CCWatershed article: Encourage the Clergy to Sing
  • MarkB
    Posts: 1,025
    Quite good:
    https://www.ccwatershed.org/2024/01/02/encourage-the-clergy-to-sing/

    The article encourages us to encourage priests and deacons to chant more of the Mass ordinary using the tones in the Roman Missal.

    Reading this article together with the one from GIA Quarterly that I critiqued in another thread got me thinking.

    The near-universal experience for the past 40+ years has been that of a mostly recited Mass with contemporary devotional songs inserted into the "downtimes" and at the "bookends". That has seemed okay to many people because the musical styles of the songs were juxtaposed with speaking, not with singing the Mass ordinary.

    If the Mass ordinary were to be sung using the tones in the Roman Missal, then the OCP and GIA songs that are widely being sung at Mass would be juxtaposed with chanted dialogues, prayers and readings. If that were to happen, I believe the juxtaposition would reveal an incongruity: the OCP and GIA music would suddenly seem out of place because it doesn't integrate nor flow well with the chanting of the Mass ordinary.

    It would be like inserting "Wipe Out" into the middle of The Nutcracker Suite: it would immediately be seen as out of place in the context of the ballet, whereas by itself, without that juxtaposition, there is no incongruity, and it's even a cool composition, considered in itself.

    Inserting "Wipe Out" into The Nutcracker Suite is something that you would expect in a parody or comedy sketch for laughs. The juxtaposition would be so ridiculous, inappropriate, and incongruous that it would make you laugh.

    If Mass were to be celebrated regularly with the ordinary chanted using the Roman Missal's tones, I think OCP and GIA music would stand out as incongruous and unsuitable because the difference and contrast in musical styles would be jarring.

    So the only reason contemporary, pop-influenced, soft-rock style devotional songs seem suitable for use at Mass is because Mass has not widely been celebrated as Vatican II and the GIRM envision: it has been almost entirely recited, with songs tagged on as filler or interlude when there is no speaking.

    If we were to chant the Mass ordinary, then the Church's instructions about liturgical music and the ordered options for music at the entrance procession, offertory, and Communion -- namely that chant and traditional sacred music are to be given preference -- would make much more sense than they do now to a lot of people working in parish music ministry.
    Thanked by 5CHGiffen igneus riverofthenorth hilluminar Aristotle Esguerra
  • igneusigneus
    Posts: 354
    When folk music entered churches in Czechoslovakia in the late sixties / early seventies, the Catholic liturgy was undergoing great changes and there was no established culture of vernacular plainchant that would contrast the newly introduced music style. But the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, created in early 1920' by the radically modernist wing of local Catholic clergy, had at that time behind itself about half a century of using a vernacular liturgy written in a somewhat archaic language register. A significant part of the liturgy was routinely sung, the priest's singing having quite a prominent role.

    When folk music entered churches of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, the perceived dissonance was such, that they, rather than singing folk songs at appropriate times during their standard liturgy (as usual in the Catholic church), ended up composing a whole new "folk liturgy" where the popular songs would not sound strange.
    Thanked by 2MarkB CHGiffen
  • riverofthenorth
    Posts: 6
    MarkB, I wholeheartedly agree. I've come to realize that over the past couple years, especially as our newest priest of the Diocese has come to my parish as associate. He chants most of the dialogues on the important feasts/solemnities, and when he does so the other hymn selections really stand out. The first time he did that at one of our school Masses, it was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and afterwards, 3rd graders were telling their teacher how it was the best Mass they had ever experienced. People are starting to notice.

    This is also why the 3 judgements of music put forward by the USCCB are not helpful, especially when compared to what the magisterium has already said, namely that Gregorian chant is the supreme model of sacred music. If it seems out of place compared to the chants of the Mass, it probably is. If it doesn't sound churchy, it probably isn't!
    Thanked by 3tomjaw MarkB CHGiffen
  • ClarkeMitchell
    Posts: 10
    This is very true. One day my wife and I attended a late Mass which happened to have a rock band playing at the same time. The Mass itself was said very reverently, and so every time the “choir” sang it felt like a “and now a word from our sponsors” moment. The more reverent the Mass, the more incongruous the atrocious music. If the priest were to sing… how much more so,
    Thanked by 3tomjaw StimsonInRehab hilluminar
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