{"id":5057,"date":"2006-10-24T09:26:31","date_gmt":"2006-10-24T09:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/bad-music-is-destroying-the-church.html"},"modified":"2006-10-24T09:26:31","modified_gmt":"2006-10-24T09:26:31","slug":"bad-music-is-destroying-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/bad-music-is-destroying-the-church.html","title":{"rendered":"“Bad Music is Destroying the Church”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scottish composer James MacMillan’s article in a magazine called Open House<\/em> was reported on a couple of weeks ago – but it’s taken this long for the actual article to find its way online.<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m going to pull quotes from it, but you really should go read the whole thing, bookmark it and pass it on. MacMillan hits it perfectly and fairly, although he doesn’t address the broader issue, discussed on this blog over the past month, that point that takes the place of chant just one tiny step further – the hymn model, period as a legitimate option, but the least preferable one.<\/p>\n

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The Second Vatican Council was certainly not the beginning of the Church\u2019s desire in recent times to improve musico-liturgical practice. The Church has worried away at the question of appropriate music for centuries, dating back to its earliest days. The constant centrality in the Roman rite, though, since these days has been the chant. The motivation of the Church, since the mid-19th century, to re-establish a more fully authentic liturgical life has been wrapped up with a concern for the chant.<\/p>\n

In 1903 Pope Pius X issued his motu proprio on sacred music. Gregorian is not the only form of the chant that has been used by the churches. One need only look to the Anglicans or to Byzantium to see the shadings of a great multiplicity. There is also great potential for new forms to suit the vernacular liturgies. Gelineau and Taiz\u00e9 are the most obvious examples of how the modern church can respond to its great musical calling. <\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

The chant, Gregorian or otherwise, has cropped up in recent news stories about Pope Benedict\u2019s hopes and fears for the Church\u2019s liturgy. <\/p>\n

As to be expected, the media have given these stories a spin of bogus controversy and have traduced the Pontiff\u2019s words and motivation. \u201cAn end to modern worship music\u201d and \u201cPope abolishes Vatican\u2019s Christmas pop concert\u201d are two such headline examples. A number of liberal liturgists have rushed to condemn Benedict\u2019s \u201ccultural authoritarianism\u201d and have found willing accomplices in the institutionally anti-Catholic BBC and other media outlets. <\/p>\n

The Pope is presented as a stern-faced, party-pooping disciplinarian, stamping out electric guitars, pop-crooning, and the sentimental, bubble-gum \u201cfolk\u201d music used in many of today\u2019s Catholic churches. <\/p>\n

Consequently we will now all have to \u201cendure\u201d his much-loved Mozart, Tallis, Byrd and Latin plainsong. The people queuing up to attack the Pope are the very ones who were responsible for the banal excrescences enforced on us in the name of \u201cdemocratisation of the liturgy\u201d and \u201cactive participation\u201d over the last few decades. They claim that the Pope is forcing through a narrow, one-dimensional vision of liturgy, and imply that chant is beyond the capabilities of ordinary people. They are wrong on both counts. <\/p>\n

First, Benedict has been quite clear that updating sacred music is eminently possible but \u201cit should not happen outside the traditional path of Gregorian chants or sacred polyphonic choral music\u201d. <\/p>\n

Clearly, there are living composers who know and respect this tradition and context and can allow their contemporary work to be infused by it, and there are other composers who don\u2019t and can\u2019t. It is quite straightforward to understand with whom the Church can and should be working. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Secondly, congregations in and outside the Catholic Church have been singing chant in Latin and in the vernacular for centuries. In Britain, the monumental efforts to keep alive the plainchant tradition over the last century have not been nurtured by the authorities. When Plainsong for Schools was published in 1933 it sold over a 100,000 copies in the first 18 months. The Society of St Gregory organised regional chant festivals throughout the land and held summer schools. Between 1937 and 1939 congregations of 2,000 and more met at Westminster Cathedral and sang the Ordinarium Missae from the Kyriale, with a schola of male amateurs singing the Proper. This shows what can and what could still be done. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Last Sunday, we went to Mass at the parish that has the most straightforward liturgy in our part of town. By "straightforward," I mean, everyone there understands that they are present to serve God through the liturgy, and there is no nonsense, no extemporaneous chat, no egomaniacal self-referencing. I told you about the very direct statement about missions offered by the pastor, also director for the diocese’s Pontifical Missions office. <\/p>\n

The music is okay – simple. No choir, just a cantor and a good organist. The music selection doesn’t approach the potential, though. I sat there, letting Only a Shadow<\/em> drift around me, and I thought…I’m sitting here in this gorgeous gothic church, lovingly preserved by its parishioners…and Only a Shadow<\/em> is the best we can do? <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

nast<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scottish composer James MacMillan’s article in a magazine called Open House was reported on a couple of weeks ago – but it’s taken this long for the actual article to find its way online. I’m going to pull quotes from it, but you really should go read the whole thing, bookmark it and pass it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n"Bad Music is Destroying the Church" - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/bad-music-is-destroying-the-church.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Bad Music is Destroying the Church" - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Scottish composer James MacMillan’s article in a magazine called Open House was reported on a couple of weeks ago – but it’s taken this long for the actual article to find its way online. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}