There’s a musical stramash going on within the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland.
In popular parlance it has been described as a battle between the “post-Vatican II hippies and the right-wing traditionalists”.
More seriously, it’s about the difference between respecting, protecting and reinterpreting the centuries’ old tradition of people-friendly Gregorian Chant within the context of congregational participation in the liturgical mass, and the banal sentimental dirges that have infested Sunday worship in most Catholic churches since the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s told its churches to open up to the modern world.
Let’s get out of the way one thing: Catholics scrap over everything liturgical to the nth degree. So this article is not a surprise to any RC. In the U.S., it’s the Oregon Catholic Press (the dreaded OCP) pushing post-VII music, but it’s the same issue. Let a bishop restrict the Traditional Latin Mass, or be deemed insufficiently supportive of the same, and the knives will come out.
The article would have been clearer if they had noted that the hymody proper to the Latin Rite Mass includes the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus/Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. The Entrance, Offertory, and Communion all have proper Psalms appointed, which have been supplanted by hymns (including a recessional hymn). Since we don’t have a huge repertoire of hymns in English, we rely on post VII production, as well as borrowing from the Anglican and Lutheran traditions. Not all of the post VII work is garbage; it takes time to filter out the garbage, however. In any case, that sort of hymnody is proper to the daily office, as a review of the Breviary will show. My own parish used the Proper Antiphons, and sometimes the entire Psalm, for a couple of years, along with the hymns. It made for a rich liturgy.
Finally, Gregorian Chant really is people-friendly. I’ve seen chants taught to a large group of people in about 20 minutes. While I’m not a traditionalist, it’s practical and servicable, and time has filtered out the garbage.
Thanks, Charles52. Very helpful.
I agree, although I admit to being biased. I’m a lover of both Gregorian Chant and SOME contemporary Christian music. In fact, since I love to use incense (which is ancient and used in both East and West) but I resist using sanctus bells (which are medieval and purely Western), while strongly encouraging the use of chant in the eucharist as well as in the Daily Office, I have a friend who loves to tease me by saying, “David, you’re not a ‘smells and bells’ guy, you’re a smells and yells man!”
However, personally, I would qualify the claim that Gregorian Chant is “people friendly.” Some of it is, and a growing number of Anglican churches use a simplified form of it. But a fair bit of the Liber Usualis, the standard manual put out by the famous Benedictine monks of Solemnes near Paris (the gold standard for “authentic” Gregorian Chant), isn’t people friendly at all. Those historic chants are far too complicated for congregations to sing.
Finally, I’ll just note that one of the most neglected and ignored biblical texts regarding music is the only directive in the NT on the topic, i.e., the brief admonition in passing in Col. 3 (with its parallel in Eph. 5) that we should “SING psalms, hymns, and spritual songs” with grateful and reverent hearts. That Pauline exhortation certainly seems to suggest that three different types of music, or at least three types of musical lyrics, should be used in worship: the singing (not reciting) of psalms as the most ancient texts, plus hymns which presumably are traditional texts familiar from customary use, and then the mysterious “spiritual songs,” which apparently refers to improvised music, created on the spot under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (and perhaps including singing in tongues). In any case, the Col.3/Eph. 5 text sure seems to endorse or require THREE kinds of worship music, including the custom of singing the psalms, as Jews have always done.
Personally, I have a strong preference for chanted liturgy over spoken liturgy. Indeed, my esteemed (late) mentor in liturgics back at Yale Div. School, the incomparable Aidan Kavanagh (OSB), was fond of quipping (only in half jest) that men who couldn’t keep on pitch or sing decently simply shouldn’t be ordained!
David Handy+
Those of us using a version of the traditional prayer book often sing traditional Anglican chants. Try it! You might like it!
Indeed, #3. When I say Morning Prayer, I sing the Benedictus with the Anglican chant I used to hear at Solemn High Morning Prayer 3-4 times a month. For my money, the incorporation of Anglican chant could be one of the great gifts you folks have given us from the Anglican patrimony. It would, I think, be a true “organic development” in the Latin Rite liturgy.
#2 –
Indeed, it is the “simplex” forms of Gregorian chant that are congregation friendly. As I understand it, editions of the Mass propers are available in both full and simplified forms.
FWIW, my understanding has always been that “singing in the spirit” relates to I Corinthians 14.15. Who knows.