This is an interesting turn in the conversation. Charles, I think you are generally correct when you say that 4-part singing isn't really a Catholic tradition in the U.S, but that is because the Catholic Church did not promote congregational singing of any kind in the same way that Protestants did. To nuance it a little, the history of Catholicism in the U.S. is the history of ethnic Catholicism, and some areas had more 4-part singing than others.

Having said that...

I am against the melody-only approach to hymnal production because it affirms musical illiteracy. Whether people sing the parts or not, what does it say about us that we don't even give them the opportunity? A lot of people read music and would sing the parts. When the music is intended to be monophonic--no problem. But when harmony is idiomatic to the music itself, why not let the people sing?

I also don't like that you have to buy expensive "choir editions" to supplement melody-only hymnals.

Neither of those thoughts are essentially "Catholic," just what I believe as a musician and teacher.

While I love ordinary hymnals to include the harmony, I have one qualification for our current level of musical illiteracy: it shouldn't be the English style of music on the left and text to the right (or below). That style was apparently designed to accommodate long hymns, with very many stanzas, which is probably more suited to Low Church worship than Eucharistic liturgy.

And the numbers of people who are musically literate in the US is shrinking, sad to say. An astonishing number of choral singers I encounter don't fully know how to read music. I actually think that a basic function of choral music directors for volunteer church choirs is becoming teaching their choristers to read music; the failure to do so means people in the choir are operating at dramatically different empowerment levels, and that works as a tremendous tax on the enterprise.

Improvising harmony does not require the ability to read music, to be sure. But even fewer people are confident enough to do that than are musically literate these days.

Jam, I don't think anyone suggested that 4-part hymn singing is intrinsically Protestant. The point is that American Protestants cultivated 4-part hymnody more than American Catholics. This seems indisputable, because the history goes back at least 200+ years:

Singing schools: Protestant
Shape notes: Protestant
Most 19th c. hymnals: Protestant
4-part hymnals today: mostly Protestant
Melody-only hymnals today: mostly Catholic

There is a difference between singing chant in unison, and singing only the melody of a song that was originally written as four-part hymnody.

edit:

in some cases, it's actually "singing only the soprano part of a song that was originally written as four-part"

Some would ask why we have adopted so many of the Protestant hymns instead of singing Catholic music. I have never really had a good answer to that.

CharlesW

THE CHURCH takes everything that is Christian and acceptable to the RC Faith and graft it to our own. It then becomes officially part of Mother Church!

Liam, I agree.

Psalm tones!!

Liam,

Some of our good borrowed hymns are metric Psalms--most of the Isaac Watts corpus, for example. But the theologically best and richest, I think, are those which most resemble office hymns or are translations of office hymns.

I disagree. Psalms are Psalms. Hymns are hymns. The metrical Psalters were written for Protestant groups who thought (usually for a short time) that extra-Scriptural hymnody was a papist aberration.

Extra-Scriptural hymnody is an enormous part of the literature of our Tradition.

Gather Comprehensive changed "saved a wretch like me" to "saved and set me free."
I haven't seen the word "Ebenezer" anywhere.
Somebody, somewhere has decided that the Saints throw down their golden crowns around either a glassy sea or a crystal one.

Clearly that makes those hymns Catholic enough, right?
We even have the better arrangement of SICILIAN MARINERS, for goodness sakes!


How much more theological vetting of hymns do we need, really? I mean... you know, it's just the music...

To bring it back a little, I think what we are all recognizing was the historical convergence of excellent metrical text writing (Watts, Wesley, etc.), excellent tune writing, and the ultra-widespread dissemination of books containing either or both together. In the U.S., this dissemination was undoubtedly a Protestant phenomenon: think Second Great Awakening. A parallel phenomenon was the importation of German musical thinking into English-speaking religious circles. That is, only "the classics" are suitable for worship. Again, Protestant--think Lowell Mason.

Catholics, for whatever reason, did not take that ride, and in retrospect it seems like a huge musical opportunity lost. The ethnic divisions among Catholics in the 19th century seem important , because there was little communication between German, Anglo, and French Catholics. They used different books, sang more or less different devotional music, etc. It took a long time for "Irish Catholicism" to transform into the mainstream and for English to become the accepted vernacular in Catholic areas (it still isn't in some). It also took a long time for Catholics to have a real presence on a national scale. There was no motivating factor for creating a large corpus of original texts or translations, because there was little opportunity for it to achieve widespread use. Several attempts were made, but none had the lasting power of the Protestant texts and tunes. Catholic efforts simply came too late.

I personally love metrical texts because of the flexibility and ease of dissociating particular texts and musical settings. Need a new choral prelude anthem this year? Slap a different setting on the text from last year! Want to fake out the congregation by playing a tune not in the hymnal? Done! This is doable in Catholic parishes but more difficult than in Protestant churches. Having said that, I don't even want to touch the question of why that music is being done over chant--not interested in that discussion.

Here is an example of the superiority of office hymns to metrical Psalms. (The translation is just a draft and is not yet a decent poem, but hopefully the incredible original comes through.)

A Psalm is one piece of Scripture. An office hymn contains the sense of the unity of Scripture--unified, that is, by the Gospel--and relates it to the active living out of the Christian life in the presence of God.

Aeterne rerum conditor by St. Ambrose

Eternal maker of all things
Of day and night the sov'reign King,
Refreshing mortals, You arrange
The rhythm of the seasons' change

The rooster sounds his morning cry
--Throughout the night he watched the sky--
For travelers, a guiding light
To tell the watches of the night.

The morning star that hears the cry
Dispels the darkness from the sky.
The demons, hearing the alarm
Abandon all their paths of harm

The sailor hears and he is brave;
The sea becomes a gentle wave.
The rooster's call reached Peter's ears:
He washed away his sins in tears.

Our wav'ring hearts, Lord Jesus, see.
O look upon us, make us free,
For in Your gaze no fault can stay,
And sins by tears are washed away

O Light, upon our senses shine.
Dispel our sleepiness of mind,
That we may sing Your morning praise,
Then, vows fulfilling, live our days.

Is there really any reason why [part singing] should be, other than we musicians might enjoy hearing it?

Because taking four part music and lowering the pitch and just singing the melody isn't really sufficient for sung participation. It's true that most people have lower pitched voices, but those of us who are tenors (and I'd guess some sopranos, including child sopranos) can have trouble singing these hymns because they're pitched too low.

Doug

We (RC's) have a visceral reaction to hymnody in general because it displaced the authentic music of the liturgy for our lifetime and denied us musicians the enjoyment and the honor of Her musical patronage. We don't hate hymns per say, we hate how that form was foisted upon us unjustly by those "seeming to be in the know".

Hymnody is central to Catholicism.

Hymnody is central to Catholicism.

That's overstating it a bit. I would argue that hymnody has a place in the liturgy by assertion. There can be some middle ground where we recognize the value of hymnody, but also that it all-too-frequently supplants the music that is proper to the Mass.

Hymns are central to the liturgy. They are adjunctive to the Mass, but central to the Liturgy of the Hours.

They are also central to the New Testament. The non-Gospel canticles of the Liturgy of the Hours are first-generation Christian hymns, which were incorporated into the New Testament. In these hymns (as in the preaching such as the homilies in the Acts of the Apostles) Christian Tradition preceded Christian Scripture. This earliest Christian Tradition included hymns.

Yes, Kathy, thank you for the correction. Mass, not liturgy, is what I meant to say.

Kathy

May I be so bold to proclaim that all early hymns were chant of some type (monophonic melody with text sung by all without meter). The RC Church's flavor of which became Gregorian.

I think we need to define the word 'hymn' as it is used today, especially in the four-hymn sandwich which presently still dominates most liturgies of the RC Church. For me personally, hymns are four part homophonic metrical tunes in duple or triple meter with a 'memorable' melody. However, I also lump into that category the 'hymns' of sing-songy praise tunes which are a lower grade of hymn compared to those we have from the centuries past.

Liam: Thank you for clarifying the timeline of musical decay within our liturgy more accurately. Perhaps foisted by the public, publishers, pips and progressives would be more accurate?

Miacoyne: Thank you for clarifying my previous statement.

Hymns can be "central" to the liturgy, but they are not supposed to be exclusive. Whether or not the chant was marginalized prior to VII is irrelevant to my point. My dig is that I have not been able to execute my authentic role as a RC church musician, and the confusion over what is proper musical form and content in the RC liturgy is primary to that frustration.

I want to refer back to a conversation with Dr. Mahrt in which we touched on the appropriate aspects of liturgical music and their respective forms on another thread on this forum. His comment was thus:

mahrt Sep 30th 2009
 
It would help if we could be clear on what the paradigm is, whether in Latin or English: Gregorian chant has principal place (principem locum—translated poorly as pride of place), classical polyphony comes second, other sacred music based upon texts from the scripture and the liturgy comes next. Further, the traditional division of pieces into ordinary for the congregation, which can be repeated over several weeks for the sake of learning, and proper for the choir (which of necessity, at least ideally, changes every week and cannot be learned by a congregation. These principles applied gradually and to the extent that ability allows them to be done well, could mean a great improvement on the long run.

My final conclusion was to create a prioritized list of music that is preferred by the Church and this is how it looks:
1. Gregorian Chant

a. liturgical prayers and responses

b. propers
c. ordinary

2. Classical Polyphony

a. propers

b. ordinary

c. motets

3. Other Music (including hymns, instrumental and improvisation)
a. Latin
b. Vernacular

So the point is, hymns (3), although beautiful and as "central" as they can be, should never displace the other more important musical functions of the liturgy (1 and 2) which promotes the singing of the liturgical texts.

Note: I have added two more categories for number 3 that promotes the Latin hymns (in Latin) as more desireable than those in the vernacular.

Tis bold, Adam... maybe they did the jig or the polka... but if we listen to hebrew, vedic or other chants, (hymns) the textual rhythms tend to be intrinsically driven by the text, not the melody or meter. Yes?

Besides... I like to be bold to get to the truth. Let the refutations (with proof) begin! Does anyone have any recordings of early metrical hymnody?

I don't think I need to prove "we don't know."
You'd only have to prove, "this we know" one way or the other.

I know you were...

But (for example) how do we know that it didn't sound more like this:
http://www.ccwatershed.org/video/10488462/?return_url=/projects/massabki/

Rather than this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DBj5HmTiz0



(I think the one thing we can all agree on is that it didn't sound anything like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9iZcSOujcA
)

And I add with some wryness: today I was putting the finishing touches on an undergraduate apprec. syllabus and noted that Dufay's combination plainchant-homophonic setting of "Ave maris stella" is on the list for my unit on "Music as Prayer and Praise."