I don't think that quip helps, Gavin, tho' it's cute and timely.
I love Peter's thoughtfulness, courtesy and his compositions most of all. However, the piece over at CCW does little more to solve incompetency in music ministry and practice other than to make these and other instruments shibboleths (thanks, Liam) in a very complicated landscape. We've heard this clarion so many times before, and we bounce back and forth with moanings about how demoralizing such a dictate would prove to people, most of whom are of good heart and want to enhance liturgy but aren't provided the guidance or are resistent to the inexorably slow pace of change te church is actually making in areas of repertoire and liturgical principles and practice.
I actually was discussing this very notion with Todd F. in a phone conversation yesterday before reading Peter's article, and its amazing how so much of what we talked about was NOT addressed by it. Jeffrey, you know that bass note counterpoint to melody is likely only secondary to melodic integrity in the compositional process. Peter, you know I know my theory up close and personal. And I'm saying, there is much wiggle room in both your premises about how a piano or guitar can function to accompany chant and even some polyphony (really homophony such as when we were on the cusp of switching from modality to tonality) that doesn't reduce the piano to a Jelly Roll Morton caricature or the guitar to a banjo. That's so intellectually dishonest that it actually surprised me. And Peter, one of your students can testify that I exhibit those abilities every Sunday.
Okay, ban your guitars of any stripe, ban your pianos/harpsichords/virginals. And in most places you'll be left with no-pedals Myrtle still playing "Glory and Praise to our God" tortuously on the analog Allen.
There is NO SILVER BULLET, gentlemen and ladies. If this issue is a "deal-breaker" (which is more or less understood already as a general precept) for CMAA adherence, then we're shooting ourselves in the foot with this particular bullet. YMMV.

Sad to say, I believe this article, good as it is, is just another ineffective shot over the bow.
How difficult it is to fashion any sort of antithesis to the music and instruments which most of us on this forum know intuitively don't belong in church! It is unfortunate and frustrating that attempts to do so nearly always come out sounding like so much highly subjective carrying on. They do so no matter what council, document, saint, or pope we bolster our arguments with, or how well reasoned or objectively correct they may be.

I can remember when these instruments and musical styles first made their appearance in the sixties and seventies (even in Episcopal churches!). That they were comically out of place and made their presence (i.e., just 'barged in') with an atrocious presumption was self-evident to me and many others. Most priests and most people, however, just shrugged their shoulders and deserted the field. Those who objected were treated to a tidal wave of shameless rudeness on the part of these 'musicians', and the helpless indifference of most of the congregations. There was, and remains, no way of demonstrating to these practitioners or their enablers that they are a hopeless incongruity thrust into divine worship.

Friend Gavin - I'm wondering (sincerely) why you suggest that Holy Father Francis disagrees. It seems to me that it might (I hope!!!) be too early to make that call. He did, after all, say something about God 'resplendent among his people'. This was in reference to, I think, liturgical vesture. Perhaps (we can hope!) such resplendence includes music?

MJO

I suspect Gavin's quip (or at least this is how *I* understood it) was intended as a humorous reference to the fact that the Pope's celebration of Mass last evening at Casal del Marmo was accompanied by guitar*

* For the associated 40-car pile-up and associated rubbernecking:

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-official-end-of-reform-of-reform-by.html

While I enjoyed the articles' analysis, at some point it would be nice to see some articles with practical solutions on how to offer alternatives to the chest-less age of liturgical therapy.

As my priest said to me after Monday's Mass, "I wonder what some of those [i.e. minimalist and nobly simplistic] priests were thinking when they read today's Gospel: 'Then Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples, and the one who would betray him, said, "Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days' wages and given to the poor?"'" After all, is that not the rallying cry of a certain group of clergy, religious, and laity : We ought not to build beautiful churches, or have million-dollar pipe-organs, or chant or polyphony, or good liturgical appointments and praxis, we should be focusing on the poor.?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for helping the poor; but why is it that the only way to help the poor is bad liturgy? The liturgy is Divine Worship, not community service : it is to worship God, not to make us feel warm and fuzzy.

Does the Pope approve in advance the accompaniment at a given Mass? When the bishop comes to my parish he doesn't know what we are planning for music. What could the Pope have done- stop the Mass and demand organ music?

Side thought:
Everyone is an ultramontaine when they like the guy. Else, not so much.

Everyone is an ultramontaine when they like the guy. Else, not so much.

Maybe we can make a flow chart like this one:

I was hoping to address the article, but Charle's first response said much better and more gently what I had to say in criticism. I only need(?) to add this:

This article is not unique. There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, such correctives written by many, many well-intentioned and knowledgeable musicians. Will this finally be the one that makes guitarists in parishes around the world hang up their instruments, take out their Graduales, and embrace chant?

I think it's better if we strain to avoid extrapolation, because we human beings will naturally tend to extrapolate a narrative that reinforces our preferences in some way.

Sometimes we need iconoclasts, but now, I think, is not one of them. We are building something substantial at the grassroots, and people are responding to it. As frustrating as it is sometimes, we need to persevere with calm; showing people what beautiful liturgical sacred music is, rather than demanding it by fiat. Converts are much more interesting people than prisoners.

I am an idealist just like Peter. However, WE have reaped what we have sown. The Church is the one to blame for our plight, not the people. The Church (the Bishops and the priests) have neglected and watered down the faith, her truths, her traditions and sacraments. "Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter." The heart of the problem isn't the instruments or the style of music; that is the symptom, not the cause. The heart of the problem is sin; narcissism; faith floundering and lost to the influence of worldly desires; it's confusion in the ranks.

To love our narcisistic society out of its quandry we must meet the world where they are and then we can take them where they need to go. I am not proposing or condoning allowing worldly influences within our liturgies. I would love to shove our piano up to pub just as much as PK. But if we run away from those who are ignorant because they have it wrong, then we are handing our camp over to the enemy, lock, stock and barrel. Instead we must lovingly and consistently build bridges to those who are confused and find ways to awaken their conscience. If we stand aloof and throw stones of criticism and refuse to reach out to the ignorant and lost, we are only inviting them to throw stones of contempt back at us.

Fight fire with love. Beauty is irresistible, and we must put it forward in every way possible in our liturgies, prayers, AND our actions. We must always hope that upon hearing authentic sacred music or seeing the liturgy celebrated in a solemn manner that one heart will become more open to truth and beauty, and love will melt away the selfish whim of personal preferences founded in ignorance and confusion. That goes for the bishop just as well as the PIP. We can only hope and love and live our faith best by example, and be ever so calculating with words, arguments and debates where they will win hearts.

Music Teacher -
I must differ with one of your assertions: if there were only one radio station and it played music that was awful, I (we?) would not 'eventually learn to like that music'. I (we?) would not listen to it. Just as if the only museum in town only showed Maplethorpe and not Michaelangelo, I (we?) would never go there.

Francis -
Oh, if only you were correct!. Unfortunately, if beauty really were irresistable this conversation would never have had reason to happen. Our churches would be filled with Gombert and Herbert Howells. Not only is beauty resistable, it is purposefully spurned by many.

Yes, they spurned beauty himself and crucified him in this very hour. But that didn't prevent him from MANIFESTING his beauty nonetheless. So we must follow even to our demise if God so wills it.

It's a chapel, so maybe they did have an organ. My point still stands: many on this forum assert that the guitar never should be used in the liturgy. The pope himself seemed to have at least tolerated it at this occasion. (And there's tremendous evidence that he may have even considered it a good thing.)

Do you mean NCR rather than Commonweal?

I can understand the experience. I'd only put up with a guitar Mass if I were a captive audience too.

The kind of thing I used to do in the '80s. (But now that I'm in my nineties I gave that up.) :-)

Maybe I should add to my list of proverbs:

Not every Mass that has a guitar is a "Guitar Mass."

Nor does the presence of many folks constitute a "Folk Mass."

I have heard all the arguments as to what guitars can do, how they can sound, and how they have been used in past centuries to good effect. Unfortunately, it is not likely many will hear them in such positive light at the average U.S. parish. They are often played in conjunction with inferior music, played in inappropriate styles, and often just played badly by musicians of lesser talents. Seems to me the problem is the guitarists more than the instruments - true of organ, too. There are also among us the legendary left-footed wonders.

Re guitars in the liturgy: I rather doubt that anyone has Williams or Segovia in mind when it comes to how they're played or used to accompany.

One need only open the most recent issue of the GIA Quarterly and read the article by Stephen Petrunak about how to strum the proper rhythms or modify them for variety.

Q.E.D.

Did you know that William Tortolano and Bobby Fischer are collaborating on a "breakout" session at this summer's NPM convention on how to accompany chant on the guitar?

Seems to me it's a bit like putting a Gelfling and a Na'vi in a room and waiting 20 minutes to see which one emerges in one piece.

*snort*

Okay, that was the last straw!!! Liam professes his love for Mary Jane Ballou even tho' she bandies about in Italia......it's personal now, I get it.
"Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I gonna eat some worms!"

;-)
What's a Gelfling and a Na'vi? Are they birds?

Oh thank goodness. I'm so glad I can return to your side of the debate Dearest. I quite agree that banishment is neither required or desired. In the area of sacred music...education is essential. Give people something good to compare the banal to. People reach for the good. We're hardwired to it. Beautiful, well done chant and polyphony will win the day every single time. Badly done chant and poorly prepared polyphony however, will go down in flames against well done guitar strumming.

It can perhaps be argued that most of the time we don't hear well done guitar, and that is what causes all of these debates in the first place, but still. The answer is NOT to banish the instrument(s). Making something forbidden immediately renders it more attractive. That is human nature.

Darling...you weren't supposed to mention my regularly scheduled chaos...

I play a liturgical guitar

And you will NEVER know what that means till you show up at a
Liturgy here in 83001

Less is best

Nuff said