Latin music vs vernacular music

sydneylam19

My question is simple: how to strike a balance between the wider use of vernacular hymns and Latin hymns as well as Gregorian Chants?

In my parish, the priests simply read out the verses and chants are obsolete. Located in a Chinese community, our parish offers Masses in Chinese. There are some beautiful Chinese vernacular hymns or hymns imitating chants, but as time progresses, there appears to be a lack of rich artistic music in the Mass. Very often the choir only repeats the several hymns (actually not several, but definitely not many) in the thick Chinese Hymn Book.

So the obstacle placed in front of me is the tilted balance to all-vernacular music, which I deem inappropriate in terms of continuity of Latin music traditions within our local church.

How can chants and Latin polyphony be adapted for vernacular use, if the use of real Latin versions in a Mass can hardly be a way out given the scarcity of musicians and cantors with moderate Latin training? Or, does this matter?

I do not want a liturgy show off or music concert where singers do not understand the Latin lyrics they are singing, while the congregation fails to actively participate in the singing of beautiful Latin. Can translations partially solve the aforementioned problem, or is it an issue? I don't want a Holy Mass to be rendered a museum.

Please understand that unlike English or other European language-speaking nations, Chinese locals are from an entirely different cultural background, which is indeed my concern in regard to the integration of Latin music into the vernacular.

I do not favor sophisticated polyphonic pieces by Mozart, Haydn or other great composers - they are great, but again I cannot predict the effect of removing some well-known vernacular Ordinary music (e.g. Kyrie Gloria Sanctus in Chinese) and replacing it with Latin setting. Any experience as to how to handle the complicated circumstances?

Thanks for any constructive suggestion!

Adam Wood

Yes, yes, yes to translations.

Perhaps a modest start would be for you, and other Chinese-speaking church musicians, to translate/adapt the Proper texts into Chinese, setting them to either simple adaptations of the chant melodies, or to Chinese folk melodies which may be familiar enough in style to facilitate singing, but not so familiar as to remind people of the original lyrics.

Though I do not know, I suspect that the work here has mostly not been done yet, and needs courageous and hardworking musicians "on the ground" to pioneer it (by which I mean- you). That is certainly the case in other vernacular languages, so I assume it is also the case in Chinese. Even in English, we have only recently managed to get user-friendly, semi-standardized vernacular editions of the sung Propers to replace our own version of the "definitely not many" vernacular hymns and songs being sung in most places.

Chris Garton-Zavesky

Sydneylam19:

To engage in translations, one must consider the use to which the translation will be put. If you intend, for example, to replace St. Thomas Aquinas' Adoro Te, Devote, but to keep the familiar tune, you need a skilled translator so that both cadence and content are present. It serves nothing to keep a tune and eviscerate the text. On the other hand, if the purpose is to convey the meaning but not intend a vernacular translation for use at Mass, translations should be as literal as possible, without regard to meter. (I suppose that it would be possible to render the Latin in some native-Mandarin poetic form, but what I know about Mandarin precludes me from saying anything further on that topic.)

As to the Ordinary of the Mass, it is important that congregations learn chant settings in Latin. Not only can these populations learn the texts and music, but they must, so as to not render them what my wife calls "Second class citizens" in the Church. Catholics in China (or in America, for that matter) are not of some different creed than those of the whole church throughout all of time.

To return to my ignorance of Mandarin: English sometimes sounds clunky on Gregorian melodies. It's quite possible that Mandarin doesn't have this problem, and so one might be able to import a Mandarin translation of the Latin text onto the Gregorian melody. The translation came from the Chinese bishop's conference, and was approved by the Holy See.

The Mass isn't a museum piece, by its nature. Only fallen man's attempt to freeze it in some specific cultural context can render it, outwardly, a museum piece. That is true whether we mean 1950's Suburban European-Immigrant America or 2010's Mandarin Chinese enclave in America.

If you're talking about "religious music", instead of "sacred music", our first obligation as Church musicians is to sacred music. Sing hymns, by all means, as your parish's liturgical life expands beyond Mass, to incorporate processions, Vespers, whatever.

sydneylam19

Thanks for all the kind advice above.
I am living in Hong Kong where Cantonese, a dialect of Chinese, is the mainstream tongue.
Adam Wood: yes, some Latin lyrics can be literally translated into Cantonese or Mandarin in a poetic form.
Cgz: In regard to the chanted Ordinary which I am really fond of, I think one hidrance is on the difference in tonality between Cantonese, Mandarin (or almost all Chinese dialects) and Latin. Latin and English are not a tonal language; for instance, syllables are only categorized as stressed or unstressed in Latin and English, if I have not made it wrong. On the other hand, in Chinese, a word can take different tones and mean differently - Mandarin has 4 tones and Cantonese even has 9 tones. I know this is obfuscating for foreigners - in fact the presence of various tones is also why Chinese is so formidable to foreigners. Hence, when setting the Propers into chants, a tactful musician has to ponder carefully on how to suit the tone of the word with a similar 'do re mi fa so la ti' sound, so that when one listens to the word, there will not be misunderstanding arising from the incompatibility of tones.

To further elaborate on the difficulty, please refer to the following example.

E.g. Fa(in the first tone) means 'flower', but when elevated to the third tone, can mean 'law' in Mandarin.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/guide/alphabet.shtml

Another real issue is that most pastors and faithful in Hong Kong do not feel the necessity to change the read Propers into chants. They are contented with this current setting, thinking that reading out the Propers is less boring. Of course I hold competing views.

To me, the compromise is the include chanted Introit and Offertory while leaving the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei in vernacular music setting. Even so, nobody in our diocese seems to be aware of the significance of continuing the tradition of chanting in liturgy. Sigh!

In my opinion, if the Missale Romanum were compiled with greater scrutiny and explicit instructions, clearly stating the necessity of chanting, at least in vernacular if not in Latin, things would be resolved better.

Now reverting to tradition is like reactionary and rebellious. Sigh!

But I have deep faith in God - God must find a way to rejuvenate His liturgy with elegance. Let's pray for this to be done.

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