The world was falling apart: 1957
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    Look at this Interesting issue of Caecilia from 1957

    It is a great issue that includes a full publication by Peter Wagner but also this extremely interesting editorial. The world was moving beneath their feet.



    As the discussion of the chant develops, we should like to reach some sort of editorial understanding. Let it be said right off that our chief interest lies in the singing and preservation of the chant, for despite the great propaganda Gregorian chant has enjoyed, both its use and its preservation are in mortal danger. The danger comes from curious sources----those who imagine themselves to be in the advance guard of a) the liturgical movement, especially the vernacular folk, b) congregational singing enthusiasts, c) educational simplification. In the first matter we ask you to weigh most carefully the words of Father Vitry in the February issue of Caecilia. In the second we are in substantial agreement with J. Robert Carroll, who in the May-June issue of the Gregorian Review ably defended the role of chant in congregational singing. Many of the chant's erstwhile proclaimers have cast it out. This is not to say that congregational singing may not take many other forms, but in the end, whatever form it takes, it will be based on, and it will be the result of, a whole culture, and not the inane notion of three minute rehearsals and shouting down the congregation such as Father Clifford Howdl propounds in the current music pages of Liturgy. In the third matter we have only to be minded of several new psalm-tone propers that have been added to the plethora of spoon-fed education. About all of these one puts out only a warning. A review would be pointless, for one is as bad as the other. We firmly believe that the guts of chant itself is worth the trouble.

  • RobertRobert
    Posts: 343
    "in the end, whatever form [congregational singing] takes, it will be based on, and it will be the result of, a whole culture, and not the inane notion of three minute rehearsals and shouting down the congregation"

    It's astonishing to read this. Over fifty years of striving for the ideal of congregational singing, and nothing to show for it. Fifty years ago, we could have embarked on the long, arduous path necessary to achieve this ideal. Instead we frittered away fifty years trying to do things the easy way and expecting that through some magic it would all suddenly start working.
  • JamJam
    Posts: 636
    "especially the vernacular folk"

    I'm sorry, but I am a strong advocate of liturgy in the vernacular, and also a strong advocate of Gregorian chant. So I don't know what that is supposed to mean.

    Gregorian chant can be sung in English, can't it? Doesn't it just mean you use Gregorian modes...? Because Byzantine chant can be sung in any language you please and still retain its "Byzantine-ness"; so I don't see why Gregorian chant can't be the same way.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    Well, in that case it is not Gregorian chant. It is English chant in the Gregorian style. When V2 says, G chant, it means Latin.

    It is very difficult for us to understand this now, but a half century ago, people who advocated English propers and ordinary were aiming to diminish the role of authentic chant, and our friends in those days believed that this would unleash Hell, that we as a community were not really prepared for a moderate move in this respect, that vernacularization would soon lead to rock and roll in Mass. People said that they were crazy and alarmist. It turns out that they were empirically correct. The Fr. Kelly style chant in English was bypassed completely in folk of secular/pseudo-folk/soft-rock styles. this is what Sacred Music feared and warned against.
  • Felipe Gasper
    Posts: 804
    Someone reflected to me recently that, when the printing press was first made widely available, the ensuing first 100 years or so saw an abundance of pure garbage: alchemy texts and the like. It took a while for the cream to rise to the top and to become people’s expectations.

    I suspect the same is happening in our church with liturgical music. “Alius cantus aptus” came naturally from what people knew as the low Mass, which begat McManus’s (IIRC?) statement circa 1969 that “anything goes” is effectively what we now have, which led to “Abba Father” and others.

    “Here I Am, Lord” is an improvement upon “Abba, Father”.

    Haas “The Lord is My Light and My Salvation” is another improvement.

    Proulx “I Received the Living God” — ditto. (Ok, yeah, I know that’s a pre-existing melody.)

    No one is writing “I Believe in the Sun” anymore. The Matt Mahers and Tom Booths of the world are writing good music—arguably, not well-suited either for congregational singing or choral singing (and, if so, of dubious liturgical value), but good music nonetheless. We could eventually, I think, move to a point where it will be understood that most new music is not congregational—and composers will embrace this openly and unapologetically.

    I foresee the role of choirs improving in the future....for the simple reason that good liturgical practice nourishes and sustains faith, while bad liturgical practice (e.g. “the congregation must sing everything but the offertory!”) kills it. It’s a little like how some have theorized that patriarchal families, because they tend to have more kids, will eventually simply wrest sociopolitical authority because there will simply be more of those people.

    The real danger that I see is that our congregations are losing what little sense they ever had that singing is an integral part of their participation in the liturgy. This is not about singing hymns; I am talking about the large number of people that I see anywhere I go to Mass who won’t even sing the Mass of Creation Sanctus.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    Agreed with much of Felipe's sentiment! As bad as the status quo is, it has been much worse. My mother, born in '58, played guitar and "planned" for Mass in her teens. One day, while I was on another mad rant about bad music (my friends and relatives are used to that from me), she conceded: "Well, now that I look back on what we did when I was young, we did some really terrible stuff," and then mentioned a bunch of hymns that I thankfully had never even heard of. I found the "lyric sheets" at my old church (you know, the mimeographed papers with texts to songs on them) and they were filled with awful things. That same church regularly does Abba, Father, and I think they'd be delighted to do "I believe in the sun", but I think the attitude of REQUIRING it is gone. The cream IS rising to the top. The lifespan of Eagle's Wings is ending, although we'll have a lot of bad self-planned funerals to play before it's totally buried and forgotten.

    I also want to associate myself strongly with Felipe's last paragraph. Apologists for the tight-lipped behavior (everyone except women 40-60) use all sorts of nonsense: "They don't want to sing heretical/bad/sappy music!" (they didn't have any at my last church), "They can't even try to top the cantor!" (ditto). "They're participating actively!" is the biggest bunch of nonsense out there. I recognize the need for and value of internal active participation - but without the ability to read minds, I'm assuming these middle-aged men and teens are thinking about the upcoming sporting game and NOT participating in the Mass. Call it a hunch. And no, it isn't about people not singing whatever new hymn I throw at them, it's about a complete dispassion in the Mass and an unwillingness to engage anything musical.

    Bonus anecdote: Bet none of you ever heard THIS... a woman came up to me shortly after I began at my last job and said to me "I love that you play nice and loud! I can finally start singing since I know other people won't have to hear me!" (My predecessor was a little old lady who always used the vox celeste) Wisdom, let us attend!
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