A Call for Papers on “Music: Its Theologies and Spiritualities—A Global Perspective”

The online journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions) is currently running a Special Issue titled “Music: Its Theologies and Spiritualities—A Global Perspective”, which is guest edited by Prof. Dr. Edward Foley of Catholic Theological Union. “Music, spirituality and theology are vast fields of study, each expanding in terms of methods and fields of inquiry at a virtually incalculable rate. This rapid expansion, however, is also the opportunity for new and unexplored intersections between these traditionally related fields....” For further reading, please visit the Special Issue website: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/Its_theologies_spiritualities

The manuscript delivery deadline is October 8 , 2017. Those who wish to contribute to this volume are cordially invited to address any questions to the guest editor, Prof. Dr. Edward Foley (foley@ctu.edu) or the journal editor, Ms. Jie Gu (religions@mdpi.com).

Completed papers may be submitted to at the following link: http://susy.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload?journal=religions

With the kind regards of the editorial team,
Jie Gu
Senior Assistant Editor

Mary, Mother of God, Simple English Propers

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The book is available again!

A Smaller Book of Chant

Today's scholas working within the ordinary form have a great appreciation for The Gregorian Missal, which provides most all the music they need for Sundays and Feasts throughout the year. It is a masterpiece of economy: introits, offertories, graduals, alleluias and tracts, and communions, all just for Sundays.

Before The Gregorian Missal there was the Liber Brevior, which I believe came out in the 1950s. It shortened the vast resources available in the Liber Usualis to just what the schola needed to sing at Mass. So 2000 pages became 800 pages, and it is a very nice size print. I'm not sure how widely circulated the book was at the time, but it is pretty clear that the Gregorian Missal is based on this model.

The good people at Preserving Christian Publications have now reprinted the Liber Brevior, and this is a wonderful thing. It is a fraction of the price of the Liber Usualis, and mostly meets all the needs of a schola that sings for the extraordinary form. It includes only Masses for Sundays and Feasts, so you avoid the bulk and complexities of the full Graduale and you don't have to sort through all the extras you find in the Liber Usualis.

This is a very helpful and nice resource, and the price is really right. The editions of music of course are stable across all of these books - all of them prepared by the monks of Solesmes. This makes singing at Mass a straight-forward matter.

And if you are good at calendar conversions, you could use this at the ordinary form too.

And congratulations to PCP for doing all of this. There can be much money in this work, and yet their prices are reasonable and their quality first rate.

You can buy the Liber Brevior here.

A Future for English Chant

The new English Missal currently being rolled out throughout the world publishes more music than any previous edition of the Roman Missal. All of it is English chant - vernacular versions of traditional Gregorian chant. With this Missal, the Church has very wisely seen that if liturgical/sacred music is to have a future in the current environment, it will need to begin with the vernacular, not only for pastoral and pedagogical reasons but also because there is an inherent integrity associated with this genre of singing.

The Missal chants will cover the ordinary chants and dialogues of the Mass. This music is the foundational song of the new Missal. The International Commission on English in the Liturgy has given away sheet music for these chants and encourages their download and use. ICEL has also posted high-quality accompaniments.

It is a requirement that all pew hymnbooks now being printed including this Missal setting of the Mass. Many organizations such as the CMAA have posted tutorial and videos (see this page). For those of us who love sacred music and seek to teach it to a new generation, it is a fantastic thing for us to be able to say, with clarity and conviction, "this is the music that the Church desires for the ordinary form of the Roman Rite." Truly, this represents a sea change in what is arguably the most problematic area of Catholic liturgy today.

English chant is the great missed opportunity of the 1960s. A few composers worked to provide it following the council but the editions were spotty and entered into a contentious world of cultural upheaval and liturgical struggle. It was squeezed out during these years of turmoil. By the time the new Missal was finally promulgated in 1969, the opportunity seemed to have already passed - especially given that the language of the Missal was very unlike the vernacular translations that had commonly circulated for the previous 10 years. All these 40 years of wandering around have finally led us back to where some people thought we should have been immediately following the close of the Council.

Of course the ideal music for the Roman Rite in either form is found in the Graduale Romanum. This book as it applies to the ordinary form came out in 1974 - at which point the cause of all chant (whether English or Latin) seemed largely lost. But in order to have any hope of getting to this point, there will have to be several steps on the way that include: 1) making music that recaptures the primacy of the human voice, 2) making music that is based in plainsong and not strict meters and pop music stylings, and 3) making music the text of which is drawn from the liturgy of the Church and not something else. This is the beginning of the skills and tools that musicians must have to get on the right track. The Missal chants in English make this possible.

However, there is more to the music of the Roman Rite than just the ordinary chants and the dialogues. There are also the sung proper chants that have formed the basis of the changing sung texts of the Mass since the earliest centuries. The most sensitive places within the Roman Rite are the entrance chant, the offertory chant, and communion. These are the places within the Mass where the propers are usually replaced by some hymn chosen by the director of music - a choice that may or may not be appropriate to the liturgy or the day.

A major problem in finding English chant for the propers of the Mass has been to have accessible editions available to average parish singers. There have been attempts and I've posted many of them over the years here at the New Liturgical Movement. In each case, there was some problem with the edition that prevented it from entering in to wider circulation: dated language, old calender, insufficient Psalms to cover the entire liturgical action, and the difficulty of the music itself. This has been very tragic, for it has meant that even those pastors and singers who have wanted to upgrade their music programs haven't had the tools they have needed.

This situation changed dramatically in June of this year with with the publication of the Simple English Propers by Adam Bartlett and published by the Church Music Association of America. This book provides introits, offertories, and communions for the entire liturgical year. The music preserves the Gregorian sensibility by retaining not only the modal structure but also the precise mode of its Latin equivalent. The text is English. Each chant includes more than enough Psalms to sing along with the antiphon so that there is music for the full liturgical procession for which it is to be used.

I would say that this is the first generally accessible book of music for the ordinary form of the Roman Rite in English - and it is no surprise that it has been a huge hit in such a short time. We can bemoan the amazing reality that it took forty years for a book like this to appear or we can simply rejoice that at long last such a book does in fact exist. It is no longer the case that singing the propers of the Mass is out of reach of the average parish. This music can be sung by any cantor or choir in any parish - and it is current being used in everything from small rural parishes to big-city cathedrals.

They also help train singers to really sing - not merely eke out a melody karaoke style while hiding being the organ or piano. They train people to really declaim the text in song - to develop the skill of projecting the word of God in song in a liturgical environment. They underscore the point that the music that is most appropriate to the Roman Rite is (no surprise except to most singers in the Catholic Church today) the music of the Roman Rite. They also prepare the way for the realization of the chants of the Roman Gradual in Latin in the proverbial "brick by brick" manner that has proven so successful in parish after parish.

Shawn Tribe has asked that these chants be posted on this site on a weekly basis according to the new calendar, as an appropriate parallel to the emphasis on chant in the Third Edition of the Roman Missal. Of course I'm very pleased to do so.

I have hundreds of testimonies to their success in parishes. The testimonies come from people who have long trained in Latin Gregorian chant but have not found a way to introduce it to their parishes for a variety of the usual reasons (no singers, no pastoral support, fear of the reaction, etc.). This fact doesn't surprise me, for the music in the Simple English Propers can be used immediately in any parish in a way that most everyone will consider an improvement.

More tellingly, I have an equal amount of testimony from people who have only sung pop music but know in their bones that chant is more appropriate to liturgy. There is also something wonderfully thrilling about leaving the weekly hymn roulette and embracing the sung texts of the Mass itself. This change provides new energy to the whole vocation of being a Church singer.

And for pastors and celebrants, this book has meant blessed relief from the hymn wars that are always roiling around barely under the surface in every parish and also permits them to say Mass without have their sensibilities shocked by hymn choices that they feel they can't control. And given the wide demographic appeal of these chants, it can mean an end to having to endure radically different Mass cultures every Sunday, each crafted with a special demographic appeal in mind.

Finally, let us turn to this past Sunday's entrance chant, which, according to the Roman Gradual, is Justus es, Domine. It has ancient origins, and we sang the Gregorian original in my parish. I understand that this is an extremely rare event. The version of this chant in the Simple English Propers preserves the themes and mode from the Gregorian but resets it for the language and the current pastoral need in most parishes. This is merely a practice video, not a final performance version, but you can see how this works. Keep in mind that the edition provides many Psalm verses to cover the entire procession.

As you listen, I encourage you not to treat this as a performance piece and judge it the way one might judge a performance of Schubert or Bach. This music serves one purpose: to accompany the procession with the proclamation of the word of God according to the approach that has been urged by Popes from the earliest centuries until our own time.



INTROIT • 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time from Church Music Association of Amer on Vimeo.

ICEL Giveth, ICEL Taketh Away

People often ask what is the best Catholic hymnal in print with English hymns. Without meaning to slight other products out there, my answer is one from 1981, a book I had never heard of until about two weeks ago.

In fact, I seriously doubt that many people know about it. I'm not sure I understand its origin or purpose or why it is not more famous. In its current state, it is not usable for parishes and it is not clear that it was ever intended to be. You can buy it but you have to look hard to find it, even though it is in print. The cover is nothing special and it has a strange name. Lots of work went into it but it is not marketed to any great extent, if at all.

My answer is the ICEL Resource Collection. It is sold by GIA. You can't find it among their hymnal listings. You have to do a search of the site to turn up the product. There is no picture. The description is as bare as it can possibly be:

"250 Hymns in the Public Domain. 106 settings of music for the Rites of the Church."

The contents are fantastic in every way. The text is in tact. The melodies are great, the best that hymnody has to offer. As suggested in the description, all 250 English-language hymns are in the public domain. That took some research to discover. Public domain means that the text and melodies are part of the commons of the faith. There is no restriction at all on performing them or marketing them or printing them or arranging them.

And look at the time in which the book came out: 1981. That was right in the thick of one of the biggest crisis in the history of Church music. In the Catholic Church, this hymnal might have sparred us much pain and suffering. At a time when nearly everything coming out of the publishing houses was, well, I won't characterize it. Let's just leave it that this collection, widely distributed, would have put matters on sound track. The public domain aspect of it would have saved millions in royalty payments.

What a gift to the faith! But wait: there is more to the strangeness of this product. The front matter says that the hymns are public domain, but still restricts their printing. How so? Well, it is an interesting thing. The texts are part of the common. The hymn tunes are part of the commons. But ICEL came up with an interesting little proviso: they claimed copyright to the typography! That means that you couldn't so much as slap a page on a copy machine without breaking the law - even though the content is public domain.

I don't understand why ICEL/GIA would have done this, or maybe I do. One can't be sure. In any case, the proviso left this book to suffer alone and unused. One wonders why they bothered to put it out at all.

I'm imagining a conjectural history in which someone at ICEL had the very good impulse of saving parishes money and getting great hymns out to the public. Then at the last minute, some powerful person swung in to defeat the whole purpose of the thing by adding one sentence to the front matter.

Given the prevailing business model of copyright/royalties, and the war chests that publishers pride themselves in accumulating in the dog-eat-dog world of publish-to-parish marketing, one can see why this product had no place: no one benefits from it except Catholic people and the Catholic liturgy generally.

The CMAA working on a work around right now.

Readings and Propers Only, for Sundays

I've been on a long hunt for a parish resource that provides only readings, propers, and Psalms for Sundays for an entire liturgical year. The idea is to save money by not publishing hymns (royalties drive up costs) and other extraneous material that are not used anyway if you have something like the Parish Book of Chant or print up liturgy programs each week. Many people are seeking only a book with readings plus ordo and that's it, at a rock bottom price.

Well, how does $2.25 per copy sound, for a book good for the entire year? Sounds good to me. An annual budget of, say, $1,000, for disposable pew resources: not too bad. Then you spend the extra on either musicians or on permanent books with music of the ages. That resource is Living Liturgy published by the Liturgical Press. I'm not wild for the Psalms in here and I think they could have left the music out of the Psalms completely but still, this book comes closest to what I had hoped to find. And no, I don't like the art that much, but it is serviceable, accurate, and the price is right.

Sing the O Antiphons

Richard Rice continues to do amazing things with his editions of music, most recently publishing a book of Magnificat antiphons in English, tunes drawn from the Gregorian tradition and shaped by his own experience as a singer and composer.

I highly recommend not only this book but all his editions of music, each of which is structured to give the liturgy more beauty and nobility.

Here is one O Antiphon from his new collection. As you can see, this is parish accessible.

Everyone Calm Down, the Choral Gradual is Complete

Richard Rice has completed the full liturgical year for his Choral Gradual. That is now available for free download. So say goodbye to sleepless nights worrying about Sundays one month from now. For my part, my email volume could fall by a third as all those anxiety-ridden directors of music and pastors who have fallen for these choral settings of propers can at last rest easy and save bandwidth writing musicasacra.com.

Who owns Ave Maria?

One of the most challenging parts of Caritas in Veritate, the social encyclical by Benedict XVI, concerns the passage in section 22. "On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care."

The background here concerns the pharmaceutical industry's demand for egregious rents from its drugs distributed in the third world, but the point applies more broadly. Some goods with the capacity for infinite reproducibility can be owned both privately and also be part of the commons. The Pope is urging a rethinking of attempts, through legislation, to make goods with universal value the private possession of a few.

The same rethinking is needed as regards the liturgy and its embedded music. Should it be made the private possession of the few or be part of the commons of civilization itself? The words and the music possess that divine trait of infinite reproducibility, and are made scarce only by artificial means of copyright legislation.

In an unprecedented step in the sweep of Christian history, the text of the Catholic liturgy have been made proprietary through these very means, which has not only harmed evangelistic efforts in the digital age; it has also netted no small sum to the rights holders themselves who are pleased to be able to charge royalties for printing and distributing at the expense of Catholics in the pews.

Another related problem concerns profit-making publishers themselves and their tendency to privatize the public domain through subtle means. For many years, private publishers have been trying to lead the faithful into believing that many of the hymns, chants, and songs, they are publishing are proprietarily held when in fact they are long in the public domain.

The best way to understand how this works is to consider a basic hymn of the faith: the Gregorian antiphon Ave Maria. I'm looking now at the Heritage Missal put out by the Oregon Catholic Press, and, in particular, at hymn number 312. It is Ave Maria, a hymn which combines scripture with medieval elaboration. The text at the bottom says the following:

Part one text: Luke 1:28; 42; part two text: 16th century
English text © 1995, Paul Ford. Published by OCP. All rights reserved.

Now, it is clear from this notice that it would be illegal to photocopy this page and hand it out to anyone. There is every indication that this chant is wholly owned in every way by the OCP, "all rights reserved." Is it true? In part. The English text itself is indeed written by Paul Ford, but Ford is not really a proprietary sort of guy. He would be very pleased to have this distributed widely. He is not the kind of person who would say: if you distribute my translation, you had better fork over the big bucks. I'm willing to speculate that OCP has never asked Ford if he would like to make his text part of the commons.

What about the Latin text? Well, the second part does not date from the 16th century. That is an outright falsehood. The easily accessible Catholic Encyclopedia points out that the text was already common by the Council of Trent and probably dates to the 11th century or certainly the 12th century. It is more ancient, then, than OCP suggests.

As for the music, it is long ago in the public domain and part of the commons of Catholic life. But would the casual singer know this from looking at this page? I don't think so. The whole of the notice seems to be designed to give the opposite impression, namely that the song is as much copyrighted as "Shepherd Me, O God."

Even so, it remains illegal to photocopy and distribute this page—I can't even post an image of it without fear of some awful fate—because the publisher has made sure that at least something on the page is copyrighted, in this case the English text underneath the Latin.

We are back to the problem mentioned by Benedict: an "excessive zeal for protecting knowledge." This is the very opposite of the impulse that is at the core of Christianity, which is all about spreading the good news and evangelizing for the faith.

Is it any wonder that Catholic music has become so diffuse and lacking in that universal quality that Pope Pius X said is a feature of Catholic music? This whole system needs to be challenged at a fundamental level. Catholic chants and Catholic liturgy must again become part of the commons of the faith.

Introits for Treble Choir

The other day, I pointed out that Richard Rice has written a collection of Introits for treble choir in three parts, a wonderful step towards providing more polyphonic options for singing the propers -- which is a fruitful direction for today's liturgical composers. These have practical value for every parish, whether in the extraordinary or ordinary form of the Roman Rite.

Here is the full book on line. Here it is in hard copy, which I recommend you get because it allows for better singing and planning.

Here is a portion of Richard's commentary in the foreword:

I designed this volume for choirs consisting mostly or exclusively of soprano and alto voices. The trio texture was popular among composers of the late Cecilian Movement, whose settings and transcriptions can still be heard in women’s religious communities.

The Introits selected cover the entire liturgical year for Sundays and Solemnities of the traditional Roman Missal (1962), but most are used in the modern Missal as well. Each Introit retains its Gregorian psalmtone verse, whose proper modality is reflected in the harmonized Introit itself. I have tried to preserve the natural rhythm of the Latin text, while still uncovering some type of motivic repetition. I have resorted only occasionally to text repetition when it helped to balance the musical phrase. I have made frequent use of mixed meters, without cluttering the score by marking all the metrical changes. Conductors should mark the changes, and conduct them (beating the half-note, as much as possible); singers need only keep an even quarter-note pulse, whether duple or compound, and follow the natural rhythm and accentuation of the text. Textual considerations will also govern the choice of tempo, which should always have a strong sense of forward movement.

And here is a sample page from the first Sunday in Lent.

Bridge Building and Sacred Music

It's a common error made in contemporary literature on sacred music to suggest that style doesn't matter, even though the Second Vatican Council clearly speaks of the "qualities proper to genuine sacred music." In fact, at least one defunct document issued in 1982 ("Music in Catholic Worship") explicitly claimed that we cannot judge the style of music as such. The replacement document, "Sing to the Lord," does not repeat the false claim, which was a great relief to the competent musicians involved.

However, at some stage of the drafting of "Sing," someone snuck in a phrase that admits the sentiment that style doesn’t matter. Such is the nature of committee work in which everyone gets a piece of the action. The phrase in paragraph 71 reads: "…the Church seeks to employ only that which, in a given style, meets the ritual-spiritual demands of the Liturgy." That seems like a pretty small nail on which to hang the hat of rock music, overt in its secular beats and emotionalism, but, sure enough, that is what we are seeing.

In any article in the June 2009 issue of Pastoral Music, a piece called "Praise and Worship Music: Can We Use it at Mass," by Ed Bolduc who is associated with a Christian publishing business, this statement is quoted to justify a rousing defense of P&M music. He admits that the music is "simple," but says that is fine since it is focused on the "individuals' personal, intimate relationship with God" and can be played by musicians "with even a minimal knowledge of their instrument." It is suitable because it address "specific needs" and "speaks to the heart." Further, it is suitable liturgical music because it encourages "vibrant, participatory, singing and worship."

Striking, isn't it? A magazine entirely devoted to the issue of Catholic music, in the same issue that discusses chant with a high degree of competence, would hand all musicians of the world a blank check to sing and play whatever they want provided it speaks to people in some way and gets people to sing. By that standard, no music, no style, no text, can be excluded from Mass, so of course Praise and Worship music is suitable too.

One would have no idea that there is any legislation governing the choice of music at Mass, though Popes have been written on this material for nearly 2000 years. The writer of this article feels free to completely ignore the whole of this writing and the whole of tradition, which is free to do, but it strikes me as the height of irresponsibility for this article to be published by a reputable Catholic publication.

Nonetheless, let's take on the notion that anything and everything can be played and sung at Mass. St. Pius the X summarized all the teachings of the Church by delineating three marks of sacred music: it is holy, beautiful, and universal. Gregorian chant is therefore the model and ideal.

Rather than explain each directly, it might be more fruitful to explain this by reference to building a bridge, the very physical structure that stretches over a body of water to road to allow transport above ground.

Let us say that we decide that a bridge has three marks: it design must obey geometric laws governing structure so that it will do its job, it must be made of solid material so that it can withstand wear, and it must be aesthetically pleasing.

The point about geometry is roughly analogous with the principle of universality: the laws of geometry are universal principles that no bridge can do without. In the same sense, sacred music should obey the dictate of universality, possessing quality that elicits a sense of the sacred worldwide.

The point about material integrity—the bridge can't be made of Styrofoam or paper but must have steel or thick wood enforcement—is roughly analogous to the principle of holiness in music. Without it, the music serves some other purpose but not a liturgical one. Holiness means to be set apart from things of the world to serve a particular godly purpose. If the music is not "made" with that quality, it cannot serve that purpose.

The final principle of bridge building concerns aesthetics. It is large and imposing and a permanent feature of the landscape. Without beauty, it can still do its practical functional work but it will be an eyesore. So it makes sense to insist on that quality since the bridge is not just providing transportation. It is also something we experience with this senses in the same way that we experience music with the senses.

So there is the analogy: music must be holy (be made of sound material), beautiful (aesthetically pleasing with an order that elevates our senses), and universal in its appeal to the best in everyone (obey universal norms that transcend time and place).

Now, just imagine if someone came along and said, you know, all these old strictures are just the work of fuddy-duddies, rules imposed by people who don't understand the contemporary bridge-building impulse. Bridges don't have to obey the laws of geometry. They don't have to be made of anything in particular. And the standards of what is aesthetically pleasing are so various as to resist any attempts at objectification.

What would happen to a bridge that in the building of which ignored all these principles? I think we know. Cars would drive on the bridge without any real assurance of safety in getting from here to there. Depending on the degree to which the rules were ignored, they might no make it at all. Meanwhile, the bridge would in fact be an eyesore.

The person behind the project would not end as a community hero. He would probably develop the reputation as a fool and rightly so: anyone who attempts to serve a community of traveler while willy-nilly ignoring established rules has little to offer anyone.

So it is with music at Mass. There are principles. There are rules. These are essential in accomplishing the task at hand. It is not enough that people's hearts are in the right place and that the music moves them in some emotional sense. It must conform to the principles governing the task at hand.

Now, I admit here that there is plenty of room for creativity in the application of these principles. No question about it. That is a good thing. If every bridge looked the same or operated the same way, the world would become rather boring. But that creativity must occur within an established framework else the job would not and could not be said to be well done.

A song singled out by Mr. Bolduc as particularly appropriate for Mass is "Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord" by Paul Baloche. I've not heard this song before. But listening to it now for the first time, I hear bongos, a trap set, electric guitars, a simplistic musical and textual structure, a rock-beat meter, and familiar rock riffs throughout, along with an ego completely unleashed from all decorum and discipline. It might be a good thing that it has a vaguely religious message (a guy wants to see God) but that alone is not enough. It does not serve the purposes of liturgical music. And for anyone with a well-formed liturgical conscience, this music will introduce scandal to many at Mass.



So, no, it does not qualify. Based on this sample, I would say that Ed Bolduc is wrong. Praise and Worship music should not be used at Mass, even if his firm of World Library Publications sells the sheet music.

1957: Catholic musicians were very unhappy

Look at this Interesting issue of Caecilia from 1957.

It is a great issue that includes a full publication by Peter Wagner but also this extremely interesting editorial, probably written by Fr. Francis Schmitt. The world was moving beneath their feet. Gone was the sober confidence from the 1930s, the sense that all that was necessary was more education, scholarship, and funding. The threat to the core of Catholic music was all around them, making the chant enthusiasts worry for the future.

To jump from the archives from the 1930s to this one issue from 1957 is quite extraordinary. It would even appear that production values of the publication itself, the predecessor to Sacred Music, had dramatically declined.

As the discussion of the chant develops, we should like to reach some sort of editorial understanding. Let it be said right off that our chief interest lies in the singing and preservation of the chant, for despite the great propaganda Gregorian chant has enjoyed, both its use and its preservation are in mortal danger. The danger comes from curious sources----those who imagine themselves to be in the advance guard of a) the liturgical movement, especially the vernacular folk, b) congregational singing enthusiasts, c) educational simplification. In the first matter we ask you to weigh most carefully the words of Father Vitry in the February issue of Caecilia. In the second we are in substantial agreement with J. Robert Carroll, who in the May-June issue of the Gregorian Review ably defended the role of chant in congregational singing. Many of the chant's erstwhile proclaimers have cast it out. This is not to say that congregational singing may not take many other forms, but in the end, whatever form it takes, it will be based on, and it will be the result of, a whole culture, and not the inane notion of three minute rehearsals and shouting down the congregation such as Father Clifford Howdl propounds in the current music pages of Liturgy. In the third matter we have only to be minded of several new psalm-tone propers that have been added to the plethora of spoon-fed education. About all of these one puts out only a warning. A review would be pointless, for one is as bad as the other. We firmly believe that the guts of chant itself is worth the trouble.

USCCB Getting the Hang of Things

The USCCB has opened all of its Psalm files so that composers and people who put together liturgy programs can work ahead.

We're getting there.

New Caecilia page

Several people urged that a special page be created for the archives of The Caecilia. Done

The Caecilia, Amazing Archives

A treasure trove of largely unseen (by this generation) issues of The Caecilia, published in the United States by the predecessor organization of the Church Music Association of America, arrived yesterday (thank to the donor!).

The files are not prepped with bookmarks and the list obviously needs something like a table of contents because right now you can only click and guess. Still, I thought it would be good to post these now, just because they are so amazing.

What do they show? Well, that there was a thriving chant movement in the "old days," that it was working very hard, that it was putting out great material, that progress was being made. I do think there are reasons why its roots weren't deep enough to head off the onslaught but that is for another day.

The Caecilia, June 1933

The Caecilia, August 1933

The Caecilia, September 1933

The Caecilia, October 1933

The Caecilia, November 1933

The Caecilia, December 1933

The Caecilia, January 1934

The Caecilia, February 1934

The Caecilia, March 1934

The Caecilia, April 1934

The Caecilia, May 1934

The Caecilia, June 1934

The Caecilia, August 1934

The Caecilia, September 1934

The Caecilia, October 1934

The Caecilia, November 1934

The Caecilia, December 1934

The Caecilia, January 1935

The Caecilia, February 1935

The Caecilia, March 1935

The Caecilia, April 1935

The Caecilia, May 1935

The Caecilia, June 1936

The Caecilia, August 1936

The Caecilia, September 1936

The Caecilia, October 1936

The Caecilia, November 1936

The Caecilia, December 1936

The Caecilia, January 1936

The Caecilia, February 1936

The Caecilia, March 1936

The Caecilia, April 1936

The Caecilia, May 1936

The Caecilia, June 1936

The Caecilia, August 1936

The Caecilia, September 1936

The Caecilia, October 1936

The Caecilia, November 1936

The Caecilia, December 1936

The Caecilia, January 1937

The Caecilia, February 1937

The Caecilia, March 1937

The Caecilia, April 1937

The Caecilia, May 1937

The Caecilia, June 1937

The Caecilia, August 1937

The Caecilia, September 1937

The Caecilia, October 1937

The Caecilia, November 1937

The Caecilia, Decemeber 1937

Ascension Introit: Viri Galilaei

A nameless person in a combox for another post accused me of not liking contemporary liturgical composers in general because I am not celebrating along with the National Association of Pastoral Musicians the naming of Paul Innwood as Liturgical Composer of the Year. Well, I know I shouldn't let these things bug me but I've noticed for a long time that the opponents of sacred music are especially fond of caricaturing our position as opposing modernity and opposing people generally. Sigh.

In any case, perhaps this is a good opportunity to highlight some contemporary ritual music, but first consider the authentic introit, which, you will observe, is neither old nor new but timeless and universal and beautiful precisely as chant has been traditionally described.

In this way, it is like the faith itself. It is not a legitimate criticism of, for example, the idea of the Incarnation that "this is an old view of some peasants 2,000 years ago and has no relevance in our hip happening modern digitally democratized times. We need new doctrines for a contemporary people!"

In any case, one might immediately recognize such rhetoric as fundamentally anti-Christian, which is fine if that's your point of view, but let us recognize it for what it is and not mask this opinion as a mere contemporary application of Catholic teaching.

I hold a similar view toward anyone who would say that this is not an appropriate entrance for Ascension:



Here is a beautiful rendition of the above from the Netherlands:



Now, there are other options, among which are beautiful English antiphons, and I won't link or display them here, but rather draw your attention to what I think is the most successful collection of propers to appear this year. It is the Simple Choral Gradual by Richard Rice. It is ingenious in the way that the music is dramatic, simple, effective -- and I'm also intrigued to find that people actually do sing along with these, even without encouragement, since the music is similar week to week and the antiphon is repeated during the entrance. Truly, this music excites people in a wonderful way while still remaining profoundly liturgical.

It has great dignity. It draws from the tradition, uses the proper text, has the forward motion of an entrance, and relates very closely to our heritage: this is music of the Roman Rite. Here is our own amateur choir singing this after ten minutes of rehearsal.

How Important Is Ceremony?

The other day a note came to me that said: "do you really think God cares whether he hears all this chant you keep talking about or where it is rock music or jazz? Lighten up and realize that praise, not rules and regulations, is what matters."

Sincerely did I ask whether he was Catholic and whether he had any regard for the liturgical books at all. He replied that he is Catholic but he thinks that we should all be priests, that the Mass strikes him as a lot of fuss, that the Pope is just some guy in Rome, and so on.

The answer didn't surprise me. There is a link between respect for the ceremonial aspects of liturgy--the decorum that is required of liturgical music--and a full understanding of Catholic faith. As we pray, so we believe.

However, it is more than obvious to many that the respect for liturgical ceremony, including but not limited to the music that is part of the Roman Rite, has been in decline for many years. This is not only a postconciliar problem, by the way. Thanks to youtube, you can observe preconciliar Masses that seem disregarding of gravity of the liturgy. But at least back then, there were rules and rubrics that served as the glue that it kept it from coming apart.

Today, it is surely easy to get the impression from the typical Sunday Mass that the liturgy is all about reading a book to periodic accompaniment from a choir and instruments interrupted by a sermon and a collection. People are up and down, bodily movements don't seem to follow any predictable pattern, and there's always something a bit improvised about what you see.

Or perhaps you don't notice this aspect of modern liturgical practice, and it all seems quite formal by comparison to the conventional evangelical service. And this aspect of Catholic Mass you quite like. If something is worth doing routinely to the glory of God, a ritual with origins back to the earliest Christians, with patterns of speaking and movement that tie together generations in succession, it is worth doing with precision in deference to what has come before.

When it comes to liturgy, one is either deferring to what has been, treating tradition as authoritative, or one is presumptuously making up something on one's own. The problem with improvisation is that it attracts attention to the will of the worship leader instead of the one being worshipped.

This is why Mass, even today and even without the extended ceremonial that is part of the Roman Rite, strikes the casual observer as an occasion of holiness and sacred mystery, and strikes awe in those who attend, and it touches us more than the most inspired bit of spontaneous worship, no matter how competent its leaders.

Once we understand that point, and really begin to understand it, we notice that there is a dividing line in Catholic liturgical praxis today: a tendency to tighten ceremony and rubrics toward doing what the Church asking vs. the tendency to loosen ever more toward the point that the will of the celebrant and the will of community prevail above all else.

There is a book that helps to sort out some of these issues, a book that I believe every Roman Catholic priest should own, and not because it makes an abstract argument on behalf of the General Instruction on the Roman Missal. No, this is something else entirely, something far beyond a general guide to saying Mass. It is an encyclopedic account of the details of the Roman Rite that goes into more depth than you could ever imagine possible into every conceivable aspect of the liturgy.

It is an important book not only because of the direction and instruction it provides. The full weight of this book is to inspire deep and abiding respect in the structure of the rite and the overwhelming demands it makes upon everyone who takes part in it. It is nothing short of a masterpiece, and one that should be on hand in every parish and every cathedral.

It is The Ceremonies of Roman Rite Described by Adrian Fortescue together with J.B. O'Connell and the marvelous Alcuin Reid in its 15th edition, newly published in 2009 by Burns and Oates. The first edition appeared in 1917 and then continually until 1962 with the twelfth edition. There is an ominous absence of updates from 1962 until 1996, 2003, and today.

The reason for the great parenthesis was the effective suppression of what has always been the Roman Rite and its replacement with what was in practice and general appearance a new form entirely. The interlude was a period in which ceremony in all aspects of life was rejected in favor of spontaneity. It is telling that there is no "Fortescue" on what is today called the ordinary form, the New Missal of 1970.

A excellent attempt toward that end came in 1995 with Peter Elliot's Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite, but the level of detail of Fortescue was notable in its absence; what's more, the book appeared a quarter of a century following the promulgation of the new Missal, which is an alarming fact in some ways.

The revival of this Fortescue book came following a new period of liberality concerning the older form, first with Ecclesia Dei in 1998 and then in 2007 with Summorum Pontificum, which made it clear that the usus antiquior was never abrogated. Before the many rubrical uncertainties and excessive options within the new Missal, having the form of the older Mass before us can make an enormous contribution to Catholic liturgical life, serving as a standard to which the ordinary form liturgy can aspire.

It is for this reason that the Fortescue book in this new edition is of such enormous value. It impresses upon us just what a massive apparatus we are dealing with when in comes to Catholic liturgy, just how serious and detailed a project we are entering into. This is not a spontaneous community meeting that is held together with a suggested order of worship. This is a monument of civilization and the highest possible act of praise and worship that exists. Solemnity is not just a thing for Good Friday but is at the core of every liturgical action the entire year.

But just so that you know what to expect, I would like to quote a sample passage that is not untypical in this treatise. Prepare for a level of detail that you might not have known to exist.

Here is a large quotation from a page in the chapter on "The Sung Mass Without Deacon and Subdeacon," and the rubrics concerning the use of torch bearers at the Canon:

At the Sanctus the thurifer comes accompanied by the torch-bearers. All genuflect in the middle together, the thurifer in the middle of the torch-bearers, who genuflect in a straight line across the sanctuary. The thurifer goes to the foot of the steps.on the epistle side of the altar.

The torch-bearers separate, bow to one another and kneel facing the altar, in line along the middle of the sanctuary. They stay here fill after the elevation, the thurifer at the epistle side waits till just before the consecration. After the warning bell the first acolyte puts incense into the thurible. The thurifer kneels on the lowest step on the epistle side, facing the gospel side. At the elevation he incenses the Blessed Sacrament with three double swings at each elevation, bowing once before and after each group of three incensings. It is convenient that he time the incensings so as to correspond with the celebrant’s genuflexion, elevation and genuflexion.

Before the consecration the MC kneels. He may kneel on the edge of the footpace at the celebrant’s left, behind him, and raise the end of the chasuble as the celebrant holds his arms. The first acolyte rings the bell at the Sanctus; once when the priest spreads his hands over the oblata, and three times at each elevation. After the elevation the MC rises, goes to the celebrant by the book, genuflects and stands there, turning the pages. He will again stand back a step at the commemoration of the dead. The thurifer rises, comes to the middle, genuflects arid takes the thurible out. His office is now ended. The torch-bearers, if they are to take the torches to the sacristy, rise and genuflect with him, then follow. But atrequiems, on certain fast days, and when people will receive Holy Communion, the torch-bearers stay kneeling till after the communion.

That is just a small piece of the overall structure, one chosen nearly at random. The entire work is 500 pages, and it doesn't waste one word. Alcuin Reid's great contribution to this new edition is to incorporate in great detail the role of music in the liturgy, even going so far as to print the tones for the celebrant and other ministers, drawing heavily on work published by the Church Music Association of America. Reid's own contribution to this new edition must have been enormous in other ways. If I'm reading this correctly, the front matter says that Reid was even responsible for the actual typesetting of the book (which is very beautiful).

I'm going to anticipate an objection that might be offered. Someone might say: all this material applies to the "Tridentine Rite" but has no actual bearing on the modern rite. Well, part of the stated purpose of Summorum Pontificum was precisely to hold up a model and encourage an integration of the modern rite into its deeper history of the past. So while the ceremonies as described in this book might not normatively apply to the new Missal in all respects, the usus antiquior does in fact provide a template and a framework for the ordinary form of the Roman Rite.

Rubricists tell me that one of the most frustrating aspects of the modern rite is that there are so many questions left unanswered in so many areas. There are too many ambiguities, too many unknowns, and they appear in strange places and in surprising ways. Experienced MCs in the ordinary form know that they must rely on the older form to light the way.

Thus does the purpose and utility of this work extend far being its apparent use as a rule book and ceremonial guide for liturgy said according to the 1962 form. In here we have a model for the ideal, one which completely buries the ego in the course of showing the deepest respect for the history and meaning of something that is much larger than our own time and place. Just to flip through the pages is a deeply humbling experience.

A book like this is not the product of one mind but of 2000 years of experience. In its vast detail, it will convince you that without ceremony, without deference to tradition, without extreme discipline over what one says and does at Mass, there can be no liturgy that is authentically Catholic.

Richard Terry on Catholic Music

Richard Terry's amazing work on Catholic Church Music, first published in 1907 and retaining its power and relevance today, is now available at Amazon for $16.

Last Two Issues of Sacred Music

Got a bit behind on uploading archives of Sacred Music, but here they are.

• Volume 136.1, Spring 2009 (Saying and Singing, Mahrt; History of the Breviary, Andersen; Sung Readings, Thome; Prepare the Way, Sywulka; Let People Sing, Treacy; Pierre de la Rue, Mahrt; Homily at the Intensive, Wallace; Homily at Polyphony Weekend, March; What After Intensive? Oost-Zinner; Glory of Chant; Thomas; Three Paths, Tucker; Turning Point in Music, Tucker; News; English chant, Poterack)


• Volume 135.4, Winter 2008 (The Sacred, Mahrt; Music as Integral to Liturgy, Lawrence; The Role of the Choir, Baker; The Lectern, Foldvary; Reading the Vatican Gradual, Ostrowki; Set the Propers, Esguerra; A Note on O Come, Berry; On Messaien, Ryan; The Theosis of Taverner, Snodgrass; Leisure and Liturgy, Cipolla; On Beauty, Johansen; On Schuler, Sanderson; Your Choir and History, Ballou; Heroism, Tucker; Education in Sacred Music, Poterack; News on Byrd and more)

Sacred Music, Volume 136, Number 1, Spring 2009

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Sacred Music, CMAA, Winter 2008

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Magazines & Newspape gregorian chant

Morning Prayer, English and Latin

William Mahrt prepared this printable edition of Morning Prayer, English and Latin, for the Sacred Music Colloquium. Feel free to download and use.