I've heard far too many people use the words "traditional" and "Mass of Creation" in the same sentence. Same with the piano, btw.

I've never understood it. Until now,that is.

I can hear it now in "Fiddler on the Roof" ... Tevye: "Tradition, tradition, tradition!" :)

Traditional = Common when I was growing up

Close, but I think actually:

Traditional = Common when my dad was growing up, at least according to his reminiscences.

How about "Better"?

Lots of "traditional" stuff was junk, though. "Traditional" religious art from the 1800s? Blech. "Traditional" Communion practices from the 1400s? No thanks, said Pius X. The benefit of hindsight is that we can keep the things that were better, and discard the rest. It's like when people think that all the movies of the '30s and '40s were all great classics, or all the music of the '60s. No, history has just jettisoned 95% of the stuff that was mediocre to terrible and was getting churned out by mid-rate artists. I guarantee music from the '90s and '00s will sound a lot better in forty years when it is synonymous only with that small fraction of songs that have stood the test of time. People nowadays have this notion that maybe fifty hymns were written in "traditional times," and they are all Immaculate Mary or Faith of our Fathers. In reality, untold hundreds of utterly dreadful hymns were inflicted on people at the time. They were often dreadful in different ways than many modern hymns are dreadful -- treacly and sentimental rather than riddled with inclusive language -- but dreadful nonetheless, and in exactly the ways you would expect based on the particular flaws of the culture that was producing them. We simply don't have to hear these hymns nowadays because they have long since been consigned to the dustbin.

Of course, the difficulty with acknowledging this is that it does not permit us the customary easy outs (not "traditional = better" any more so than NPM should say "fresher is better"), but rather demands actual artistic and value-based (and liturgical, etc.) judgments.

Mark, I often think about how much mediocre music is written in any age, too. Will that be our purgatory??
And treacly is a great adjective for some of the hymns people consider traditional. My pastor jokes about wringing such hymns/songs out like syrup over his pancakes. Always gets a chuckle from me.

While I don't disagree with the basic thrust of Mark's observations, we need to be mindful that the whole process of "standing the test of time" is intertwined with political and social forces that often pit the powerful against the weak, not necessarily the good against the bad.

Going back to the original subject: my wife is the music director of a two-parish cluster, one "traditional" and one "progressive." Imagine the contemporary parish's horror when she programmed something for the Thanksgiving mass (for example) that had never been done before. "Well we've been doing it this way for 40 years!" So much for progress and change.

Then the "traditional" parish is exactly as Mary Ann describes. Tradition is what people remember with fleeting memories from idealized bygone days (which might have been the 1970s!).

Another story that rubbed me the wrong way...

Mary Ann, I had a similar experience in the mid-late 90s when I used to organize a monthly NO Latin Mass with chant. Each month we had to find a priest who was willing and able to offer Mass in Latin. After one Mass, for which the schola sang, let's say Mass XI, Orbis factor, the priest asked me why we had sung that unusual Mass, and not the 'traditional Gregorian chant.' I mumbled something to the effect that I thought all the chant Masses in the Graduale were traditional. He responded by humming to me the opening of the Kyrie from Mass XVIII, the ferial Mass. For him, that was the traditional chant.

Even more fun are the folks who insist that the Rossini psalm-tone Propers are "real" Chant.

Not to mention the "traditional" confiteor-and-shriving before Communion, which was deleted from the Mass in 1961 or so--

And there are those who claim that "it was an unbroken tradition" wherever they've been going to Mass, despite the roughly 30 year hiatus.

Ah, well.

I just had an experience yesterday that suits this thread, but there is an underlying theological question behind it that may be more suitable for another topic:

I work at a parish where we have both OF and EF Masses. I became music director for this parish about two years ago, and, before I came, one elderly man sang the Rossini propers at every EF Mass. When I started, the pastor (also new to the parish) desired that I sing propers from the Liber Usalis at the EF Masses. So, I have compromised and alternated singing the Liber propers, letting this man sing the Rossini he loves every other week.

He and I have had an ongoing conversation about the appropriateness of Liber propers for quite some time. Last year, he was trying to convince me that Rossini propers sung by him (a man) were better than Liber propers sung by me (a woman), because this was "traditional". Our pastor put a stop to that fairly quickly.

Yesterday, he comes up to me with another idea. Rossini propers are more suited to our high Masses because a high Mass is "just a sung Low Mass". Therefore, according to him, Rossini propers should be used at a "regular" high Mass, while the Liber propers should be reserved for solemn high Masses. My initial reaction was to explain that he was looking at things from the wrong direction. A high Mass is not "just a sung low Mass", but rather a low Mass is a high Mass without music. Any thoughts or suggestions on how I could explain this better to my choir member?

Regrettably, Ben, that "note in the Liber Brevior" is extraordinarily misleading, almost to the point of falsity. It makes it sound like the Congregation of Rites ruled that simple propers can be tolerated only when the full propers cannot be done. But here is the full dubium from 1888 and its response (my translation):

DUBIUM V. Whether the practice can be tolerated of singing Mass in a psalmodic or semi-tone manner?

TO V. "It can be retained."

Hmm, no restriction or even suggestion of limitations or disfavor for the practice. In fact, note the shift from the grudging "tolerated" in the question to the neutral "retained" in the official reply. So where did the rest come from?

Well, when this was compiled two years later among the Analects of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin (who had originally submitted the dubium), it was reported as follows in a section called "Explanations (Dilucidationes) Concerning the Decrees of the S.C.R.," with the explanatory note apparently added by an editor (again, my translation):

Dubium V. Whether the practice can be tolerated of singing Mass in a psalmodic or semi-tone manner?

Notandum. Truly the ecclesiastical chant is the Gregorian chant, and whatever is sung in the Mass is to be sung in the Gregorian manner. The Sacred Congregation of Rites responded to Dubium V: Psalmodic or semi-tone chant can be retained among the Capuchins; by which words the Gregorian chant is not prohibited, but semi-tone chant tolerated.

So perhaps that's what somebody was looking at when he wrote that comment in the Liber Brevior. But clearly, color commentary aside, the real and complete ruling of the Congregation was that psalm-tone propers "can be retained," full stop.

Thank you so much for all of your help everyone!

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