"Among the early problems was the instability of the translations, which were changed a number of times during the period of experimentation which produced many temporary versions."

A CHRONICLE OF THE REFORM
PART V: The Place of Music in Eucharistic Celebrations

The enormous task of implementing in the practical order the wishes of the council fathers as expressed in the constitution on the sacred liturgy occupied the attention of the Roman authorities for nearly ten years. Two official bodies were involved in the process, the Consilium for Implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and the Sacred Congregation of Rites. Difficulties between the two groups were many, but they were eventually solved by the establishment of the Sacred Congregation of Divine Worship to replace the old Congregation of Rites and the reorganization of the Consilium as a special commission dedicated to completing the liturgical reform.1 Many conflicts of personalities and problems between the liturgists and the musicians continued to trouble the work of implementing the reforms called for by the council.

For church musicians the most important events of the decade following the close of the council were the publication of the new liturgical books as well as the various instructions and decrees of the Consilium and the Congregation of Rites and later, the new Congregation of Divine Worship. Fundamental to the entire reform was the new order of the Mass which was finalized with the appearance of the Missale Romanum in 1969. Controversy over the introduction to the 1969 edition led to the issuing of another "Institutio generalis Missalis Romani" in 1970. The Latin text of the missal remains the basis for all vernacular sacramentaries that have been published throughout the world.2

The new order of the Mass brought new texts for which musical settings were wanting, particularly the responsorial psalms. The rearrangement of introits and communions, different from the old order, as well as the three-year cycle of scripture readings, presented some difficulties at first. The new calendar impinged more closely on the church musician, because of the suppression of some feasts and a revised positioning of others. A new system of classification of liturgical celebrations according to importance brought a new vocabulary with "memorials," "solemnities," "ordinary time," etc. The old octaves were gone for the most part, and the familiar sequences were no longer obligatory.

Publication of a new Graduale Romanum followed shortly. Based on scholarly research and sound methodology, the chants for the Mass were made available in an edition prepared by the monks of Solesmes.3 According to the principles enunciated in the preface to the volume, only authentic chants were included, eliminating many pieces that had cluttered the earlier 1908 edition. New feasts introduced into the calendar with texts lacking in authentic chant settings would have to be provided with music written in the idiom of our day, since Gregorian chant is no longer the style of contemporary composition and the process of producing an ersatz chant has been discredited. Music for newly introduced responsorial psalms would have to be newly composed. The challenge of the council fathers to musicians was seen to be an on-going one.

The new missal contains eighty-seven different preface texts. To provide musical settings for use at the altar, the monks of Solesmes edited a volume called Ordo hAissae in cantu. Settings for the prefaces in both solemn and simple tones, as well as musical notation for the singing of the four Eucharistic prayers, and the various introductory rites made up this most useful volume.4 Together with the Graduate Romanum and the Missale Romanum, the Ordo Missae in cantu provided the clergy and the musicians with all the books needed to celebrate the sung liturgy in Latin.

An effort to introduce a simpler chant for the Mass produced a Graduate simplex, which was a failure from the beginning. It neither pleased the progressive liturgists who wanted only the vernacular, nor the musicians who pointed out that it was a mutilation of Gregorian chant as well as a misunderstanding of the relationship between text and musical setting with reference to form. They objected to the use of antiphon melodies from the office as settings for texts of the Mass. An effort at an English vernacular version proved to be even a greater disaster.

The revision of the office and the ritual had less impact on the ordinary church musician, although it caused grave changes in monastic communities.5 No new official books in Latin with musical notation have been forthcoming as yet for the universal Church for the singing of the hours, although attempts to set the vernacular texts can be found. The official Liturgia horarum has no musical settings.

While the Holy See published the official revised liturgical books in the Latin language and spread them around the world, in the United States these books remained almost totally unknown, and in fact, in some dioceses, their use was prohibited by local legislation that forbade the use of Latin.6 To a great degree, the American clergy still do not know the Missale Romanum, the new Graduale Romanum or the Ordo Missae in cantu. They continue to co-relate the use of Latin with the old rite and the vernacular with the reformed rite. When asked to sing a Mass in Latin, they frequently resort to the old editions which are no longer in use. The confusion spread in the sixties concerning the use of Latin still continues.

Thus, with the virtual demise of Latin and with it the repertory of Gregorian chant and polyphonic music, church musicians turned their efforts to music for the new vernacular liturgy. Among the early problems was the instability of the translations, which were changed a number of times during the period of experimentation which produced many temporary versions. Choirs were discouraged by the assertion that there was no longer a place for them, and they regretted the loss of familiar repertory. New music was not quickly forthcoming, although publishers rushed to sell compositions, many the work of total amateurs. It soon became apparent that the congregations that were expected to sing psalms and responsories and lengthy antiphons and parts of the Mass, were only capable of mastering a few hymns and not much more. The vernacular liturgy did not generate a "nest of singing birds" in the United States, and with choirs disorganized, the combo of a few instruments with various types of so-called folk-music became the musical ensemble in many churches. The organ was replaced by the guitar, the choir by the vocal combo, the professional musician by the amateur, the sacred by the secular. The hoped-for flowering of the privilege of the vernacular did not mature. Rather the speed of the disintegration of all that had been worked for during the years since Pius X amazed serious musicians. The decay was incredible.