Chrism, I'm really not sure what you are talking about but let me clarify that i don't mean the whole MP was not applied. I'm speaking of a ban on women singing in a schola. That was not consistently obeyed in the U.S.. I mean, isn't this obvious? The Ward books and classes taught all children to sing the propers. She put out manuals of simplified propers for kids. Classes in music for liturgy were in most Catholic schools. These weren't classes just for boys while the girls went off to knit. It was for all children. You can see it in the pictures. Everyone sang. They sang for Mass. They sang the propers. The girls don'to have duct tape on their mouths. What I find striking about this issue is that if you look back at the writings and materials of the 20s and 30s you find no discussion of this sex issue. Suddenly, in 2009, some people discover old material in the closet and decide to make a massive issue of it, even though doing so would be ahistorical and divisive and musically catastrophic.

Chrism, I'm sorry but this just seems like pettifoggery.

I want to clarify a few things.

First of all, I am no "newbie" to the traditional Mass movement. I have been singing chant for years and, for some long stretches of time, on a daily basis. I have had a high level of involvement in the liturgy, and I have studied liturgical history, rubrics, and other aspects of liturgical law extensively (both formally and independently). I have participated in EF Masses (i.e. MC'ed, served or sang in scholas) throughout this country and in parts of Europe. I understand the distinctions between what was legislated and what was custom, but I think it's also important to strive for a specific ideal in the liturgy, and I tend to favor the ideal set forth by Dom Gueranger and the Liturgical Movement as it manifested itself in the early 20th century, which means an exceedingly high level of awareness and involvement among members of the laity.

With all due respect, I think some of you may be setting up a false dichotomy. I never suggested that we ought not teach chant to women. I was just pointing out the preference in law that Chrism spoke of above. Preference for the qualified all-male schola does not implicitly mean that women should not sing chant. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Morse's missionary approach to teaching and spreading chant to both sexes, and I hope to successfully implement a similar program in my neck of the woods. I think it is possible to give pride of place to the all-male pseudo-clerical schola while at the same time giving a high level of involvement to female singers.

Also, I don't agree that holding up the clerical schola as the ideal automatically leads to the Caecilian mentality. But at the same time, I don't see anything wrong with viewing the all-male schola as a possible place where young men discover vocations. I know this was the reasoning behind Bishop Keating of Arlington's decision to exclude female altar servers, because he explicitly stated that he saw altar serving as a possible stepping stone to a priestly vocation. The result was (and remains) a diocese that pumps out new priests at an unrivaled rate in the post-Vatican II era. Sometimes, intimate involvement with the liturgy is a way of awakening men to their vocations, and if we can play a role in that, I think we are doing a great service to the Church. I am not championing the Caecilian ideal, but I wonder how many of us would stand up in opposition if a dozen young men from our respective parishes sought tonsure and wanted to sing propers as an exclusively clerical schola. I think we would all be pleased to have such a visible clerical presence in our parishes. There is no reason why this could not someday become a reality in a rejuvenated Church.

In the meantime, I realize that we do not live in a world with such abundant vocations, and regardless of the amount of available clerics, it is a desirable thing for all of the faithful to learn Gregorian chant.

Both historical practice and official statements (some of them binding) of the hierarchy express the notion that the schola cantorum is a clerical entity, and that laymen filling this role act as a sort of pseudo-clerical class (similar to the role fulfilled by lay altar servers).

The canonical interpretation which allowed "altar girls" was derived specifically from the NON-clerical status of 'choirs of the Faithful.'

As hinted above, actuosa participatio is not exclusively male.

Thanks, Joannes. What a wonderful resource!

Richard,
I'm familiar with the situation in Arlington, as I grew up there. In fact, I was the one who contacted you to recruit your schola for the inaugural indult Mass at St. Lawrence a few years back (which I MC'ed). Nice to speak to you again! :)
My point in bringing up Bishop Keating's reasoning was not to claim that he had any affection for the EF Mass or things Latin, but to point out the principle that informed his decision to exclude altar girls. I think it was a valid point. In my current situation, our schola is split about 50/50 between young married men and young unmarried men (the youngest being college age). In fact, a few of them have expressed interest in creating a society of young men which would rotate between serving at the altar and singing in the schola. I haven't heard any of them speaking explicitly of pursuing a vocation, but you never know. Also, many of them have become interested in chant through the all-male schola that sings at our local Anglican-use parish. Singers over 30-years-old are the exception rather than the rule there. I think they've had such success in drawing young men because they are drawn to the camaraderie that can only exist in an all-male setting. I think this accounts for the success of groups like the Brazos Valley Schola (http://www.brazoschant.org/). Just another factor to consider.

If a hypothetical question involves presupposing situations that don't exist in practice, then (insert meaningless question here).

The article makes clear the author's opinion that this was not an indult, but the proper interpretation of the M.P.

Here is the legslation application to the Novus Ordo (Musicam Sacram, 1967):

22. The choir can consist, according to the customs of each country and other circumstances, of either men and boys, or men and boys only, or men and women, or even, where there is a genuine case for it, of women only.

It's hard to take much issue with this, except perhaps against the nationalization of custom. In America one used to be able to find Latin Masses according to the customs of Lithuania, Gemany, Poland, Hungary, Northern Italy, Southern Italy, French Canada, etc., all of which had superior musical traditions to the prevailing American mean. Why should we be forced into Irish-American cultural homogeneity?

Also, it should be noted that barring this paragraph (and the somewhat similar EF legislation), it is hard to find any explicit justification in Church law for segregating scholas by sex anywhere.

Re: the practical problem in the parish

In my parish, we have a bell choir, a children's choir, a contemporary choir, and a semi-old semi-contemporary choir. Next week, the children's choir is singing at the Mass usually served by the semi-old semi-contemporary choir. So the semi-choir not only has Sunday off, but had a practice free for their Halloween pizza party.

So it's not like you can't divvy the Mass up between choirs. In fact, most people are glad to have some "time off". Singing every Sunday and practicing every week gets tiring.

"Women do sing in the choir, if anyone might have been wondering, but that is about it."

True. There are no woman in minor orders, however, which includes reader and chanter. Orthodoxy (and probably the Eastern Rite) stands with Orthodox Judaism in contrast to the rest of Christendom in that it is male-heavy. If you took a random sample of the congregation and put them in the choir, you'd have more men than women. We lost several women recently, and badly need to recruit more.

The choir typically sings only during Divine Liturgy. At the other regular services (Matins, Vespers, and Hours), readers and chanters sing, and they are almost always all male -- certainly if they are tonsured, they are male. We have had women read (read means chant in plainchant, not recite), although never the Epistle at Divine Liturgy (I don't think that is possible, since the reader must go behind the iconostasis into the sanctuary for the blessing), but it always seems strange, and women in our choir prefer not to read.

Three or four is the best number of chanters and readers for services, we have found.

I love singing chant and wish Father would let us (women) who wish to do more of it do so. However, another reason perhaps for wanting men only is the question of the octave. Chant, I think, is at its best when sung in one octave. In my EF Sunday morning Mass the men sing the Aspeges but on the repeat of the text after the psalm verse the women join in. During Holy Week the women in the choir sing more of the chants. The choir sings a polyphonic setting of the ordinary except the Credo which the congregation sings and the choir almost always sings a polyphonic motet after the proper chant at Offertory and Communion.

From an organist's perspective: yes, women nominally sing an octave higher than men. But their voices do not have the same timbre. I like to compare the group dynamic of the voiced to stops on the organ. A good cantor can be like a nice, well-developed 8' Principal stop. A few more men would be like adding the 8' Flute (maybe a man with a bit darker voice) and the 8' Gemshorn (similar to the Principal, but not quite as strong). The French consider these stops all "foundation" stops. Now add a woman's voice, and it's not (to my ears) like adding the 4' Octave (a member of the Principal family), but rather a 4' Flute. Quite often, a 4' open Flute simply adds color to the 8' stops, no matter how many. If you have both 4' open and stopped Flutes, that might be like adding multiple female voices. So, a mixed schola would sound similar to the organ with a few 8' stops and a couple of 4' flute stops - just about the limit of what I would use to accompany a congregation chanting part of the Ordinary.

Jan - the mixture of voices you mention should prove absolutely spectacular for polyphony!

The first strong evidence I've seen from the past that the Motu Proprio of 1903 had absolutely no effect on the role of women singing in choirs comes from Fifth Avenue Famous, by Salvatore Basile (Fordham U Press, 2010). The director of St. Patricks NY, had this to say in 1904:

"There is nothing in Gregorian music that women's voices cannot do most effectively," said Mr. [James] Ungerer, the New York choirmaster of St. Patrick's cathedral. "The public seems to be laboring under erroneous ideas of the whole subject of Gregorian music and the purport of the Motu Proprio. It seems to think all figured music is to be abolished, and that church music of the future will in consequence partake of requiem - something mournful and monotonous. Unless there come from Rome explicit orders to abolish women they will certainly be retained at the cathedral.

"The cathedral, in probability, will have no more Gregorian chant than it always has had. The Introit, Gradual, Hallelujah, Tract, Offertory, Communion, which change with the feasts, have always been Gregorian at the cathedral. This has not been the case in other churches in this vicinity and elsewhere, and it is to effect this that the pope evidently wishes to make it compulsory. The Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei will continue, as they always have been at the cathedral, to be figured music, but we trust of a higher order of composition. There is a lot of splendid modern music to displace Haydn, Mozart, etc. -- music that sustains all the simplicity and solemnity of Palestrina. To bring the figured music to a higher standard of excellence, it would seem, is one of the chief objects of the pope's decree, and it has not come too soon."

All women were retained by the choir here, and so it was around the country. It was only the Protestant papers that were chortling about how women were all to be fired from their positions. The Catholics understood that the Pope's instructions applied to clerical choirs in the sanctuary, not lay choirs in the loft.

In some ways, it is ridiculous but predictable that traditionalists today would rediscover PX's motu proprio and completely misunderstand it in an attempt to reinvent a tradition that never existed.

Re-read this thread in light of our new ladies schola at Assumption Grotto in Detroit. What a wealth of information! What we have as of the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany is a men's schola which sings the Introit, Offertory and Communion Gregorian Chant and a ladies schola which sing the Gradual and Alleluia/Tract. The men seem perfectly happy to have the ladies take over chants that they did not have time to learn properly. Our pastor is the one who conducts the choir when he isn't celebrating Mass so he is the one who made the decision. I am so fortunate to be at a parish where the Pastor is a great musician!