is expressed in a more attractive way, the mystery of the liturgy, with its hierarchical and community nature, is more openly shown, the unity of hearts is more profoundly achieved by the union of voices, minds are more easily raised to heavenly things by the beauty of the sacred rites, and the whole celebration more clearly prefigures that heavenly liturgy which is enacted in the holy city of Jerusalem. Pastors of souls will therefore do all they can to achieve this form of celebration. (MS 5)

In other words, the chanted celebration of Mass should be a rule, not an exception. The same document, which is still the most authoritative Vatican document on music since the time of the Council, states: “For the celebration of the Eucharist with the people, especially on Sundays and feast days, a form of sung Mass (Missa in cantu) is to be preferred as much as possible, even several times on the same day” (MS 27).

As if to underline that singing is not an add-on but part of the inherent structure of the Mass, the Instruction Musicam Sacram goes on to establish, perhaps surprisingly, three degrees of musical participation for Mass (see nn. 28-31), such that one should begin by singing what pertains to the first degree, then add that which pertains to the second, and finally, move on to the third, according to the capabilities of the congregation and choir.

• The first degree includes the entrance rite (including the Collect), the Gospel acclamation, the oratio super oblata, the preface dialogue and preface, the Sanctus, the doxology of the Canon, the Lord’s Prayer with its introduction and embolism, the Pax, the Post-Communion, and the dismissal. 
• The second degree adds the Kyrie, Gloria, Creed, Agnus Dei, and the Prayer of the Faithful.
• The third degree adds the Introit, Offertory, and Communion antiphons, the Gradual, Alleluia, or Tract (if chanted in full), and the Epistle and Gospel.

One can see that the first degree depends on the priest’s chanting his parts given in the Missal, which, in the Church’s tradition, have always been in a simple form of chant, involving a few notes of melody, and may even be sung recto tono in a case of necessity. These prayers and dialogues are the most fundamental elements of the liturgy to be chanted. The second degree adds beauty and solemnity by giving the choir and faithful more scope for singing the Ordinary of the Mass, which brings out the full richness of the prayers themselves. The third degree completes the musical elevation of the liturgy by ensuring that its meditative texts (antiphons and lessons) are sung.

The singing of the Mass is not something rare, only to be done on feasts, but something normal, flowing from the very nature of liturgy. We can see this in the fact that the Church’s tradition provides chants for every day of the year, every occasion. As Dom Mark Kirby explains:

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.

Dr. Jennifer Donelson begins her classes on liturgical chant with “Top Ten Reasons to Sing the Mass”:

1. Intensifies the sense of sacrality
2. Encourages active participation
3. Respects the dignity of the text of the liturgy and Scripture
4. Centers singing on the Mass itself, not on paraliturgical songs
5. You disappear; Christ appears
6. Singing is often an aid for understanding (diction, audibility)
7. Gives a better sense of the grammar of prayers
8. Gives a better sense of the structure of the Mass
9. Strengthens the sense of community rather than isolation
10. Sensus ecclesiæ, not sensus individualis 

These points are borne out in the section of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (2nd ed., 2011) devoted to “The Importance of Singing”:

       39. The Christian faithful who come together as one in expectation of the Lord’s coming are instructed by the Apostle Paul to sing together psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles (cf. Col 3:16). Singing is the sign of the heart’s joy (cf. Acts 2:46). Thus St. Augustine says rightly, “Singing is for one who loves,” and there is also an ancient proverb: “Whoever sings well prays twice over.”
       40. Great importance should therefore be attached to the use of singing in the celebration of the Mass, with due consideration for the culture of peoples and abilities of each liturgical assembly. Although it is not always necessary (e.g., in weekday Masses) to sing all the texts that are in principle meant to be sung, every care should be taken that singing by the ministers and the people not be absent in celebrations that occur on Sundays and on Holydays of Obligation.
       However, in the choosing of the parts actually to be sung, preference is to be given to those that are of greater importance and especially to those which are to be sung by the Priest or the Deacon or a reader, with the people replying, or by the Priest and people together.[2]
       41. The main place should be given, all things being equal, to Gregorian chant, as being proper to the Roman Liturgy. Other kinds of sacred music, in particular polyphony, are in no way excluded, provided that they correspond to the spirit of the liturgical action and that they foster the participation of all the faithful. Since the faithful from different countries come together ever more frequently, it is desirable that they know how to sing together at least some parts of the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin, especially the Profession of Faith and the Lord’s Prayer, according to the simpler settings.

It is noteworthy that numerous magisterial documents, following the directive of Vatican II, specify that the people should be able to chant in Latin the parts of the Mass that pertain to them. We have always joyfully implemented that policy at Wyoming Catholic College. This has included the chanting of the Creed, as is provided for by GIRM 55, 68, and 137.

These are some of the reasons why we ought to sing the Mass — not merely sing at Mass. The beauty of doing this on a regular basis is something that I have experienced at Wyoming Catholic College, where the following has often taken place since 2007:

• the Schola sings the Introit, Offertory, and Communion antiphons, and on occasion, the Gradual and Alleluia;
• the congregation sings the Kyrie, Gloria, Gospel acclamation, Creed, Sanctus, Pater Noster, and Agnus Dei;
• the celebrant sings the entrance rite, the oratio super oblata, the preface dialogue and preface, the doxology of the Canon, the introduction to the Lord’s Prayer and its embolism, the Pax, the Post-Communion, and the dismissal;
• the celebrant introduces the Prayer of the Faithful, which is sung by a cantor, with the people making the response.

With a celebrant and congregation who know their chants from repeated experience, and provided there is a brief homily as recommended by the Church for daily Mass, it is possible to do most of these things within a 35-minute daily Mass, and all of them within an hour or a little more on Sundays and Holy Days. Moreover, there is no question that the congregation participates more fully when singing their parts than when merely reciting the spoken text. From the vantage of the pew-sitter, it is the difference between the uplifting unison of simple chant and a scattered muttering of words.

In conclusion: chanting the Mass is more in accord with Catholic tradition. It is in harmony with what anthropology, sociology, and psychology tell us about how ritual activity is best done if it is to be satisfying, renewing, and connecting. It is more in keeping with Vatican II and subsequent magisterial teaching. Lastly, it is crucial for the evangelization of modern and post-modern man through “the way of beauty.” This is the step we must take if we wish to get past the doldrums of excessive verbosity to the heights of prayerful engagement with the sacred mysteries.

NOTES
[1] See here for more.
[2] The GIRM cites here Musicam Sacram, nn. 7 and 16 — clear proof, if any were needed, that the 1967 Instruction is still considered to be pertinent to the Pauline missal, which appeared a couple of years later.

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)

How Can We Elevate the Quality of the “Prayer of the Faithful”?

In “Imbuing the Ordinary Form with Extraordinary Form Spirituality,” I suggested that if the Universal Prayer (also known as Prayer of the Faithful or General Intercessions) is going to be retained, the very first thing that needs to be addressed is the literary, theological, and spiritual quality of the petitions.[1] It is surely no exaggeration to say that throughout the world the quality of these intercessions has tended to be deplorable, ranging from trite and saccharine sentiments to political propaganda, from progressivist daydreams to downright heretical propositions to which no one could assent without offending God.[2] Even when the content is doctrinally unobjectionable, all too often the literary style is dull, flaccid, rambling, or vague. Put together problematic content, poor writing, and the monotonous manner of delivery of most lectors, and you have on your hands, to put it mildly, a lame duck.

Two things, therefore, are urgently needed, and one more thing is strongly recommended.

First, we need strong, solid, Catholic content in the intercessions. They need to be unmistakably, unambiguously the prayers of Catholic Christians, praying in accordance with our tradition for serious intentions that are manifestly worth praying for. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says that we should offer petitions “for holy Church, for those who govern with authority over us, for those weighed down by various needs, for all humanity, and for the salvation of the whole world” (GIRM 69), and then specifies a little more: “The series of intentions is usually to be: a) for the needs of the Church; b) for public authorities and the salvation of the whole world; c) for those burdened by any kind of difficulty; d) for the local community” (GIRM 70).

Second, we need well-written intercessions. Rising above the gabby or pedestrian, the literary style should have a dignity, forcefulness, and sacral register that match the style of the revised Roman Missal.[3] As an illustration of these first two desiderata, consider the following:

Celebrant: Let us raise our minds and voices to the Lord as we present our petitions.

• Cantor: Let us pray for the holy Church of God: that the Lord may grant her peace, unity, and good governance.

• Let us pray for missionaries and for persecuted Christians everywhere: that the trials they endure may increase their faith and their glory.

• Let us pray for Jews, Moslems, and all who do not believe in Christ: that by God’s mercy they may renounce their errors and cling to Him.

• Let us pray for our nation, our state, and our city: that good laws and good morals may prevail over sin and corruption.

• Let us pray for the members of this community: that we may seek holiness at all times and in every place.

• Let us pray for our friends and benefactors: that this Oblation offered for their needs may bring them salvation.

• Let us bring to the Lord in silence the intentions of our hearts.

Celebrant: O God, from whom all good things come, grant to Your suppliants that, by Your inspiration, we may think that which is right, and, by Your Providence, accomplish the same. Through Christ, Our Lord.

Finally, it makes a tremendous amount of difference to sing the intercessions. This can be done by a cantor either recto tono (on a single note) or with a psalm tone. The response, when it comes, has a great deal more punch to it, because a simple sung response involves the people far more. Possible responses include “Lord, hear our prayer”; “Kyrie eleison”; “We beseech you, hear our prayer”; “Te rogamus, audi nos.” At our chaplaincy's Sunday Mass in the Ordinary Form, the cantor chants at the end of each petition: “We pray to the Lord:” and the congregation sings: “Lord, hear our prayer.” When sung, the intercessions are elevated to a new plane; the entire prayer is more solemn and meaningful, and one really listens to the individual petitions. Wyoming Catholic College has been doing this for eight years, and my impression is that it has worked very well. Visitors often favorably remark on the practice.

Here is a downloadable document with 22 sets of intercessions for Ordinary Time or Tempus per annum (including the example given above). The content is available for free and unrestricted use. If anyone would like to have this in Word format, just send me an email.

Here is another document with intercessions for Seasons and Feasts, namely, Christ the King, the Sundays of Advent, the Baptism of the Lord, the Sundays of Lent, Passion (Palm) Sunday, Holy Thursday, Easter Sunday, the Sundays of Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, Exaltation of the Holy Cross, All Saints, All Souls, Dedication of the Lateran, Conversion of St. Paul, St. Joseph, Annunciation, and other Marian feasts.

Lastly, here is a document with suggested chant tones to use at the end of each petition.


NOTES

[1] As to the abstract question of whether the Universal Prayer is a feature that belongs in the Roman liturgy as a regular feature, I have some doubts (see here). Nevertheless, as always, we should have the attitude that if something is to be done, it ought to be done well.

[2] See the hilarious spoof at Eccles. Warning: British humour.

[3] I had high hopes for the book Prayers of the Faithful, edited by Msgr. Peter J. Elliott, but a closer examination showed that the collection was quite uneven, suffering from some of the flaws noted at the start of this post.

Book Review: The Proper of the Mass for Sundays and Solemnities

The Proper of the Mass for Sundays and Solemnities: Chants for the Roman Missal in English. Fr. Samuel F. Weber, O.S.B. of The Benedict XVI Institute of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2015. xx + 995 pages. List $34.95. Publisher’s link.

THIS is the book so many choirs and scholas have been waiting for, I would even say for 40+ years. If you want to sing Propers (specifically: Entrance, Offertory, and Communion antiphons) for the Mass in English, and you would like to do so with chant melodies that are inspired by Gregorian exemplars and at the same time idiomatic and comfortable in their vernacular adaptation, Fr. Weber’s magnum opus does the job better overall than it has ever been done before. This is hardly a surprise, since Fr. Weber has been chipping away at the task — introit by introit, offertory by offertory, communion by communion — for over twenty years. It can be said without exaggeration that this book has been in progress for decades. It is the definitive book of English plainchant for the Catholic liturgy.

Content

First, the nuts and bolts. What exactly do we find in this 1,000-page volume?

1. An excellent Foreword by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone (pp. ix–xiii), explaining why the Propers should have pride of place at Mass, how this fits in with Vatican II’s call for participatio actuosa, and how this book responds to the call for a renewal of sacred music.

2. An “Introduction concerning Chant Technique” (pp. xiv–xx), reminiscent of the introductions in older Solesmes volumes. Fr. Weber explains the fundamentals of chant (notation, neums, modes) in crystal clear prose for the non-expert, and offers a wonderful mini-treatise on the art of singing chant, with an explanation of how he has approached the task of setting the English language.

3. The rest of the book, divided into the Proper of Time (pp. 1–771: Advent, Christmas Time, Lent, Holy Week, Sacred Triduum, Easter Time, Ordinary Time, and Solemnities of the Lord), the Proper of Saints (pp. 772–917: solemnities of saints), Ritual Masses (pp. 918–67: ordinations and marriage), Varia (pp. 968–84: Asperges, Vidi aquam, Glory Be tones), and Indices (985–93).

The Chants 

The Proper of the Mass contains English chant settings for the Entrance and Communion Antiphons as given in The Roman Missal (2010), as well as Offertory Antiphons in line with the Graduale Romanum (1974). (I will return below to the question of the source of the texts.)

For most antiphons, four settings are provided, from complex to simple: (i) through-composed melismatic; (ii) through-composed simple; (iii) Gregorian psalm tone; (iv) English psalm tone. Cantors or choirs that are ready to tackle it can choose a more melismatic setting, while beginners could easily render the psalm tone; or the choice can be made depending on the length of the liturgical action or other factors. Verses are given for all the antiphons, as well. Other collections tend to presume either absolute beginners or advanced scholas, but Fr. Weber has arranged his book in a way that suits every possible situation, so that it’s easy to “shift gears.”

Jeffrey Ostrowski has already been posting recordings of some of the chants. Here are the four settings given for the Introit of Christmas Day, “A child is born for us.” Notice how close in spirit and melody the first setting is to its Gregorian model.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

All-Or-Nothing vs. “Progressive Solemnity”: An Invitation to Debate

In what is today officially termed the “extraordinary form” of the Roman Rite, a sharp distinction is made between low Mass (Missa lecta) and sung or high Mass (Missa cantata). At low Mass, the audible ordinary and proper texts (antiphons, collects, readings, Preface, etc.) are recited, never sung, whereas at high Mass they are all sung. It is an all-or-nothing affair. The “ordinary form,” on the other hand, makes no distinction between low and high Mass; indeed these terms are not used in the revised liturgical books. The 1967 Instruction Musicam Sacram, published by the Sacred Congregation of Rites less than two years after the close of the Second Vatican Council and three years prior to the publication of the Missal of Paul VI, introduced the principle of “progressive solemnity,” providing a degree of flexibility in choosing parts of the Mass to be sung while maintaining official distinctions (at that time) between high and low Mass. This document is quoted or cited in the 3rd typical edition of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (2002) and the U.S. Catholic bishops’ music guidelines, Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship (2007), but it remains largely unheeded, for good or for ill. What is sung and what is recited at any given Mass depends on the decision of the celebrant and perhaps the cantor and/or choir. Seldom, if ever, does one hear the Credo sung (in Latin or the vernacular) at novus ordo Sunday Masses. I have concelebrated or otherwise participated in ordinary form Masses which were styled “solemn” (e.g. “Solemn Mass of Installation,” “Solemn Parish Centennial Mass”) but which, in traditional terms, were more approximate to low Mass than high or solemn: choral and congregational singing of hymns and perhaps the Gloria and Sanctus, but no sung collects, Gospel, Preface, etc.; that is to say, the celebrant and deacon sang none of the parts that are properly theirs.

With this in mind, I call your attention to an interesting collection of essays I recently came across online: Musicam Sacram Revisited, published in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 Vatican instruction on music. I would like to pose a question for informed debate, namely: Which is the better approach, pastorally and liturgically (the two go hand-in-hand): maintaining a rigid distinction between low and high Mass, or articulating orders of precedence as set up by Musicam Sacram or some other scheme? (By “informed” I mean that you will have read the aforementioned essays with an open mind.) It seems to me that each has its advantages and disadvantages. Let one example suffice. The all-or-nothing norm allows the faithful (and not-so-faithful) to know in advance exactly what to expect, in terms of external solemnity, when they come to a particular Mass, assuming the parish schedule indicate which Masses are sung/high and which are said/low. Those who attend Mass merely to get their spiritual ticket punched are thereby without reason to complain about “too much singing” (unless they happen to find even the old four-hymn sandwich too much to stomach!), while the more liturgically attuned needn’t worry about lackluster liturgy (preaching being a separate matter). Visiting priests, moreover, needn’t be “briefed” before Mass as to how things are done at St. So-and-so’s (“We recite the Gloria but sing the Sanctus...”); they need only know whether Mass will be sung or not. On the other hand, “progressive solemnity” as elaborated in Musicam Sacram requires that at least some parts of every Mass be sung (as distinct from singing hymns at Mass), even if one disputes that document’s hierarchy of importance. This requirement safeguards the irreplaceable contribution of music to the sacred liturgy; rather than accommodating liturgical minimalism, it orients every eucharistic celebration towards the (entirely) sung Mass as the norm of Roman Catholic worship.

Perhaps my use of the adjective “liturgically attuned” suggests the right answer (if a right answer there be). What say you? (I am, of course, particularly interested in what NLM’s own Jeffrey Tucker, Jennifer Donelson, and Charles Cole might have to say.)

The Lumen Christi Simple Gradual as a Component of a Parish Music Program

Today there is a veritable flood of outstanding sacred music publications. And they are coming not a moment too soon, as we see the desire for authentic Catholic liturgy growing, opportunities for learning multiplying, and a generational shift under way. Even if this shift is sometimes leading to a certain polarization among the faithful, nevertheless the need for reconnecting with our past heritage is widely recognized by many, including mainstream publishers.

As I discussed last week at Views from the Choir Loft, one of the most crucial things that must be done everywhere is the recovery of the Propers of the Mass. In this noble and necessary task, the Simple English Propers were a step in the right direction, but its author Adam Bartlett freely admits that it was an interim solution until something more complete could be put in its place. (That's not to say that the SEP can't continue to function well in places that are accustomed to using it, but only that musicians should be sure to check out the Lumen Christi Gradual and Fr. Weber's Proper of the Mass when these volumes appear, as each of them will contain all that the SEP has—and a great deal more.)

Most NLM readers are familiar with Bartlett’s company Illuminare Publications, which is bringing out the Lumen Christi line of books. By offering a panoply of English chant that accounts for all the inherent needs of the liturgy, the Lumen Christi series faciliates, for the first time—or at least, for the first time with any ease of execution—a fully chanted English Ordinary Form liturgy.

Not long ago I received review copies of both the LC Simple Gradual and the LC Simple Gradual Choir Edition, and I was quite impressed with the quality of their musical content, internal organization, crisp typesetting, and sturdy production. These should be no surprise to those who have already held in their hands the comprehensive and elegant Lumen Christi Missal.

The LC Simple Gradual is nothing but an excerpted version of the LC Missal—that is, it contains all the chants of the Missal but not the Lectionary readings and devotions. (The LC Simple Gradual Choir Edition adds pointed Psalm verses.) Some parishes don’t want Lectionary readings and are just looking for a sleek, inexpensive volume for the pew in order to begin singing the Mass as the Church desires. This is the niche that the LC Simple Gradual fills, and fills more economically due to its slender size. The LC Missal and LC Simple Gradual are therefore alternatives, based upon community needs and financial ability. The forthcoming LC Hymnal can function as a companion to either. The LC Gradual will complete the series by furnishing a more extensive selection of chants, including more elaborate melodies, for the choir’s use on Sundays and Holydays.

The series may seem a bit complex, but it’s actually quite simple:

• Do you want the lectionary readings as well as congregational chant? Your book is the LC Missal.
• Do you want just the congregational chant? Your book is the LC Simple Gradual, with a few copies of the Choir Edition for the cantors/choir.
• Do you want to add a substantial collection of classic hymns? Add the LC Hymnal (once it’s available, which I hear is relatively soon).
• Do you wish to have fuller or more complex chants for the cantors/choir? Add the LC Gradual (once it’s available).

The LC Simple Gradual Choir Edition comes with a masterful introduction that describes in detail what the guiding ideals are and how the books are intended to be used. Readers should keep in mind that this is indeed a Simple Gradual, with a full Gradual to follow it. The Simple Gradual provides a repertoire that is aimed at congregational singing through seasonal introduction of antiphons. The full Gradual will have every proper text set in a few different ways (including the Simple Gradual settings). Think of it this way: the Simple Gradual is a base repertoire for congregational singing, hence the seasonal options and sometimes abbreviated texts, whereas the Gradual is the book for the choir, which sets the full proper in its full integrity.

For now, the role of the LC Simple Gradual is clear, so long as it is understood for what it is: a selection of liturgical chant for parishes to help them begin “singing the Mass” rather than “singing at Mass.” One can imagine the book sitting alongside various hymnals, with parishes introducing a few new antiphons each season, leading the faithful beyond a total reliance upon hymnody. In time, a base repertoire is built up, the parish gets used to chant, and hymns begin to take a backseat. This is a very non-radical approach to the problem, but one that is more palatable for most parishes today.

As they watch the rise of newly composed vernacular chant, some traditionally-minded Catholics fear that the ancient and magnificent Gregorian repertoire will be forgotten in the midst of this mini-renaissance. The beautiful thing about the LC Simple Gradual, as with its parent publication the LC Missal, is that it doesn’t necessarily require the sacrificing of the authentic Gregorian repertoire; it can work in tandem with it. As Adam Bartlett explained to me, at the Cathedral in Phoenix there are three different Sunday Masses, all of which feature traditional sacred music—but in different proportions of Latin and English, chant and polyphony and hymns:

1. Saturday evening: LC Simple Gradual antiphons, with a few hymns.

2. Sunday at 9:00 am: Entrance hymn followed by LC Simple Gradual antiphon; English antiphon at Offertory or something more substantial on occasion; Gregorian Proper antiphon at Communion, at the beginning and end of the LC Simple Gradual antiphon, sung with English verses, and with congregation singing the English antiphon.

3. Sunday at 11:00 am: Gregorian Introit and Communion, Lumen Christi chants everywhere else, along with much polyphony.

All of this is done in the context of a fully sung Order of Mass and chanted Ordinaries in Latin and English, as a norm. Bartlett tells me that it has worked out beautifully.

Some parishes, relying more heavily on hymnody, may inch more slowly into the Lumen Christi material. Still, it has the great merit of being accessible to them, and has the potential to open the door to so much more when the time is ripe. Here, a policy of incrementalism in the Ordinary Form context would seem to be more prudent, more realistic about the habits that need to be inculcated, and ultimately more assured of success, as people grow to appreciate the musical and textual prayerfulness that chanted Propers and Ordinary bring to the celebration of the Mass.

Australian Catholic Students Association - Annual Conference

A recent encouraging report from an anonymous reader:

OF Mass with Bishop McGuckin

The annual conference of the Australian Catholic Students Association (ACSA) took place this year in Brisbane on the 5th, 6th and 7th of July. The conference theme was Foundations of the faith, which was inspired by the current Year of Faith. The principle guest speakers were; Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, Bishop McGuckin of Toowomba, Professor Greg Craven from the Australian Catholic University and Dr Ryan Messmore, the president of Campion College (Australia’s only liberal arts college).

In regards to the Liturgies of the Conference, the conference was opened by Bishop McGuckin celebrating a Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit, in the Chapel of Duchene College University of Queensland. The simple chant Mass from the Missal and the relevant simple English propers were chanted.

EF Solemn Mass

In the evening, Fr Paul Chandler, a Priest of the Archdiocese of Brisbane and Spiritual director of Frasasti Australia, celebrated a Solemn High Mass in the extraordinary form. Following the Mass, the Sacrament was exposed and ACSA formally spent one hour in prayer together before the Blessed Sacrament. This concluded with Compline and Solemn Benediction.


The following day was begun with Lauds in the College Chapel. Fr Adrian Sharp, who acted as the Deacon the previous night, celebrated an ordinary form, ad orientem Mass at midday. Again the Simple Chant Mass from the Missal and the simple English propers were chanted. Before the Mackillop ball in the evening, several of the Clergy and students gathered in the Chapel to celebrate Solemn Vespers.

One of the OF Masses, with properly vested
deacons, which is a welcome sight

Sunday began with Lauds as well. The Conference was closed by a Solemn Ordinary form Mass. The Asperges was chanted in English, the Creed and even the general intercessions were chanted at this Mass in addition to the Ordinary and Propers. Fr Gregory Jordan SJ, the ACSA national Chaplain celebrated this Mass at the High altar of St Ignatius Church Toowong, with two con-celebrants, a deacon and a tunicled Acolyte.

The director of Music and organist was Martin Hartley, a student from Campion College and he was aided by an Ad-hoc schola of Students. Several seminarians were in attendance at the conference. Frassati Australia (a peer to peer men’s ministry which has a server’s guild), generously provided the servers for all the conference liturgies.

Review: Ad Completorium - Compiled by Steven van Roode

As many of you know, the situation for liturgical books concerning the sung office in the Ordinary Form is somewhat complicated and difficult. Not all of them are even published yet! Not to mention the size of the books are usually on the larger end of the spectrum.

However, with Steven van Roode's new resource, Ad Completorium, one can easily sing compline (night prayer) according to the official liturgical books in Latin. Compline is a wonderful office to begin with, since it is on a weekly cycle, it's shorter, and almost never changes for the feast day, giving it an ease that is good for beginners to the office. It also makes a great introduction to the office in latin, if you are already praying with the English editions of the Liturgy of the Hours, as it is very easy to draw parallels between the english and latin, and to feel more comfortable with it, since Compline is on a weekly cycle, instead of 4 week cycle.

It opens with the Ordinary section, providing musical notation for every text spoken in the liturgy, encouraging it to be sung, which I find very desirable. He even goes so far as to notate the confiteor, so that it is clear that it be sung (for those not as familiar with it), even though this step could certainly be seen as unnecessary, but is a great way to encourage the sung liturgy, even if parts are sung recto-tono, which in some cases, is actually the norm many times, such as parts in the minor offices.

Interestingly, even the rubrics were in Latin, allowing this book to be used in a multi-lingual parish context, or even outside the English-speaking world.

As I was flipping though it, I found that every single text (in Latin) needed to sing Compline at any time of year or any feast is found inside. It contains all of the Marian antiphons, all of the responsories for holy week, and all of the psalm verses pointed for easy singing. The book itself is printed in red and black, making it very easy to read with the red rubrics and other characters in red.

Lastly, in the back, the psalm tones are listed, along with the tones for the readings and collects. I was also pleased to see 6 pages of the hymns, containing all of the various tones and texts needed throughout the year, including several tones for Te lucis ante términum, Christe, qui, splendor et dies, and others.

You may recognize Steven as the typesetter of Bartlett's Simple English Propers, as well as the Lumen Christi Missal, which means you'll get the same high quality, beautiful typesetting. I'm a big fan to Steven's typesetting style, especially his attention to small detail, as you can see in some small details below. To be honest, I can't put my finger on exactly what he does, but whatever it is, it looks good.

For those wishing to take a closer look, check out this PDF preview of a few selected pages to give you a feel for the quality of the book.

This book can be purchased here for $12.94.

Good work Steven!