Music has become today the decisive vehicle of a counter-religion and thus the scene of the discernment of spirits in a form that we could not have suspected a generation ago. Because rock music seeks redemption by way of liberation from the personality and its responsibility, it takes, in one respect, a very precise position in the anarchical ideas of freedom which predominate today in a more unconcealed way in the West than in the East. But precisely for that reason, it is thoroughly opposed to the Christian notion of redemption and of freedom as its exact contradiction. Not for aesthetic reasons, not from reactionary obstinacy, not from historical immobility, but because of its very nature music of this type must be excluded from the Church.

We could concretize our question further, if we were to continue analyzing the anthropological ground of different types of music.

There is agitation music which animates man for different collective purposes. There is sensual music which leads man into the erotic or essentially aims in other ways at sensual feelings of pleasure. There is light music which does not wish to say anything but only to break up the burden of silence. There is rationalistic music in which the tones serve only rational constructions but in which no real penetration of spirit and sensibility results. One would have to include many sterile catechism songs and modern hymns constructed under commission here.

The music that corresponds to the liturgy of the incarnate Christ raised up on the cross lives from another, greater and broader synthesis of spirit, intuition, and sensuous sound. One can say that Western music, from Gregorian chant through the cathedral music and the great polyphony, through the renaissance and baroque music up until Bruckner and beyond, has come from the inner wealth of this synthesis and developed it in the fullness of its possibilities.

This greatness exists only here because it alone was able to grow out of this anthropological ground that joined the spiritual and the profane in an ultimate human unity. This unity is dissolved in the measure that this anthropology disappears. The greatness of this music is, for me, the most immediate and the most evident verification of the Christian image of man and of the Christian faith in redemption that history offers us. He who is touched by it knows somehow in his heart that the faith is true, even if he still has a long way to go to re-enact this insight with reason and will.

That means that the liturgical music of the Church must be ordered to that integration of human being that appears before us in faith in the Incarnation. Such a redemption is more laborious than that of intoxication. But this labor is the exertion of truth itself. In one respect, it must integrate the senses into the spirit; it must correspond to the impulse of the sursum corda [lift up your hearts]. However, it does not will a pure spiritualization but an integration of sensibility and spirit so that both become person in one another. It does not debase the spirit when it takes the senses up into itself, but first brings it the whole wealth of creation. And it does not make the senses less real when they are penetrated by the spirit, rather, in this way they first receive a share in its infinity. Every sensual pleasure is strictly circumscribed and is ultimately incapable of intensification because the sense act cannot exceed a certain measure. He who expects redemption from it will be disappointed, “frustrated” — as one would say today. But through integration into the spirit, the senses receive a new depth and reach into the infinity of the spiritual adventure. Only there do they come completely to themselves. But that presupposes that the spirit does not remain closed either.

The music of faith seeks the integration of man in the sursum corda; man, however, does not find this integration in himself, but only in self-transcendence towards the incarnate word. Sacred music, which stands in the structure of this movement, thus becomes the purification and the ascent of man. But let us not forget: this music is not the work of a moment but participation in a history. It is not realized by an individual but only in community. Thus, it is precisely in it that the entrance of faith into history and the community of all members of the body of Christ expresses itself.

It permits joy again, a higher kind of ecstasy which does not extinguish the person but unites and thus liberates him. It lets us glimpse what a freedom is that does not destroy but gathers and purifies.

b) Remarks on the present situation

The question for the musician is, of course: How does one do that? At bottom, great works of Church music can only be bestowed because the transcendence of self, which is not achievable by man alone, is involved, whereas the frenzy of the senses is producible in accordance with the known mechanisms of intoxication. Production ends where the truly great begins. We must first of all see and recognize this limit. To this extent, reverence, receptivity, and the humility that is ready to serve by participating in the great works that have already issued forth necessarily stand at the beginning of great sacred music. Only he who lives from the inner structure of this image of man at least in its essentials can create the music pertaining to it.

The Church has set up two further road markers. In its inner character, liturgical music must correspond to the demands of the great liturgical texts — the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei. That does not mean, as I have already said, that it may be only text music. But it finds in the inner direction of these texts a pointer for its own message.

The second road marker is the reference to Gregorian chant and to Palestrina. Again, this reference does not mean that all Church music must be an imitation of this music. On this point, there were in fact many constrictions in the renewal of Church music in the last century and also in the papal documents based on it. Correctly understood, this simply says that norms are given here that provide an orientation. But what may arise through the creative appropriation of such an orientation is not to be established in advance.

The question remains: Humanly speaking, can one hope that new creative possibilities are still open? And how is that to happen? The first question is really quite easy to answer. For if this image of man is inexhaustible in opposition to the other one, then it also opens up ever new possibilities for the artistic message, and does so all the more, the more vividly it determines the spirit of an age. But here lies the difficulty for the second question.

In our times, faith has to a large extent stepped down as a publicly formative force. How is it to become creative? Has it not everywhere been repressed into a subculture? To this one could reply that we are apparently standing before a new blossoming of faith in Africa, Asia, and Latin America from which new cultural forms may sprout forth.

But even in the Western world the word “subculture” should not frighten us. In the cultural crisis we are experiencing, it is only from islands of spiritual composure that new cultural purification and unification can break forth. Where new outbursts of faith take place in living communities, one also sees how a new Christian culture is formed, how the community experience inspires and opens ways we could not see before. Furthermore, F. Doppelbauer has correctly pointed to the fact that liturgical music frequently and not coincidentally bears the character of a late work and presupposes a previously acquired maturity.23

Here it is important that there be the antechambers of popular piety and its music as well as spiritual music in the wider sense which should always stand in a fruitful exchange with liturgical music: they are fructified and purified by it on the one hand, but they also prepare new forms of liturgical music. From their freer forms there can then mature what can enter into the common possession of the universal liturgy of the Church. Here then is also the realm in which the group can try its creativity in the hope that something will grow out of it that one day may belong to the whole.