There’s a reason why the Church requires that Gregorian chant be given pride of place and that it is the touchstone for determining what music is appropriate for liturgical worship.

There’s also a reason why we’re not supposed to be ruled by our emotions and appetites.

This is precisely why.

Some of the more evangelical denominations are raking in the cash with emotional music.

Emotions are a gift from God, and can be used wisely and effectively. To deny emotion is to take a quasi-gnostic view of body=bad, spirit=good.

@Gamba, I was just proofreading the latest edition of Devotional Stories for Little Folks, Too from CHC, and there's a whole little story about the Protestant neighbor and "feelings" vs. the Catholic family in these books and Church "Truth" and the CCC, etc. etc., and why so many things can't be led by feelings alone, especially since feelings and emotions--while real--can so easily betray us.

"Music composed for the sung Liturgy should, if things are being done well, have to live side-by-side with Gregorian chant, and not feel terribly out of place doing so. Indeed, it should feel right at home. Because just as liturgical music must respect length etc. in proportion to the liturgy, it also must respect the native soundscape of the liturgy.

Several years ago, and at a different church, I was once asked not to sing propers because the chant didn't fit well with the praise and worship, and it was a "praise and worship Mass."

Do not get married based on how you “feel”! Totally the wrong reason.

CORRECTION

What I really meant to say here was do not get married, based ONLY on how you feel. It is of course, obvious that emotions are a part of human psyche.

I forget if it was D.Q. Mcinerney or Fr. James Schall who came up with this analogy, but it has stuck with me: a person is like a chariot, with their reason as the charioteer and the emotions as the team of horses. Now, these horses need to be placed in proper order as they are pulling the chariot, and the charioteer should know which horses are steadfast but need more encouraging and which need to be reined in due to natural choleric tendencies. This is how to manage to make it around the treacherous curves of the arena in one piece.

Emotions are a good and necessary part of the human psyche. Every emotion, at some point in our life, needs to take the forefront. But we need to look to our God-given reason to give these emotions direction for our own sake. We should be sad, for example, when a family member dies. We should wear black in their honor, and lament their departing from this life. We should be happy when a family member gets married, and join in their celebration. But (tempting though it may be) doing the Electric Slide at a funeral and singing Dies Irae at a wedding are not reasonable choices.

Of course, we can't completely control our feelings and where they lead us. And trying to force an emotion deliberately and without due involvement is a broad definition of kitsch. But a decently formed conscience should be able to tell us whether we should indulge in the emotions we feel at a given time for our own sake.

Consider this, published today:

https://www.blackcatholicmessenger.org/one-size-mass-doesnt-serve-black-catholics/

I disagree with the author, but his argument and assertions are very similar to the P&W crowd that wants emotionally moving, energetic music at Mass. They are similar to every person who puts forth subjective criteria for evaluating the music sung at Mass.

I think I understand where the author is coming from, but I believe he desires the Mass and Roman liturgy to be something it's not. What he finds emotionally stirring and fulfilling does not necessarily belong in the Mass. He can find that in another devotional activity.

His assertion that "black" constitutes a cultural identity that "needs expression" in the Mass is not supportable.

Maybe he'd prefer a hip-hop Mass:

https://www.youtube.com/live/253BYZHIApw?si=Ta9ksJXcl-Zx19MN&t=1190

I wonder if the author of the BCM article has ever even been to a fully-sung Mass such as we promote, and what he would think. The American waters are so muddied by the dreadful low-church state of most parishes, which are plainly white in culture and practice, that I find it hard to disagree with him. Memorial Day, July 4 and Thanksgiving are observed, with homilies extolling the Founding Fathers (how do those land with descendants of their slaves, I wonder….?) and even proper liturgies devised by the USCCB (the Thanksgiving one being particularly jingoistic). St. Patrick’s Day is marked not so much with the Mass Statuit ei solemnly sung, but with green kitsch, Irish jokes, and Lady of Knock. Probably there are some lovely old ladies who still sell pierogi or another European traditional food.

The music is performed in the style of white 60s/70s/80s pop artists, or maybe it’s been updated to Hillsong/Bethel songs that white evangelicals were doing 10 years ago. The preaching avoids any mention of racism and inequality, because Father knows how his biggest donors voted, and so it’s feel-good platitudes mixed with remembrances and riffs on white Boomer pop culture.

On the other hand, in the Black Protestant churches of the article writer’s youth: the choir is well-trained, and together with the [Hammond] organ, are the leaders of the music. The preacher happily spends an hour carefully expounding the Bible and connecting it to his flock’s lives, even when in direct opposition to government policies and the broader culture. The parishioners know each other well and support each other in times of need, and consider charitable work and evangelism to be an ordinary part of the Christian life. To me these seem like things all parishes, Catholic and Protestant, should be striving for, no matter their ethnicity, and I can understand where the author is coming from.

To me, part of the problem is the loss of paraliturgical services and the distinction between devotional music and liturgical music. If there's a Missa Cantata in place on Sundays, I'm honestly happy for any parish group that is enriched by adoration with praise and worship music, or a hymn festival, or a revival with Black (or white) gospel music, throughout the week.

But if we were to talk about inclusion of devotional music at Mass in place of or in addition to the propers, whether it's Wesley or Chris Tomlin or Neocatechumenal Way songs, Gospel music to me is one of the better options. I'm not an expert on Gospel music, but: it's objectively sacred music, arising independently out of its own lengthy tradition.

Many of the songs are straight from Scripture, e.g.
https://youtu.be/djH0tufzYYQ?si=DZUDz3wPmcwM9XKC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9nRqR6Oh9s

In addition to upbeat songs and songs for the congregation to participate in, there are also soloistic, melismatic ways of singing, providing a similar opportunity to meditate on the text as our graduals and alleluias. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCLgFFJt8D4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBp_5ox3eNk

Should it replace the proper of the Mass? Nah. Is it ipso facto un-Catholic? Certainly not. Is it better than Gather us in? You tell me.

and the latter comes from deep, deep within their souls

I went to Steubenville and you’re wrong. Even I have a soft spot for it. I have fond memories of Hillsong, Bethel, and Matt Maher’s music, as well as the otherwise inappropriate “You are Holy/Prince of Peace” from my baccalaureate Mass, when just a few years before my arrival Cardinal Burke sang Mass with chant and polyphony. Like, this is so obviously silly that even though it’s not what I’d want and it’s not what the church wants, if we allow southern or black gospel, we have to allow P&W.

Pfleger is 75 or so now, and what he does at St. Sabina is likely to be unsustainable without him because it's his personality keeping it going

His associate pastor has kept it up. So the contrary must actually happen for me to accept that it will die any time soon, and even then, it’s a spectrum. Saint Sabina’s is just more extreme. You can do what he does liturgically without styling yourself as a missionary Baptist church would.

I'm not always the best example, but come on, that's just not necessary, and I am going to call that out. We know. You know that I know that we should use chant, polyphony, and where appropriate more traditional hymns. So why the dig?

I find the schematizations one sometimes encounters in discussions of sacred music (such as melody=intellect, harmony=feeling, rhythm=body; or major=happy, minor=sad) to be thought-stopping.

About the intellect/emotion/body schematization, I have to agree with what ContemporaryWorship already said: all forms of music by nature have a fundamental emotional component, and the schematization is further prone to associating monophonic chant with a 'dryness' which is both insulting (imo), and as Delalande states, simply untrue. It really does seem like a schema that only a non-musician could come up with and ascribe to. Here it seems to me that it points to theological-anthropological questions about human nature, and a basic mistrust for emotion that pervades a not insignificant amount of traditional Catholic theological opinion.

About major and minor, while I would affirm that intervals and chords (whether sequential or simultaneous) have a basically objective effect on the listener (and here I would simply subscribe to the classical idea of their correspondences with the soul), I think there is still a cultural construction overlaid, as well as a simplification that parallels the reduction of an earlier and rich modal diversity to merely major and minor.

I've read, for instance, that some modal progressions we would call minor (ergo "sad") were felt to be sweet and tender. There does seem to be some fundamental continuity between that experience and the modern one - in the sense that tenderness and sadness can feel grouped in a way that happiness and sadness do not - but I don't want to elide the differences either.

I have a choir member, a talented musician, who seems to have that "modern" ear strongly inculcated. He frequently describes different modes and chants as major and minor, and experiences the "minor" ones to be gloomy. I don't mean to put him down, of course, but I can't help thinking it reflects some constriction in emotional range.

So why the dig?

Google “Hillsong scandal”. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Hillsong is just plain evil.

I may be very odd in my personal tastes, but I can enjoy a squared rhythm of drums this way - the drummers have to wait patiently 2:30 to let their hair down a bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv2Eq35cn8s

and then something very different, this sequence from "Ball of Fire" (what a perfect film) with Barbara Stanwyck and Gene Krupa is incandescent (and would not be as incandescent in color):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEdh2MmIIVs

but I can't help thinking it reflects some constriction in emotional range.

Mode 1 is gloomy? That's…look. I don't want to put him down either, but I would play the Pulchra es + ps 126 from Fontgombault over and over again.

Many good points on this thread.

In my past I have played music with Greeks, Arabs, Turks, Persians and Afghans, using modal systems such as the Maqam system and the Radif.

These systems use many modes that do not easily classify as major or minor. Plus, they often have untempered intervals that include so-called "quarter tones".

There is a long established tradition which can assign emotional effects to certain modes, and it is somewhat complex.

The simplification of the idea that "major is happy and minor is sad; indeed does put

some constriction in emotional range

.

There is no rhythm in Gregorian chant really. And the melodies, although sometimes discernible are more modal arpeggiations and ornamentations. Gregorian hymns are more recognizable by their melody, but rhythm is almost nondescript in all chant per say

In many of these modal systems, there is a division between music that is in a fixed meter, often accompanied by a drum of some type, and unmetered sections that do not have a danceable fixed rhythmic pattern.

Instead, a flowing pattern that is not in any time signature is used. In the Persian system, such pieces are called "awaz" and the pattern is taken from poetic meter of the spoken word.

There may be a parallel to Gregorian chant, where the Latin words help define the flow of the musical ideas.

Finally, I would add that I am not a fan of Catholic music that follows the Protestant "Praise and Worship" style.

One of the beauties of chant is that it is NOT a musical style used in secular culture, nor is it performative, and it does not lend itself to adding drums and guitars.

Mode 1 is gloomy? That's…look. I don't want to put him down either, but I would play the Pulchra es + ps 126 from Fontgombault over and over again.

I can't recall offhand which modes or particular chants he has commented on in this way, but I don't think it's ever mode 1. Guido describes its mood as "serious," if I'm not mistaken. The perfect fifth between the tonic and reciting tone tends to be a defining interval, and it's a very extroverted and expansive one, needless to say.

Mode 1 is interesting to me within this tradition of assigning moods though, because in writing organum parts I've found cases where the expansive sound of the fifth works better with the text and music, and cases where the less expansive, sweeter sound of the major third works better. So I have two templates, so to speak, for mode 1, one that focuses on the Re with some flexing to Do and elsewhere, and one that employs more parallel motion with major thirds. This results in different moods of mode 1, and the curious thing to me is that I feel I'm just bringing out and emphasizing something that's already in the piece. So sometimes it feels to me like there are two modes in one here.

While I'm on the subject, another cliche one hears - and this might be the most common - is that in chant the text is primary, and the music subordinate.

This might be a description of how it ought to be ordered, but I am convinced it's not an empirical finding from the melismatic repertoire, where primacy is often traded back and forth. This could be problematized by noting that where pure tone appears to be taking over from text, it is still engaged in some kind of expression that extends from the text. But then you have numerous cases where minimally associative words like 'et' are given 15 notes. At the very least, here, the text is not straightforwardly primary.

As much as I'm interested in what authorities have prescriptively said about liturgical music, I'm equally interested in what liturgical music says about itself - and I'm not willing to say that ancient repertoire is wrong when it perhaps begs to differ. I relate this also to the Guidonian list and what I believe one empirically find in the repertoire of mode 1. Much like the saying that the text is primary, it's not wrong, I just think there's more to the story.