Gregorian Chant vs. Praise & Worship Music video
  • MarkB
    Posts: 1,078
    15-minute video:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ-D4OMtk08

    Attempts to cut through sometimes acrimonious disagreements about liturgical music that are based on personal taste by appealing to Church teaching about music for Mass. Distinguishes between music that is profane/secular in style and music that is sacred in style. References Pope St. Pius X’s 1903 document on liturgical music, “Tra Le Sollecitudini”.

    This is one of the better videos I've watched that attempts to persuade ordinary Catholics that the OCP/GIA/P&W style of music is not what is most suitable for Mass.

    Another current message thread has a remark that laments the "Disneyfication" of liturgical music published by OCP. This video addresses that experience and approach.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw smvanroode
  • francis
    Posts: 10,806
    If only music were the divide, but that is just part of the veneer that tries to cover over the core of the liturgical difference. The real issue is the theology, plain and simple. The NO is a fabrication, an APE of the true Mass.

    “He will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”

    Fulton Sheen


    https://taylormarshall.com/2023/03/961-pachamama-returns-new-ritual-brazils-synodality-mass-podcast.html
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,460
    francis - The NO is a fabrication in the true sense of the word - something made by assembling pre-existing components. In this case from elements of the ancient sacramentaries and graduals, and other liturgical texts, and ultimately by extracting phrases from the Bible. As compared with Missals from 500 years ago it avoids the Sequences and "Offertory" prayers newly composed in the second millennium.
    Whether it has been well crafted is another question entirely.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • francis
    Posts: 10,806
    Here is how the next 'well crafted' is going to emerge...

    https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2017/09/09/170909a.html

    see Canon 838, par. 1,2,3 and 4

    The point I am trying to make is that the music is just a reflection of the underlying theology, and that is why the pope is now trying to cancel the TLM AND GREGORIAN CHANT that accompanies it. Disneyland music goes with the NO, and GC goes with the TLM.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • francis
    Posts: 10,806
    I have been a DM for the NO for the past five decades. I STILL presently provide music for both the NO and the TLM. Anytime I ever tried to introduce GC or traditional polyphony to the NO (and that happened in each of my positions), I was consistently met with animosity. The proof is right there for me in the experience of it all.

    The creed for the NO was and is this:

    https://youtu.be/ETV1DXQk_Gk

    Thanked by 1ServiamScores
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,460
    francis - My experience over the last 50 Years in England and the Isle of Man has been less dire than that, though still not what I would like. But that is as a singer in 'choirs' or in the congregation (occasionally as cantor). little responsibility or opportunity to choose music. I suspect all of us with a longing for a foretaste of the heavenly banquet will just have to wait for the real thing. I recall only two/three? occasions when I felt replete.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,806
    a_f_hawkins

    Thank you for your transparency.

    As for myself, I will not wait, and I will not give in, nor will I be silent.

    I will only bring to earth what heaven has commanded me to do while I still have breath... continuing through music, prayer, words and action all in devotion to Jesus as a simple slave of Mary.

    Viva Christo Rey!

    God bless you all!
  • >>The NO is a fabrication in the true sense of the word - something made by assembling pre-existing components.

    And possibly other components?
    e.g., was "the great Amen" part of the Mass before V II ?
    there may be other examples
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,460
    mmeladirectress - in 1570 they did not do what the Council of Trent had asked for, they took the missa privata of Vatican officials added purely decorative professional singing (non-functional) and called it missa solemnis. So all the ways of involving the congregation were dropped in favour of conformity to a use which had no congregations. Naturally that suppressed the Amen which Augustine had once described as shaking the rafters. You can still find participation mentioned for example in the Exsultet reference to 'the mighty voices of the people'
  • Hawkins,

    I'm most definitely not a scholar of the Mass before 1570, but your framing of the question seems designed to give cover to the people who made the new as different from the old as humanly possible while still claiming something resembling continuity in 1960. That, mind you, is a camel that won't cross the desert.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,878
    I still think the “hermeneutic of continuity” horse meme sums it up best.
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,460
    The claims of diligent research to respond to the requests of a Council seem to me as specious in the case of Pius V as of Paul VI.
  • Serviam,

    I don't know that meme. Elaborate, please.

    Hawkins,

    Has someone claimed that the work after Trent was "diligent research to respond to the requests of a Council"?

    Read Bugnini's book The Reform of the Liturgy, 1948 - 1975. Don't take my word for it: Bugnini's goal wasn't to reform the liturgy in continuity with what had come before. Or, consider Traditionis Custodes, or Fr. Joseph Gelineau SJ. Or Cardinal McElroy.

    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,878
    I cannot fail to chuckle every time. It seems so accurate.
    Hermeneutic of Continuity Horse Meme.jpg
    766 x 619 - 65K
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,460
    CG-Z - yes - St Pius V in his Apostolic Constitution Quo Primum
    ... besides other decrees of the sacred Council of Trent, there were stipulations for Us to revise and re-edit the sacred books: the Catechism, the Missal and the Breviary. ... [Catechism & Breviary done.] therefore ...
    We decided to entrust this work to learned men of our selection. They very carefully collated all their work with the ancient codices in Our Vatican Library and with reliable, preserved or emended codices from elsewhere. Besides this, these men consulted the works of ancient and approved authors concerning the same sacred rites; and thus they have restored the Missal itself to the original form and rite of the holy Fathers. When this work has been gone over numerous times and further emended, after serious study and reflection, We commanded that the finished product be printed and published as soon as possible, so that all might enjoy the fruits of this labor; and thus, priests would know which prayers to use and which rites and ceremonies they were required to observe from now on in the celebration of Masses.
    I have read a comment by Fr K Peclers that the only amendment they made to Burkhardt;s Curial rubrics for Low Mass was to remove a couple of references to bystanders.
    St Paul VI in his own AC was careful to echo this and endorse Quo Primum
  • Hawkins,

    Very good. Thank you.

    Here's an appropriate puzzle for you, then.

    In both time periods, some reference to scholars and experts and original sources is made. How did the two sets of scholars and experts consulting original sources come to such different conclusions and dissimilar products?
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,878
    Good question! Dear ol' Cardinal Roche just admitted in an interview the other day that the "theology of the mass has changed". (And Lefebvre rolled over in his grave.) *eyeroll*
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • francis
    Posts: 10,806
    Lefebvre has done so many rolls he is a thousand feet deeper than he should be.
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,878
    Hot take: I honestly wouldn't be surprised if in 100 years the barque is righted and he is raised to the altars. People will one day say "Lefebvre contra mundum." This isn't the first time the wider catholic world has lost its mind, alas.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • Now I'm envisioning a mitred Lefebvre-drill spinning rapidly and burrowing its way deep into the bowels of the earth.
  • If the NO is an APE of the real Mass and a mistake from start to finish, and we are all just waiting around for the prophesied return of the pre-conciliar Mass, then it doesn't seem to me that there is much point to this forum, or this organization, anymore. That's not meant to be harsh - just pragmatic. Just go do EF music, and be done with it, and be happy. I definitely understand the desire to just open up the Graduale Romanum, sing what's there, and go home. Because working in the NO is complicated, and there are compromises, etc., etc. But if you really believe it is just something that needs to be discarded, I'm not sure what there is to talk about anymore.

    FWIW, we do Gregorian Chant every single week, in large amounts, at my NO parish, and there has not been any revolt or even controversy. Sometimes you need to get out more.

  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,460
    How did the two sets of scholars and experts consulting original sources come to such different conclusions and dissimilar products?
    Different times. The Reformation was an interconnected (if rival) set of heresies about the sacraments. Politically there was little change.
    In the early 20th century Europe was engulfed in two major wars and political systems were completely revolutionised. Education, philosophy and economics were also completely different.
  • NihilNominisNihilNominis
    Posts: 1,020
    If the NO is an APE of the real Mass and a mistake from start to finish, and we are all just waiting around for the prophesied return of the pre-conciliar Mass, then it doesn't seem to me that there is much point to this forum, or this organization, anymore. That's not meant to be harsh - just pragmatic. Just go do EF music, and be done with it, and be happy. I definitely understand the desire to just open up the Graduale Romanum, sing what's there, and go home. Because working in the NO is complicated, and there are compromises, etc., etc. But if you really believe it is just something that needs to be discarded, I'm not sure what there is to talk about anymore.

    FWIW, we do Gregorian Chant every single week, in large amounts, at my NO parish, and there has not been any revolt or even controversy. Sometimes you need to get out more.


    I'll see this and raise:

    We would all do well to quit caricaturing each other's liturgies and work (what follows is nothing personal at all, Dr. Ostermann, just opportunistic -- you raise a ton of excellent points).

    Anyone who thinks that working in the EF just a matter of opening up the Graduale, singing what's there, and going home, and that this will be fine, and loved, and adored, is in for a very rude awakening when they first step foot in the loft of their very own FSSP parish or what have you.

    Ritual form aside, the People of God and the ministri Dei lurk wherever church music is carried out and, with highs and lows and all the ins-between, it is as valid and true as ever what Aristotle held -- Man is a political animal. All of us must deal, to some extent, with these things - complicated work environments, hostility, politics, and the like.

    I have a strong preference for the older Mass. I don't look down my nose at the new or those who worship in it. I have worked in and still work in the context of both.

    Maybe it's hopeless subjectivism or aestheticism, but one of my favorite ways to think about it is to take note of the liturgical and musical moments that are possible, that make sense, in each liturgy. It is the moments, more than the rites as a whole, that I would miss so much, were the permanent kibosh ever to be put on the TLM, moments like:

    (1) A polyphonic Kyrie wafting over a kneeling congregation at prayer, the priest and servers busy at their work, the beauty of the music energizing and electrifying the moment - filling an active silence - rather than holding the people and priest hostage as they patiently wait for Palestrina to get done with it already.

    (2) ut supra, applied to the Sanctus & Benedictus

    (3) The beauty of the pride altar servers take in their work, having mastered a very rigorous and precise set of tasks, and executing them beautifully. As a previous pastor once observed (not a traditionalist himself, but he said the old Mass): "When I add solemnity and servers to the Ordinary Form, my job as a celebrant gets harder. At a Solemn High Mass, my job as celebrant is easier, and all the assistants and ministers free me and let me simply pray the Mass." People don't understand how practical the tradition so often was -- which is why adopting elements of it in hodgepodge fashion for show just comes off as a strange and clunky affectation.

    (4) Hearing the Gradual, Alleluia, and Sequence unfold as an unbroken kaleidoscope, in the correct order, as they seem so often to have been intended to by those who wrote them.

    und so weiter...

    As a Catholic, I feel privileged to help God's people pray and to sing in His house.

    As a musician, I am still too self-conscious and awkward as a human being to enjoy a performance as a performance.

    What I'm there to do is to be a small part of a puzzle that brings a beautiful moment of ritual prayer into being so that nature corresponds to the grace that is being bestowed upon it in that moment. I'm in the groove at the old Mass. That happens like it happens at a Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, or at least it can happen.

    In my experience, the Novus Ordo is never groovy like that, it doesn't have good "flow", even though there are certainly moments of prayer, reverence, and beauty to be found in many places that worship in that way.

    But, looking at what our Protestant brethren of the separation have descended into... I suppose I'll be grateful in some measure for even the pretense of ritual action.
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 2,878
    If the NO is an APE of the real Mass and a mistake from start to finish, and we are all just waiting around for the prophesied return of the pre-conciliar Mass, then it doesn't seem to me that there is much point to this forum, or this organization, anymore.
    One can hold two things to be true at the same time, and one must also play the hand one was dealt. I would love to see the old Rite restored (or even perhaps a form of the old rite that was carefully reformed closer in accord to what the council fathers likely had in mind). But I have to live and breathe the NO, so I also want to make it the best that it can be for what it is. I want it to be august and holy, as Our Lord is indeed there, even if I can't help but feel He might might have had different designs had human hearts been more supple to the whisperings of the Holy Ghost at/after the council.
    Thanked by 2DavidOLGC tomjaw
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,460
    "When I add solemnity and servers to the Ordinary Form, my job as a celebrant gets harder. At a Solemn High Mass, my job as celebrant is easier, and all the assistants and ministers free me and let me simply pray the Mass."
    I think that captures it very well in 1570 they made the task of the celebrant (sine qua non) as easy as possible. Focus on his awesome role, and his unworthiness, no/zero interaction with the congregation. That is contrary to the exposition of the texts demanded by Session XXII of the Council of Trent and also of course is contrary to the plain meaning of words like "Orate, fratres ...".
    NB the list of disobedience to VII would be longer.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,806
    But if you really believe it is just something that needs to be discarded, I'm not sure what there is to talk about anymore.

    Because we all live in the real (ever changing) world, we all have to wrestle with the demands of the times... how can a Pachamama Mass ever be considered as part of ANY Catholic rite? It simply cannot. It is an ape at the least. And so is the beach mess, the puppet mess, the skateboard mess, the bubble mess, and the list goes on.

    Many of us serve both forms presently... our task here is to uphold both forms as best we can while bringing some kind of musical sanity and reverence to the N.O. ...in a sense, acting as guards against abuse. Perhaps we become teachers to the moment, influencing and redirecting many to understand what the liturgy truly is... the worship of God, and not the exaltation of man, or, God forbid, a demon.

    This forum is invaluable to pray for and support one another in these turbulent times, share wisdom and resources. As I have said often in the past, this forum is invaluable.

    Viva Christo Rey!