Catholic hymnody today
  • Don9of11Don9of11
    Posts: 685
    During my annual family Christmas gathering it is often the case that discussions about the church, her priests, celebrating Mass ad orientem, church music or whatever arise. Needless to say some of my family members deem themselves experts in church matters...lol. Sometimes these conversations occur simultaneously as if we were seated about a large round table and you can only hear bits and pieces of the conversation. I over heard the following,

    Today’s Catholic hymnody is an amalgamation of Protestantism and folk-style music that sprang up after the Vatican II Council. Many of her hymns are poetically indifferent and lacking in theological content and are composed by hymn-writers who are not Catholic or not practicing Catholics.


    A bold statement indeed but I thought I would ask the opinion of the forum members, "How would you characterize today's Catholic hymnody?"
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  • davido
    Posts: 874
    That hits the nail on the head.
    Thanked by 2Don9of11 tomjaw
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    I suppose most people judge this category by either 1) what is sung at Sunday Mass, or 2) what is printed in hymnals.

    I would like to mention a couple of "underground" sources of data for consideration.

    3) Monastic/ Religious hymnody. In his 1966 Apostolic Letter Sacrificium Laudis, on the subject of Gregorian Chant, Pope Paul VI rightly indicated that monks carry the treasure of the sacred music treasury. I think that in many houses there has been a recovery of ancient hymnody. I have received a number of requests from Religious (as well as cathedrals) to use translations of office hymns in their self-printed house hymnals, enough to suggest at least something of a trend. This hymnal by the East coast Dominicans is the high-water mark as far as I know of these recovery efforts https://opeast.org/2013/11/hymnarium-o-p-now-available/

    4) The Magnificat. With a circulation of almost a quarter million, and intended for daily rather than weekly use, the Magnificat is an undervalued influencer in the world of Catholic hymnody. Go to any daily Mass anywhere in the US and you will see the Magnificat. I regularly and gratefully have one or more hymns in most issues. Yes, some are from Protestant sources, but they are carefully chosen and have very Catholic sentiments. Often the hymns are translations of Latin office hymns. Some are devotional, others theological or about the saints. What I would suggest is multiplying a quarter million times 7 days x 2 offices. It's major league, and reaches the people who are most likely to pray.
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  • ScottKChicago
    Posts: 349
    Pretty lightweight, both musically and textually, in my experience of "OCP parishes." And IMHO way too much reliance on refrains.
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  • NihilNominisNihilNominis
    Posts: 986
    If we're making bold statements: Catholic Latin hymnody of the late Classical and early medieval period was magical. The Renaissance brought with it the pretentious and intractable, the ponderous and convoluted (try singing the second verse of the revision "Creator Alme Siderum" with attention to the meaning).

    Catholic vernacular hymnody of old was sentimental and devotional. Some of it is quite moving, but it is almost entirely not intended for liturgy. Latin liturgical hymnody of the post-Tridentine period was absolutely wrecked by Urban VIII*. So it's no wonder we hadn't a clue what to do, when vernacular liturgical hymnody was called for. In fact, the early medieval stuff is almost a perfect model. Straightforward in expression, rich in content, sober and evocative.

    J.M. Neale and others like him saved a lot of our old liturgical hymns for vernacular use, for which I am grateful.

    And yes, Catholicism knows strophic hymnody for the Mass liturgy -- in the glory days of sequences, almost every Eucharist had a proper hymn text. This is not a bad development.

    *in the spirit of "a bold statement indeed"
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  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Don9of11,

    Catholic hymnody is still as beautiful as is has ever been. What most people experience on an ongoing basis is neither Catholic nor hymnody.
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  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,916
    If that's the sort of conversation you're having - remind me to come to your place for Christmas next year, Don.
    Thanked by 3Incardination CHGiffen Kathy
  • Don9of11Don9of11
    Posts: 685
    StimsonInRehab, be thankful you were spared the impeachment conversations! :)
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Kathy makes a point. If you are talking about the Mass, well, there is no (or very little) tradition of having hymnody at Mass.

    The norm for the liturgy is:

    1. sung dialogues
    2. ordinary
    3. propers

    everything beyond that is alius cantus aptus

    Therefore, the focus about good or bad is really a non sequitur when it comes to authentic sacred music for the Mass. Just sayin.

    My point is that we can keep compromising the ideal using the lame excuse that 'well, we need to bring them along gradually'... which will never ever work out, because the changing of the guard (at the NO) allows one to easily walk back in the other direction. You will never arrive at the ideal in that scenario. You will probably be singing hymns (good or bad, and more likely bad) until you leave the earth.

    Where is our cause for CMAA and supporting authentic sacred music?
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  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,371
    francis - Did the Church not lose that pass when polyphony was permitted.
    I think the first edition of the Westminster Hymnal asserted that hymns are not permitted at Mass, but the 1940 revision says of the newly included Latin hymns etc. for Benediction "some of them might well be sung by the congregation at Mass in the place of the customary motet" The 'customary motet' is surely an intrusion of 'alius cantus aptus'.
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  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    There is, of course, a widespread difference between actual Catholic hymnody and the purported 'hymnody' that most Catholics sing today. Real Catholic hymnody is as good as it has always been.
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen tomjaw Kathy
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    and remember... many motets ARE the propers
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen tomjaw cesarfranck
  • davido
    Posts: 874
    For English language Catholicism, the appropriate hymn rep exists - the Anglicans/Episcopalians demonstrated the artistic heights to which English vernacular liturgy can aspire. All that is needed to solve the Catholic hymn problem is to adopt hymn books like The English Hymnal, The New English Hymnal, or the Hymnal 1940. Or The Lumen Christi Hymnal, which simply is a selection of that rep.

    The problem with Catholic hymnody today is that the informality (per Mosebach) of the 60s was adopted instead of the catholicism of the high church Anglicans.

    Other vernaculars do not have the Anglican tradition to fall back on. What are they to do?!
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  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    .
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,704
    I still do not understand why we need everything to be in the vernacular (whatever that means).
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,371
    I doubt that we need everything to be in the vernacular. But I received immense spiritual benefit when the vernacular was first introduced. And that despite studying Latin for four years at school. I would also not have been able to follow today's celebration adequately. The immediacy of following the prayers in English is not something I would routinely trade for looking at a translation during worship, or for studying the text later/earlier. Hearing and reading are quite different, as is demonstrated by the fact that although printed books have been available for several centuries, lecturing has not died out.
    Of course the Church (as opposed to individual priests and bishops) has never asked us to have everything in the vernacular. There is no good reason (I would say NO reason) why the Ordinary of the Mass should not routinely be in Latin/Greek/Hebrew. No one needs to follow a translation of these texts, anymore than they need a translation of the refrain of Ding dong merrily on high.
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  • toddevoss
    Posts: 162
    There is no good reason (I would say NO reason) why the Ordinary of the Mass should not routinely be in Latin/Greek/Hebrew. No one needs to follow a translation of these texts, anymore than they need a translation of the refrain of Ding dong merrily on high.
    . Bingo.
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  • davido
    Posts: 874
    Forum posters have gone round and round on Latin/vernacular for years!
    The reality is most liturgies are vernacular and needing of solemn vernacular liturgical music. This corpus exists, and playing around with Haas, Farrell, or Matt Maher is simple avoidance of what needs to be sung.
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  • MichaelDickson
    Posts: 419
    As others said, the comment is presumably based on the speaker's personal experience with what happens at Sunday mass.

    It is not at all difficult to imagine that experience to be such that the statement is not at all bold. Just a statement of fact.
  • PaxMelodious
    Posts: 426
    There is no such thing as "Catholic hymody": a hymn cannot be Catholic any more than a musician can be arpeggio.

  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    The text of a hymn can be more or less Catholic in the theology it promotes.
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  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Pax,

    Could you explain, please, how that works?
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,704
    Forum posters have gone round and round on Latin/vernacular for years!
    The reality is most liturgies are vernacular ...


    While most modern services are in what could be described as the vernacular (in many cases the vernacular only means the language of the largest group). This is a modern idea, historically Liturgy has always been in a special liturgical language.
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  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    And I hasten to add that that 'special liturgical language' for some of us is Old Church English. For most it is, or should be, Latin; for others Old Church Slavonic, for others Coptic, etc. Conversational or presumptuously familiar and chatty English does not qualify.
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  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Latin is and will always be the mother tongue of the Roman rite... even if it suffers an eclipse.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,704
    @ MJO
    I am sure I heard a talk or read a paper, explaining that the Language used by Cranmer in his English Rite was particularly created for the Liturgy, and was not the same Language 'used by the people'. I agree, Old Church English, some of which can now be heard in the Ordinariate, is also a Liturgical Language.
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  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Tomjaw,


    Wait.... do you mean to say that the Reformationists' claim that the services needed to be in vernacular was merely a pretense?!
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  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,704
    @Chris Garton-Zavesky

    At least here in England many, perhaps most of the Catholics did not agree with the new services in English, I note b**dy Elizabeth the worst, kept her own priest to continue to say Mass in Latin.

    Of course when you change the language you can change the meaning in subtile ways... Not that the reformers told you this, they all seem remarkably similar to the spirit of vatican two brigade...
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    ...kept her own priest...
    Indeed. If Elizabeth were alive today she would be an arch=Anglo Catholic. She would goad said priest on during the elevation, saying 'heave it higher, sir priest'.

    As for Elizabeth's Latin mass, it is not widely known that the BCP was indeed put into Latin for use at university chapels and other places where Latin was understood. (Isn't it is sad what these university chapels have come to?! Even up into the XXth century doctoral dissertations were required to be written in Latin at universities. I believe that Oxford was one of the last hold-outs.)

    And, it is said that the peasants in northern England detested the new BCPs so much that they made bonfires out of them. (Our English friends would know more about that.)
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  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,704
    It is said that the peasants in northern England detested the new BCPs so much that they made bonfires out of them. (Our English friends would know more about that.)


    And in the west of England too... It was only by committing genocide that the state was able to impose it's will... eventually!
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  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Learning from history might mean, in this case, that the essential quality of the reform, to meet the needs of modern man by putting the public prayer of the Church into language easily understood by that same modern man....
    Do you mean to suggest that this whole "meet the needs of modern man" might be nothing more than a ruse?
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,371
    Elizabeth I was of course fluent in Latin, so having her chapel services in that language was quite within "language understandid of the people". Not only universities used Latin, but in Ireland and the Isle of Man English was hardly known by the clergy, which is why a version came out ASAP. I don't know about Irish practice, but it is thought (no written evidence of any kind is known) that up to ¡ 1765 ! Manx clergy were still translating the services 'on the fly'. (or at first just leaving them in Latin so as not to annoy their parishoners)
    Liber Precum Publicarum 1560
    The Book produced was purportedly a translation of the 1559 Book, but in fact differed from it in a number of ways, mostly fairly minor. Most of the changes introduced were copied from a Latin translation of the 1549 Book, some were from older Latin missals, and some were original compositions. It is not certain whether these changes were intentional, or the result of carelessness - but likely the former. The effect of these changes tended to make the Latin Book more conservative, i. e., more like the 1549 Book or the Latin missals, and less "Protestant".
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  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,704
    Elizabeth I was of course fluent in Latin, so having her chapel services in that language was quite within "language understandid of the people"


    Did you just suggest she understood the Mass? She may have understood most of the words, but the meaning appears to have been lost on her.

    To be fair I am sure that St. Thomas Aquinas, would have said he did not fully understand the Mass.
  • PaxMelodious
    Posts: 426
    There is no such thing as "Catholic hymody": a hymn cannot be Catholic any more than a musician can be arpeggio.


    A hymn is a collection of poetic words, attached to a tune and intended to be sung.

    Those words may be perfectly in accord with the teachings of the Catholic church in whatever topic they are about. But (unless the hymn has a few thousand verses!), they cannot possibly encapsulate the fullness of Catholic teaching. And even if they did - can your really baptise a hymn? Because baptism is what it takes to be Catholic.

    In the same way that a musician may play a chord in an appregiated (is that even a word!) manner - but it is sitll the chord itself that's appregio, not the person who sounded this instance of it.

    Now, there is a set of hymns that are used by Catholic people at worship currently. There is another set of hymns that are written by people who are Catholic at the time they write they hymn. Possibly either of these sets of hymns could be called "Catholic hymody", as a shorthand phrase.

    But I'd still say it's an unsatisfactory shorthand: are so very many people who are Catholic, and so many different places where they worship, it's pretty much impossible to speak of them collectively.

    If people really want to make summary statements about hymody, they should stick to "Hymns used in English services in Catholic churches in [my town / my diocese / my country] - which they at least have a chance of offering a reasonable opinion about.





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  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Pax,

    For a person to be made Catholic, he must be baptised, but we can declare easily that such and such a belief is consonant with the Catholic faith, or not, as the case may be. Baptism isn't necessary for a belief, or the propositional form of a belief, since no physical baptism is possible for the propositional form.

    Do you mean "reasonably accurate" or "reasonable" opinion?
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