Latin is not a magic bullet
  • ryandryand
    Posts: 1,640
    I visited a parish today with an overall beautiful liturgy. Sung dialogues and priest's parts - and a very nice voice from the pastor. The mass ordinary was chanted in latin (incl. pater noster), and the offertory, communion, and recessional were all latin choral pieces.

    Here's the thing: the latin choral pieces didn't fit.

    One was an art song that's great for the concert hall but makes the liturgy drip with sentimentality.
    One was a broadway style composition, but deemed acceptable (I assume) because it was SATB, and latin, so that makes it liturgical, right?
    One was just hokey. Add a tuba and a guitar and this was a mariachi. But: latin, so that makes it liturgical, right?

    These pieces, while in latin, were distractingly inappropriate. When the priest began to sing, it took a moment to readjust to the sense of sacred vs. the sense of vulgarity. Even when the communion antiphon was chanted beautifully in the vernacular, it was in stark contrast to the non-sacred style of the latin piece which followed. Between the vernacular and latin pieces during communion, the latin was the one which ruined any sense of the sacred.

    I don't want to name anything too specific in case someone from that parish happens to read this and takes it as a nasty critique. What they are trying to accomplish seems to be pointed in the right direction. Far more than other parishes around here with praise bands so entrenched that parishioners old enough to be grandparents think that Mass of Creation is traditional. But when the recessional was sung, I wanted to get out as quickly as when the latest Maher hit is being belted by a teenage diva who imagines herself a broadway star. It was such a musically goofy piece, and the fact that it was in latin did not make it any more liturgical than an English language calypso jam.
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  • Dauphin35
    Posts: 31
    There's definitely a lot more to liturgical renewal than the return of Latin (as great as that is!). This is evidence that an obsessive focus on the language tends to miss the point... one has to begin by restoring a liturgical sense and making the text primary, with Gregorian chant as the model.
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  • francis
    Posts: 10,825
    It could be in Swahili for that matter, but if it isn't liturgical, (TLM), then it is just a novelty trying to include something from the past without the theological underpinning. That is why, IMHO, the NO in Latin is just as bad (a novelty) as a jazz mass. It ain't the real thing, baby!
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  • hilluminar
    Posts: 121
    When I first began to play the organ at our local Extraordinary Form Mass, the choir was singing the Mass of St. Basil from the St Basil Hymnal. I refused to play it because it sounds like cheap theater music. Definitely not worthy of the Temple. The choir thought it was fine since it was in Latin and was in the St Basil Hymnal. I thought to myself, what musical sense of the sacred, or what sense of beauty does this choir have?
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  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    Current sensibilities as to what is appropriate and tasteful may likely not carry into the next century. During the last four hundred years, what has been considered appropriate has changed in each century. I am sure the folks in the 19th-century thought their music was fine. Tastes have changed, not always for the better - they never do. During the actual Classical period, Europeans may have heard chant rarely, if at all unless they visited a monastery. They probably thought Haydn masses were the way to go.
  • Chris HebardChris Hebard
    Posts: 124
    Ryand, your critique would be more useful if you were specific. I might disagree, but, for example, hilluminar's comment gives me an opinion that I can think about. If you don't want to risk offense, then couch your language more diplomatically.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,093
    Well, I assume the art song was the adapted form of the Schubert for the Ave Maria....
  • David DeavyDavid Deavy
    Posts: 105
    My guess for the Broadway piece - Pie Jesu, by Andrew Lloyd Weber
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,414
    With due respect to Chris, I didn't think that Ryand's language was undiplomatic. It is rather a commonplace that many who love the EF, and many who love Latin, do not have the best taste in music. Often they do not champion the likes of Palestrina or Poulenc, but, rather, stuff like Schubert, purple 'hymnody', and other drivel from the late XIXth and early XXth centuries. Indeed, Latin, in and of itself, is not a magic bullet. There is as much rubish in Latin as there is in English, and, often, as is the case with English rubish, it is preferred by a quite large number of persons.
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  • ryandryand
    Posts: 1,640
    My guess for the Broadway piece - Pie Jesu, by Andrew Lloyd Weber


    Got it.

    And I don't think I was undiplomatic. Could you explain, Chris? I noted many positives - the chanting of the communion and from the priest being beautiful and a "sense of sacred." And, noting that I don't intend it as a "nasty critique." Or a critique at all, really. I'm just taking from this morning's experience the fact that latin is not a liturgical cure-all, and that the music can be just as unliturgical even if it is a text more suitable than sacropop and in the church's language. The settings are still undignified.

    The other songs mentioned are the Franck Panis Angelicus and a ...peppy... Magnificat.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    I don't see that music from the 19th-century represents bad taste or is inappropriate. It's just out of fashion. We are coming out of a Baroque craze that has lasted since the 60s. These fads run their course, as all fads do. I already see a move away from Baroque-heavy liturgies and the incorporation of other music, Romantic and more modern. Baroque music, along with chant, nearly disappeared from the liturgy for around two hundred years. They will fall out of fashion again. Ears are fickle and they get tired of hearing the same things. I am a great fan of French Baroque music, but try not to use it to excess. I don't want to wear out its welcome.

    The idea that music can be frozen into a particular style or time period is not reflected in historical practices. This was the mistake of the liturgical and musical reformers in the 60s time period. We exchanged our vox humanas for metalshredder celestes in the organ world, and got "liturgical" guitars and folk music in church. It's kind of funny, and poetic justice, that those "reformers" are deeply wounded when the young today reject it all. The oldsters respond with something along the lines of, "how can you not appreciate all that we have done for you?" I wonder what the next fads in music will be?
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  • Scott_WScott_W
    Posts: 468
    With due respect to Chris, I didn't think that Ryand's language was undiplomatic. It is rather a commonplace that many who love the EF, and many who love Latin, do not have the best taste in music. Often they do not champion the likes of Palestrina or Poulenc, but, rather, stuff like Schubert, purple 'hymnody', and other drivel from the late XIXth and early XXth centuries. Indeed, Latin, in and of itself, is not a magic bullet. There is as much rubish in Latin as there is in English, and, often, as is the case with English rubish, it is preferred by a quite large number of persons.


    As I've said before, the cloying schmaltz of 1970 isn't solved by the cloying schmaltz of 1870. My views of Opus Dei have dimmed, but I always appreciated it's founders comment that he preferred rough-hewn statues to the "modern" ones of his day that look like candied sugar.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    I think we take things out of their cultural contexts and try to make comparisons that are not always valid. Would I enjoy worshipping more in a French cathedral in say, 1900, than attending mass in Chicago in 1985? Oh, yeah! That is personal preference. I couldn't demean the worship of France in 1900 because tastes have changed.
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    While I'll grant that trash is trash regardless of language, it is a fact that Schubert was a very good composer--one of the Second Rank, as was Charpentier, e.g.

    Those who propose that Romanticism, whether early (late Beethoven or all of Brahms), or late, such as that of Strauss and Mahler, is defective in se are mere iconoclasts.

    Having said that, the Church's STATED preference has always been for Chant, or Chant-based music, no matter the language.

    So that's what one should do!
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  • Scott_WScott_W
    Posts: 468
    I think we take things out of their cultural contexts and try to make comparisons that are not always valid. Would I enjoy worshipping more in a French cathedral in say, 1900, than attending mass in Chicago in 1985? Oh, yeah! That is personal preference. I couldn't demean the worship of France in 1900 because tastes have changed.


    I'm not sure what you are directing this comment towards, but I don't think it is mine. My point is that I've been in several situations where there was an attempt to return to traditional music as a kind of reaction to the bad music of the day and it didn't sound any better because the hits of yesteryear were just as bad as the hits of today. Maybe they sounded better in their cultural contexts, but it seems to me this ties in directly with the church document that tolerates cultural artifacts with the caveat that there was some permanence to them rather than ephemera. (Can't recall the document off hand).

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  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    Gilbert and Sullivan would definitely be stretching it. However, I have used some Elgar pieces that were lovely.
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Dad29,

    You're quite correct that the Church's preference has always been for chant. I think, however, that you misunderstand the Church's magisterial critique of Romanticism.

    When Pope Pius X wrote Tra Le Sollecitudini, he manifestly had two specific composers' music in mind, but not because they were composers. Schubert's Ave Maria was deemed too operatic -- i.e., not a bad piece, but clearly intended for an operatic stage rather than the Sacred Liturgy. The entire opus of Giuseppe Verdi was covered under the rubric of association: when hearing this, do most people think of the worship of God or Italian national opera.

    I ran across this problem in a new context recently. (Schubert and Verdi were not on the menu.) Someone proposed singing what would effectively be Simon & Garfunkel and Gilbert and Sullivan in the same Mass. Both can be good music, but neither belongs at Mass.
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  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    Those who propose that Romanticism, whether early (late Beethoven or all of Brahms), or late, such as that of Strauss and Mahler, is defective in se are mere iconoclasts.

    Indeed. And Anton Bruckner (whose music has had a great influence on me since I discovered it almost 60 years ago) was smack-dab in the middle of the crowd. Moreover, his wonderful Latin motets, beautiful as they are and evoking an earlier era, still have the stamp of mid to late 19th Romanticism. The much loved Bruckner Ave Maria, sung not infrequently at our own SMCs, is ample evidence of the master's Romantic genius.
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  • ClergetKubiszClergetKubisz
    Posts: 1,912
    Having said that, the Church's STATED preference has always been for Chant, or Chant-based music, no matter the language.


    Yes, this is true. The best reason to do something is because Holy Mother Church says so, and She does say so in many documents.
  • PaixGioiaAmorPaixGioiaAmor
    Posts: 1,473
    Well a lot of this really is a matter of opinion and taste.

    I agree that Latin is no magic bullet - but at what point is "dripping sentimentality" too much?

    Would Lauridsen's motets be too sentimental and emotional? Either way, I know some will disagree.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,311
    Franck's PA is much prone to mangling. But I think it can be done well, as it was at the Institute ordinations this summer with Cardinal Burke. It is, however, just one step from ALW's Pie Iesu, and that is one step outside of liturgical music for me, though it is beautiful, and I think parts of it are inspired by Mass XVIII. And it is the only part of his Requiem that is liturgically usable. Schubert's Ave Maria...never again shall I request it at Mass. I am not sure it can ever fit a model that is both beautiful and liturgical.
  • ryandryand
    Posts: 1,640
    Those who propose that Romanticism, whether early (late Beethoven or all of Brahms), or late, such as that of Strauss and Mahler, is defective in se are mere iconoclasts.


    It is some of my favorite music. That I find it jarring in a liturgical context is evidence that I'm not just speaking from personal taste (I DON'T LIKE IT SO STOP IT OK?), but from an understanding of the church's ideal and the unsettling incongruity of this music with this liturgy.

    Franck's PA is much prone to mangling. But I think it can be done well, as it was at the Institute ordinations this summer with Cardinal Burke.


    I feel it important to note that the choir I wrote about did a fine job with the piece. A beautiful rendition. BUT ... the song is still odd in the liturgy.

    Panis angelicus
    accents all o'er da-place
    language so purdy
    yet cadence so strange
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,799
    Gilbert's hardly in play, is he? I can't even think of any Sullivan (whose "Taste and see" I actually prefer to Vaughn-Williams') that has a Latin contrafactum like Elgar's Ave verum. It was composed to a different Latin hymn originally, but the manifestly superior fit of "Jesu Word of God incarnate" to the first phrase (rather than "Ave verum corpus, natum, de Maria…") can then be turned around as powerful propaganda for singing the Mozart in Latin.
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