On a side note: I've had about enough Eric Whitacre.

I've had about enough Eric Whitacre.

Welcome to the club. Add a few other in the faux pantheon.

I must live in a traditional music bubble, since I have never heard of him.

I didn't even know he wrote sacred music.
I know a lot of band directors who enjoy programming his music, though.

I guess Whitacre's Alleluia qualifies as "sacred music" since the text is "Alleluia" (sung a lot of times). But there is very little else, if anything, by Whitacre that would qualify as "sacred music" for the RC church. Much, though, is certainly beautiful, inspiring, and in some sense "sacred" in a non-liturgical sense.

An Eric Whitacre sampler:

When David Heard (II Samuel 18:33).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2ZKKXCuaYc

Alleluia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rak_rJLG49k

Lux Aurumque.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j2JRcC6wBs

The Seal Lullaby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxTghSZupv8

Virtual Choir 2.0, 'Sleep'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WhWDCw3Mng

They are birds (vultures, to be exact) of a feather.

And I hope they all get flocked.

Exactly! There is, or should be, a wall between secular and sacred. The fact that often there is not a divide between the two may have helped lessen the effect of the sacred. I am "old school" on this, but going into the temple should be an entrance into heaven on earth with its own sights, sounds, and even smells - a completely different world.

Ok, so, I'm the one who originally posted the "offending" Alleluia. I had no idea that posting a modern choral "Alleluia" on Easter could be so controversial! :-)

In any case, I'd like to expand on a few things... In the thread "Easter Joy", people were encouraged to post things that made them feel joyous on Easter. Many things made me feel joyous on Easter: the priest chanting the Exsultet, the smiles on everyone's faces during Mass, the excitement in my kids' voices as they told their cousins the next day about how cool it was to attend Vigil... AND the "Alleluia" I posted. I listened to that piece over and over yesterday while making Easter brunch, and it made my heart happy.

For the record, NOWHERE did I state (or imply) that the Whitacre piece belonged in Mass. I intended no debate on sacred, "sacred", or secular music. I had just wanted to share it with people who appreciate music. Nothing more, nothing less.

Finally, to be clear, I'm not picking a fight with ClergetKubisz ... it's totally fine to dislike (or be sick of) Whitacre. And totally fine to state as much. The bummer to me is how easily my post/link and ClergetKubisz's reply can turn into a rant thread on sacred, "sacred", and secular music in Mass, when that's really not ever what it was about... it saddens me that so many folks' view on music comes from such a defensive stance.

I see no vitriol in either CK's pronouncement or my POV regarding the modern anointment of select composers. What I do see is misconstrued extrapolation and dismissal of concerns by intellectual devaluation. As Monty Python observed, "that's not argument, it's contradiction."
PS. To refocus, the obvious reality is that this discussion does not concern the linkage between the likes of Beethoven and Monteverdi to Mr. Whitacre. There is and cannot be at this point in time's dialectic no likening comparison of catalogues. I do have the benefit of having been exposed to Whitacre's opi because as a Californian I programmed many of his works while teaching HS choral and took in his performance piece about angels at CSU Northridge while still in development (which he directed from his armada of Mac computers.) There is no doubt Whitacre is a compelling force in art music in this era, a positive force. However, his popularity has resulted in a number of concerns, a couple of which: 1. The further eroding compositional vocabularies among emulating adherents with dubious skills and craft (I don't want to name my suspects.) and 2. a corollary shadow over other very talented "new" composers. For example, since Monteverdi was mentioned, William Hawley comes to mind.
I suppose it's time for me to cease and desist. And as Fidem reminds, a great amount of introspection is required for local church choirs in terms of what can be successfully rendered at a parish level that witnesses to the Lord Jesus.

For the record, NOWHERE did I state (or imply) that the Whitacre piece belonged in Mass. I intended no debate on sacred, "sacred", or secular music. I had just wanted to share it with people who appreciate music. Nothing more, nothing less.

No, you didn't say it belonged at mass. In my earlier days, we were subjected to the infamous one word Randall Thompson 'Alleluia' - the most tedious piece ever written! It is like "The Song That Never Ends."

There's nothing offensive about Eric Whitacre's music, so I apologize if there was any miscommunication regarding my opinions of Mr. Whitacre and his produce. He is simply very overplayed in the band circles, from which I hail musically (I originally trained as a clarinetist). Eric Whitacre's "October" is one of the most beautiful and moving works I've ever played, conducted, or heard, and I've done all three many, many times. The problem, I think is that everyone wants Mr. Whitacre to provide another "October" or "Ghost Train," which were two of his most successful and popular works, and they were produced early on in his career. I think his popularity also has something to do with his physique.

Charles

I think that is the fault of programming, not the work. Many church and secular choral directors, pace what they put in their program information about the etiology of the piece, fail to grapple with the piece's unusual (given the ostensible text) sobriety and instead use it as a programming widget. Classics are not invulnerable to such treatment.

Imagine if someone had programmed it after 9/11, for example. That's closer to the heart of the matter.

Having conducted Mr. Thompson's Alleluia this year as part of our Easter programme, I have done about every three or four years. But I sang it with Robert Shaw, who gave it a real go. Perhaps that is why I love it. And my adults love it. It is hard work in terms of ensemble.

So I guess I am among those who inflict the piece on people. I also met Thompson and found him to be a lovely person.

The choral society here does "Carmina..." it seems every other year. Is there anyone left who either hasn't heard it, or even wants to hear it again?

I understand why they do those "warhorses." People buy tickets and the choral groups need the income to survive.

I've always liked Bolero. =)

MJO, isn't everything subject to the "eye/ear of the beholder?

BULLoney!

my newly fabricated word...

I realize from working in western churches, that a "y'all come, let's party and be happy" mindset is too often the norm. Not too much uniquely sacred about that.

Who would ever mistake what goes on at even the most banal NO Mass as everyday secular business as usual? I recall being at a baptism performed by the stereotype of the chatty Post-Vatican II priest who, to my mind, was about as ritually inept as possible. But the fairly large number of truly secular folks who happened to be there said that they were blown away by the ceremony and had never experienced anything like that before. As with so many things in life, YMMV.

But the fairly large number of truly secular folks who happened to be there said that they were blown away by the ceremony and had never experienced anything like that before.

This particular point is anecdotal. Of course, Catholic Masses and other liturgies are going to look very organized and ceremonial to someone who has never experienced anything like them before. This does not have anything to do with the correctness or sacredness of the liturgy performed.

...there is too little difference too often between the sacred and the profane, which means others are not convinced of the truths revealed through the liturgical action.

This is true, as well as the fact that there is a concerted effort by some to include more of the profane where it should never be. This, of course, confuses the lines between what is sacred and what is profane. This answers the following question:

Who would ever mistake what goes on at even the most banal NO Mass as everyday secular business as usual?

While at its core, the Mass is the Mass. Period. It is a sacred action, occurring in what should be sacred space, which means nothing profane should ever penetrate its walls. However, we see this frequently: the profane entering sacred space and nothing is ever done about it. If the Mass is sacred, and it is, and the church in which it is celebrated is sacred, and it is, should the profane be allowed? Should it be purposefully included, as it is often? Or has the definition of what is sacred changed?

This particular point is anecdotal.

Of course it is. I don't believe I claimed anything more than that.

Let me try another tack: people keep invoking the sacred/secular distinction as if it is obvious what falls on which side. But the Eric Whitacre piece under discussion seems to be not so obvious. Can someone identify for me the particular objective qualities of the piece that they think would make it fall on either the secular or the sacred side of the divide?

I like Carmina Burana, and would go to a concert to hear it if the tickets were affordable.

As with all problems of liturgical aethesis, we are on very infirm ground in that the matter is highly subjective and difficult to codify. We know, though, when the ritual is being suitably graced and we are being spiritually aedified, and when the liturgy is being usurped by an aesthesis foreign to it - even though as an offering at a sacred concert it might be aedifying indeed.

So my question is, who is the "we" in your second sentence above? Does it include only those with a certain degree of spiritual and/or aesthetic training? Also, while I do think people know when they feel that they are being spiritually edified, isn't it possible that they are actually being spiritually corrupted by what they feel is edifying them? I know plenty of people who would say that they are edified by On Eagles Wings or Be Not Afraid, but I suspect there are a lot of people who would be dismissive of that feeling. More controversially (at least in this forum), I know people who feel spiritually edified by Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus or by Handel's All We Like Sheep, whereas other's consider them spiritually destructive schlock, or at least unsuitable for the liturgy.

MJO: I appreciate the honesty of your parenthetical "whatever that might mean"s.

What on earth makes Handel's Hallelujah Chorus unsuitable for liturgy? Or ALL oratorio movements? Now I'm cranky!

We did Handel's "Worthy is the Lamb" as the introit for Christ the King. Because it is...a well-crafted musical setting...of the official liturgical text for that moment. Am I missing something here? Would it need to be flat and boring and unimaginative, like say, a Ravanello setting, to be suitable for the liturgy? Or does the text itself call for some intensity and drama, in a musical setting meant to worthily sound that text in the liturgy?

Personally, I think dull, uninteresting music with no drama (or intensity) is unsuitable for the liturgy, especially for high feast days, regardless of whether the text in question is proper.

...who is the "we"...

This is, really, a quite profound question, and one pregnant with cultural, educational, spiritual, and highly subjective and referential aspects. I may say a few things that will surprise some of my colleagues here, things that, really, I don't like, myself, to say, but which it seems to me are in the realm of 'fair play' and appreciative of the genuine and non-contrived differences amongst the multitude of persons and communities on this splendid planet on which the Father of All placed us. Some of the observations that I offer I do so begrudgingly, but with the sense that they are fair and not culturally coercive. None of us likes to be put into a mold, especially one that is foreign to our nature.

Cultural honesty should be evident in all our liturgy. This means that most of us on this forum should not be subjected to musical languages that connote to us a clear secularity, an undoubted market-place ethos, a pop or faux(!)-folk idiom. Most of us would identify renaissance polyphony, much of the English anthem genre, and much from the pens of such moderns as Poulenc, Messiaen, Howells, even Whitacre, etc., not to overlook Gregorian chant, as supremely apt for our worship, supremely ecclesiastical in nature, and possessed of a fundamentally spiritual and objectively worshipful reference. We would like to commend this ethos to the vast majority of our European heritaged brethren (including our youth!), to all educated folk, and to all who share in our western cultural heritage (dare I say 'patrimony'?). Such is our genuine cultural and musical language.

But! There are in our midst those, even of European heritage, to whom this cultural paradigm is foreign. They live in the mountains or the 'back woods' and are strangers to what seems to us self-evidently holy. Ours is not the cultural, and especially not the musical, language which they speak, or which they would think of as anything but strange. Is it not a sort of imposition to think that the music of their worship should not be expressed in the musical language which they speak. Oh, but it's vulgar and mundane we would object. But if it is crafted carefully to express the meaning of the sacred verba in a musical language in which they see themselves, and see themselves in reverence, can we say that it is not 'a' sacred idiom? Can we look into their hearts and judge them to be irreverent? Ignorant? I'll, I pray, never presume to judge what is in another persons heart when he is at worship of his God. And, lest there be any doubt, nor should he dismiss the expressions of my soul as 'Euro-centred' or elitist, or this that and the other. Both he and I are worshiping our own worship when we start hurling those boulders around.

What I have said about the sub-cultures in our midst, I would say as well about non-western cultures. Why shouldn't Japanese or Indian worship sound like Japanese and Indian music? Their music is foreign to me (though I do admire it). Indeed, I wouldn't be able to tell a Japanese love song from a Japanese song about the warring deeds of a Samauri. But the Japanese could. One must assume that there is a sacred idiom within the language of Japanese music, and that God would be pleased to hear it. (Unfortunately, what one most often hears of Japanese, or Viet-namese, or any oriental sacred music is not the genuine music of their culture but a ridiculously [even hilariously] orientalised and debased western idiom. This is as disgusting as western sacro-pop. And! What I just said about the orientals applies equally to the Hispanics and Afro-Americans in our midst!)

I think that what I have suggested about the 'uncultured' or 'unlettered' sub-cultures in our own midst, and what I have said about non-western cultures in general, serves to make the point that everyone should be, and is entitled to be, culturally genuine. Many will have no objection to this proposition. But the same many will have no problem at all thinking that I, and most of us on this forum, should be subjected to sacred idioms that are anything but sacral in nature, that are not expressive of the European heritage and culture which is the birthright of the vast majority of our countrymen and women. We are accused of such idiotic things as 'cultural imperialism' (really!!!) by the very folk who wish to practice their own imperialism on us. This is unholy. It makes a lie of their own professed inclusiveness. It reveals them to be pitifully ignorant and willfully, snidely, mean and disrespectful.

A final note: there are those of all these various cultural identities who, shall we say, cross various cultural lines. A Japanese may have great devotion to Tallis or Palestrina. An American back woods dweller may find in Howells a spiritual expression that he or she was amazed at. And, to be sure, many of 'our' own people not only jettison their true heritage, but hold it in contempt. One thing, though, of which we may be certain, is that those who cry 'oh, that is elitist', or 'oh! that is so Euro-centric', and those who cry, 'oh, that is so folksy', or 'oh! that is not sacred', are, all of them, birds of a feather.

Someone once told me that he had never met anyone who had such a sense of fair play as I. I don't know whether or not this is so (I think that it mustn't be), but I do know that my sense of fair play, my appreciation for the myriad of cultures which share our Earthly home, is, sometimes, irksome even to me - because Tallis and Anglican chant, and Brahms and Bach, and Monteverdi and Byrd, and Gregorian chant and DuFaye, et al., are so obviously, so self-evidently, universals.

This is my excuse for an answer to Deacon Fritz' question: 'who is the "we"'?