Using recorded music during Mass
  • TeresaH
    Posts: 53
    Please, can someone tell me quickly which document prohibits the use of recorded music during Mass?
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    This may help:

    http://www.ewtn.com/library/liturgy/zlitur59.htm
  • hartleymartin
    Posts: 1,447
    It goes back a fair while. I believe the Motu Proprio Tra Le Sollectudini of 1903 made such a prohibition as some churches had bough barrel organs, which would have paper rolls inserted to play hymns (much in the same was as a pianola). It was seen as reducing liturgical music to cheap entertainment (since such instruments were still being used in the public square by buskers).
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    Does this mean synthesizers are out, since every time you press a key, it's playing a pre-recorded sound sample of that note? What if the music is just recorded on paper in ink?
  • Charles in CenCA
    Posts: 2,416
    You're such a scamp and muckraker! ;-)
    I've oft argued that a pipe organ, in concept, is a synthesis-based instrument. Though the actual soundwaves are generated by the movement of air vibrating at certain frequencies and timbres, the organ is a mechanism that by craft reproduces those factors in imitation of the voice and other natural instruments, as well as tones uniquely crafted to the organ (Diapason). BEFORE MJO or others HATE ON ME for such heresy, I'm not demeaning its status as THE rightful instrument for accompanying sung worship and enhancing worship by the artistry of composition or player.
    We ought to take this notion into consideration (as we hedge on digital organs and accept them, if disingenuously as temporary substitutes until...?) as we do when we admit the classical choral performance Mass as a legitimate worship expression. It argues simply for discretion based upon the intent and skill of the artist/performer on the given instrument or the specific performance Mass. The Church seems always to opt to be flexible so as to bend, but not break her own rules.
    And don't get me started on "sequencing."
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    The major problem in the industry is that pipe organs get more and more expensive so fewer and fewer churches can afford them. Attempts to make them affordable, as Wicks and Moller did, caused experts to call these second class or worse builders...and you can see what shape they are in today. The pipe builders that succeed to stay in business today tend to be very, very good or bad. And there are an equal number of both.

    The church music industry in the US, where more decisions are made based upon emotions rather than common sense, is a strange business.
  • hartleymartin
    Posts: 1,447
    Adam - If only it meant that synthesisers could be tossed out!

    However, the intention was to avoid the use of pre-recorded music and to encourage the use of live musicians. So, your arguement about synthesisers and electronic organs falls rather flat on its face.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    You must not know me very well.

    It was a joke, not an argument.
    Thanked by 1E_A_Fulhorst
  • donr
    Posts: 971
    I've oft argued that a pipe organ, in concept, is a synthesis-based instrument. Though the actual soundwaves are generated by the movement of air vibrating at certain frequencies and timbres,

    So if this is accepted than so would be a synth through an amp to speakers vibrating air and certain frequencies and timbres. :-)
  • Charles in CenCA
    Posts: 2,416
    It is you who have said it.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,365
    .
  • Charles in CenCA
    Posts: 2,416
    Jackson, there is no one here that you need expend worry or anxiety over what is being "foisted" in our various parishes.
    I can't speak for what is going on in whatever percentage of parishes not represented here, nor do I think it beneficial to engage in conjecture. We work our own vineyards, you know this.
    Take comfort, this DM has never, in forty plus ever programmed "Let there be peace on earth." Seriously.
    But to mimic the late great Dusty Springfield and Burt Bacharach, "What the world needs now is laughs, sweet laughs..."
    We can't engineer our own salvation, so why expend needless energy proctoring everyone else's proclivities?
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    Did you ever program it in jest?


  • Charles in CenCA
    Posts: 2,416
    Hardee, har har, FNJ. There is no joy in Mudville, Mighty Sy he did strike out.
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,217
    The prohibition was re-stated during the reign of Pius XII.

    The theory is simple: worship is 'done' by human beings, not machines. Worship requires communication, whether mental or physical. Real communication is live, not recorded, nor 'reproduced' in other ways.

    Umnnnhhhh.....would your spouse be enthralled with a tape-recording of "I love you" while you're sitting next to her? See how far that gets you.......
    Thanked by 1chonak
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