The
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awful stuff that has passed for liturgical
music in the Catholic Church for the past thirty-five years is a continuing disgrace
and embarrassment. The insipid "hymns" and utterly trite musical
settings of parts of the Ordinary of the Mass suddenly appeared from nowhere
sometime shortly after Vatican II.
Overnight,
fifteen hundred years of some of the most beautiful, inspired music in all of
Western culture was thrown out and replaced by what sounds like bad 1960s folk-pop-elevator
music. In fact, it's worse than that. Nothing in pop music ever sounded quite
as loathsome as what is played and sung in the church today.
The
magnificent and austere chant as well as Masses and other liturgical music
written by a succession of history's greatest composers has largely disappeared
from the Catholic Church. As Richard Morris has pointed out,
the great tradition of liturgical music flourishes today in concerts, on CDs,
everywhere but in the church. How did this great art get replaced by the
repugnant drivel we hear today? What happened? Who commissioned this awful
stuff? Why has this been tolerated all this time? Who writes this trash? If
there is to be new music, why isn't it better? This rubbish is not heard just
in regional parishes in the US. It is worldwide. To my horror, I heard this
same shameful music performed at the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome!
Try
to imagine what it would be like if the rest of the Church's art were
dumbed-down to this degree. Paint-on-velvet say, replacing the Sistine Chapel
ceiling. Or an upturned bathtub with a plastic Virgin, spray painted blue,
replacing the Berninis. Would the clergy and faithful sit by silently and endure
such an insult? Is music a less important art form in the eyes of the modern
church? It would seem so.
Apparently,
part of the reason for the sweeping changes of Vatican II was to make the
service more accessible. It was thought that vernacular "folk masses"
and other such misguided secular notions would somehow bring the parishioners
closer to the service. It has not done so. How could it? Bad music is just bad
music. Some of these ideas might have worked to some degree if the job of
writing the music had been given to anyone capable. But that didn't happen. The
congregation does not participate in singing any more than they ever did. Why
would they? Who would want to sing this music?
The
choir had always handled the bulk of the singing in past generations, and did
so quite adequately. Even in my small parish, the choir was good enough to sing
some Palestrina, Vittoria, and other great composers, as well as the chant.
This magnificent music was a vital part of the uplifting experience of going to
church. The chant worked for illiterate medieval peasants. Are we somehow less
sophisticated today than they were?
Did
Vatican II really think that the average church parishioner could somehow no
longer appreciate the music of Josquin? Did they think that the congregation
could no longer relate to the music of Ockegham and Byrd? This is clearly not
true. There are more recordings of this music today than ever before, eagerly
listened to by people all over the world. Is there something out of line with
this music and the interpretation of church doctrine according to Vatican II?
In
the 1950s, when I was growing up Catholic, we were taught that one of the
distinguishing characteristics of the Catholic Mass was that it was the same
everywhere, unchanging. We were taught that the Mass never changed, at least
not much since the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century. That's why it
was said in Latin, so that it would be the same in any service, in any country
throughout the world. It was not subject to regional traditions, local bias,
local mores, local interpretations, local reformers, but rather it remained
unaltered everywhere, and always would remain the same. One could expect to
hear the beautiful chant sung in Latin wherever one went. One also looked forward
to the almost endless supply of magnificent contrapuntal music performed at
High Mass and special occasions throughout the church year. Gesualdo on Good
Friday maybe, if the choir was up to it.
Then
suddenly, it all went away. Suddenly, there were bad folk guitar players in
church, bongos. The choir disappeared. Why is all of the new music in the
church totally uninspired and pedestrian? Doesn't anyone care?
A
grave error in judgment has been made and seems to go unnoticed. The Church in
its ignorance has willfully reduced the music of the Mass to a numbingly dumb,
excruciatingly bad set of fake-folk melodies. The musical part of the service
is no longer uplifting, no longer a positive experience. It is an embarrassment
of bad taste.
My
understanding was that folk Masses, Masses in the vernacular, and the "new
music," were meant to be exceptions to the traditional Latin services and
their attendant music, that the Latin Mass would remain the standard, that
these new things were experiments. Instead, they have become the norm. The old
music is now so distant that priests and church choirs no longer even remember
the traditions, so all that beautiful chant, all that magnificent art music, is
completely lost on younger generations of Catholics. What a shame for a young
person to grow up thinking that Marty Haugen is the traditional music of the
Catholic church.
Today
we are seeing the results of some of the misguided reforms of the church since
the 1960s. Catholic congregations diminish in numbers every year in the US.
Fewer and fewer Catholics are finding vocations in the priesthood or as nuns.
The truly important reforms: Holy Orders for women, celibacy as a choice for
priests, the church's view of contraception, and the responsibility of the
church leadership in dealing with its own criminals, have not been addressed.
Instead, the church has concentrated on secularizing its traditions and with
that, diminishing, or getting rid of much of the art that has contributed to
the glory of God as well as profoundly enhancing the joy and uplifting
experience of celebrating the sacrifice of the Mass.
—T. McFaul July, 2002
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