Papal Permission for Accordions at Mass
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    Okay... I definitely never heard this one before!

    I was searching for Lambillotte stuff, and found this guy's webpage for his CD of Marian hymns on accordion. It's a very big page, but if you scroll down, it says this:

    "The accordion has appeared in church probably since the early nineteenth century. Many small parishes with insufficient funds to purchase a pipe organ or reed organ undoubtedly employed the services of a volunteer village accordionist to accompany the singing of hymns, but not without some controversy. Due to the accordion's 'profane' characteristics and history (it was predominantly known as a 'tavern' instrument), some self-appointed 'defenders of the Faith' considered the instrument inappropriate in church, and campaigned with some success to have the accordion banned from Catholic services. However this naturally caused some dire concerns for those parishes which were forced to do without music to accompany the congregational singing during mass.

    "The heated controversy came to a resolution in 1943, when the Dallape Accordion Company of Stradella, Italy, was granted an audience with Pope Pius XII, and presented to and demonstrated for him a custom-built accordion played by virtuoso classical accordionist and composer GianFelice Fugazza (b. 1922). Fugazza played for the Pope religious music, transcriptions of classical works, and some of his own original compositions.

    "This accordion was reputed to be the most valuable accordion built at the time, valued at $5,000. The instrument had six ranks of reeds each for the right- and left-hand manuals, and had 33 different stops. It weighed 32 pounds, about fifty percent heavier than the average full-size accordion. The Pope respectfully listened to Fugazza play the Dallape instrument and subsequently decreed that henceforth accordions may be played in all Catholic Churches."

    So there you are. Interesting!
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    Really? My whole Christmas program is going to change now!

    Not really, but definitely a cute story.
  • Joseph Mansfield
    Posts: 113
    And if you scroll down further, you find sound files! Some mighty nice stuff here.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    It would take more than a pope's blessing to change the secular nature and substance of the accordion - no matter what music it plays. One is reminded that Italy is the land in which XIX. and XX. century church organs were very often equippped with cymbals and drums which were freely used in playing what amounted to circus music at mass.
  • IanWIanW
    Posts: 756
    I used to have strong feelings about this issue. I read an old magazine recently, and it's clear argument about it has been going on for a long time.
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,204
    IanW wins this round. Thanks to everyone for playing.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    Joke referenced and recognized in another thread.
    I HAVE WON THE INTERNET!


    By the way, I'm a liberal and a heretic, and even I like it when accordions play circus music at Mass.

    Wait, no.
    What are we supposed to think about circus music?
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,046
    That's not just "some guy", that's one of the most respected players in America. The CWRU music library has his commercial recording of the collected works of Guido Deiro. Now, none of this has any relevance to whether it's appropriate at Mass. But it's a tasty enough devotional recording, and an appropriate accompaniment for those hymns, when used in the context those hymns are appropriate for.
  • Steve CollinsSteve Collins
    Posts: 1,021
    OK. Now you're all in for it! My first instrument was the accordion, and I wish I still had one. Yes, my aunts and uncles always wanted me to play "Beer Barrel Polka" and "She's Too Fat for Me", but my main interest was always in classical music. When I was a HS freshman, I had both the "Barber of Seville" and "Poet & Peasant" overtures memorized - in their entirety! So now that certain of you seem just as much against the accordion in church as against accompanied Gregorian chant - well, you can all put 2+2 together!
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    I think there were probably both pastoral and aesthetic/liturgical considerations behind Pius XII's permission.

    1. It was 1943. In lots of places, they didn't even have churches, much less Gregorian chant books or organs.

    2. The argument of overwhelming beauty produced by a great artist is difficult to counter, and it counts as a theological argument.

    3. A really well-made big accordion is somewhat comparable in sound to a really small organ. (Better-sounding than some of the smaller or worse-maintained organs of Pius' time, probably.) I've heard people kinda sorta do an accordion version of a vox humana, stuff like that.

    4. Possibly Pius XII was sick of the whole argument. Getting rid of divisive perpetual arguments is within the scope of pastoral authority, if it doesn't violate doctrine outright.

    Obviously, a permission doesn't mean music directors and pastors don't have an obligation to be prudent. Nobody is saying you should have somebody play "Lady of Spain" for St. Teresa's Day or "Beer Barrel Polka" for St. Wenceslaus and St. Solange. But if it's permissible, and you see accordions at Mass somewhere, now you know that you don't have to get scandalized about it. Isn't that a good thing?
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    I would like to hear Steve (and only Steve) play the Poet and Peasant Overture on the accordion - this was my favourite piece to play on my great aunt Eliza's victrola. No doubt, when my friend Steve plays the accordion it is transformed. For all others, it remains hopeless klutz.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,944
    The liturgical banjo and jaw-harp are coming soon enough.

    You'll really appreciate the accordion, I promise.
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    Has anyone see the Far Side cartoon where the souls being welcomed into heaven are being given harps, and those to hell given accordions?
  • Steve CollinsSteve Collins
    Posts: 1,021
    Yes, SkirpR, I've seen it so many times!

    Jackson, that will be an incentive for me to save up my pennies to purchase another good accordion - and practice for many, many hours getting the overtures back under my fingers. It's been many years!

    A good search on YouTube will yield many wonderful classical accordion videos, including the Franck E major Chorale! Mechanics wise - an accordion is nothing more than a compact reed organ. Then it's only a question of the musician playing it.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    Steve - I don't like reed organs, either. They sound like accordions!
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Wasn't he the brother of Guido Arrezo? It's got to be sacred music!

    Don't ever build theology on the action of any single papacy... Especially on visits by the head of Italian accordion corporations... Was P12 Italian? How many antipopes has the RC church burried to date so far? (disclaimer: not saying that P12 was an antipope, just making a point)

    I tend to see it from another perspective... If they truly aspired to be a church under The Church, they would have found a way to pay for an organ! I guess the accordion company never considered doing that?

    Heck I can buy a small tracker for 5k... Today!
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    BTW... Is there a patron saint of beer? I owe him my many thanks!
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    Re: beer patron saints -- There are many! Generally regional patrons of the beermakers, like St. Wenceslaus (who also did wine) and St. Solange. There were many saints who made beer for their monastic communities (among other folks). There were also many saints who did miraculous multiplication of beer (prominently, St. Brigid and St. Columbanus (not to be confused with St. Columba)). Here's a good beer page about beer patron saints, including about a zillion Arnolds from France and Belgium.

    Re: buy an organ -- Italian hill towns, even today, can be really really really remote, and many of them don't have much in the way of outside contact. Back in the old days, I'm fairly sure that a lot of them didn't have much source or need for money, either. Heck, there were plenty of times when those little villages didn't have a priest anywhere close, and Mass was a sometimes thing. And then there's the political situations in various regions of Italy, with lots of rumpuses foreign and domestic. This is why you had folks from orders so often having to missionize remote Italian villages. So, between the Depression and WWII, alllll those tiny remote villages were supposed to buy organs, or be given them by generous donors, when their villages were often not even on any but the largest maps. Yeah, good luck with that.

    But I don't have a dog in this fight. If Phil Cunningham of Silly Wizard had been Catholic, then sure! :)

    Here's a very organ-ish accordion piece somebody sent me a link to. It sounds a lot like the little play organ that my grandfather had at his house. I guess that would have been a reed organ?
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    I don't even own a dog.

    I certainly can commisurate with the state of affairs of that time and day, but it doesn't seem to hold a lot of water now for Catholics in the US. I think the Church in general makes too many excuses why it cannot "afford" the proper things for God... that includes eyerything from a proper building right down to throwaway hymnals.

    I just saw a TV show yesterday on Air Force One... And NO expense was spared for one International visit by the pres of the USA...

    Meanwhile we designate that GOD should be relegated to the side of a sanctuary in a brass box?

    I think the world has something else coming for it's lack of priority for the Almighty himself!

    This is the same reason we justify fake organs and the rest of it. I don't buy it.
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    "it doesn't seem to hold a lot of water now for Catholics in the US."

    Well, I've never seen an accordion at Mass in the US. I suppose there are the fabled polka Masses, but not around here.

    Tambourines, now, they are a constant danger to us all! Every time you think they're dead, out they come again. Fear them! Fear!
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Yea... The state of the church can be frightening... I showed up the first day to a post in one of the wealthiest parishes in the suburbs of Baltimore. One of the parishoners approached me and said, "see that organ over there? It's locked and for a good reason!" I replied, "Oh, why is that?" The parishoner replied back, "because we LIKE it that way!"

    When I left that position six months later I was told one of the main reasons I was being let go was because "the place is starting to sound like the cathedral."

    Imagine that! Organ music in a Catholic Church!
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    Argh! Man, that's the sort of person who should have cutting things said to them.

    Like, "So, do you threaten all the new people in the parish, or just the ones who come to work here?"

    Or, "It's the gracious spirit of hospitality in this parish that makes me really feel the love of Jesus."
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Wow, Maureen... I will have to email those off to the parish... of course it's ten years late, but heh! I was too shocked to say anything at the moment.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,934
    Mass of Creation on the accordion. Now there's a wicked thought!
  • eft94530eft94530
    Posts: 1,577
    and subsequently decreed that henceforth accordions may be played in all Catholic Churches

    Where on the Vatican website is this audience and "decree"?
    I will research and report below in the next week or so.

    Somehow the phrase "apt or can be made apt" comes to mind.
    Maybe in 1943 this $5,000 custom-built accordion was "apt"
    and the playing by a virtuoso classical accordionist "made" it "apt".
    Surely, we cannot argue from the specific to the general?
    Did every village have such an instrument and such a player?

    In 1943, what was a $1000 or $2000 or ... organ specification?
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,046
    OK, OK, but can the OtamaTone be made apt? I think it would be very apt for penitential seasons.
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