Pastors: This Is the Time to Fix Your Music Program

Priests talk about it often in private, and kid about the subject around laypeople they trust. They grouse about it week after week, and this has been going on for years. But they dare not actually attempt to address the problem, much less take it up with those who are responsible. They know that there is something profoundly wrong (and people complain to them regularly) but they worry that they lack the competence they need to make a change. And so the status quo lasts and lasts.

I speak of course about the unspeakable topic of music in our parishes. Every priests knows that no good can come from seeking to fix the problem that everyone knows exists. It is a mine field. You take it up with the musicians and them balk, bluster, and bring up their low pay. You bring it up with the parish counsel and you unleash arguments over taste and style that begin politely and end in total war. You raise the topic with the Bishop and he assures you that going there just isn’t very pastoral.

The biggest fear of all traces to their own perceived incompetence in the area of music. They wouldn’t tell the plumber how to fix the drain, the electrician how to make the lights work, or the builder how to make the roof stay up. The priest’s job centers on the sacraments, along with the infinite number of pastoral things that pastors do to keep a parish alive and thriving. Isn’t that enough? Must they be expected to take on the area of music too?

And so the pastor just leaves it alone, in the hands of people who have been swirling around in parish music circles for decades with greater longevity than any pastor. Any current pastor has nothing to gain and everything to lose by insisting on change. The budget is tight and most of these people are volunteers anyway. Members of the paid staff are even more of a problem, with their pattern of seeming to sneer and roll their eyes at anything Father requests.

This is how the pattern came to be established that the pastor just doesn’t touch the music question. Once there is relative peace, even if it means the weekly parade of mediocrity and music that embarrasses people with an understanding of the Roman Rite and its true musical demands, the pastor just lets well enough alone. But the problem is still there and he knows it. He might like to push for change and even gain the knowledge necessary to talk shop with his music team, but the occasion never seems to present itself.

Well, the Church has given these pastors a wonderful gift with the new translation of the Roman Missal that will go into effect this Advent. The Bishops are urging a widespread education plan for two reasons: 1) to make sure there is no repeat of the meltdown following the introduction of the 1969/1970 Missal, and 2) as an opportunity for new catechises about what the Mass is and why it matters, the knowledge of which has plummeted to new lows in our times.

For a while, I couldn’t understand why such enormous efforts were being pushed just for a new translation. The people’s parts have very few changes at all. The most substantive changes occur for the celebrant, and here it is incontrovertible that the changes represent a huge upgrade. This doesn’t strike me as anything that needs a gigantic push to make happen.

However, it was then explained to me that the second point about educating people more generally is the real reason for all the materials being published and the seminars being conducted. Then it became to make sense. It is true: the new Missal really is a wonderful opportunity.

Well, it is also true of music. The new Missal integrates English chant into the structure of the Mass to a much greater degree than the past editions. The Bishops are pushing for the Missal chants to become precisely what we have always lacked in the post-1970 world: a national body of music that has been approved by the Church that is known by everyone. Important, this music comes not from a for-profit publisher but from Church authority itself.

The settings are not in themselves universally brilliant but I find myself rather impatient with criticisms of them. They are so much better than what we have, which are almost entirely unused as it is. They are written in the style of chant, which is to say that they are plainsong and can (and should) be sung without accompaniment. To think about these chants properly, you need to think with a bit of depth about what dominates the typical liturgy today (hymns plus mostly silly or puffy Mass settings) and also where these Missal chants will lead congregations as the next step.

There are really three parts to the right reform agenda. We must first phase out nearly the whole of the conventional repertoire that exists, one piece of music at a time. We must work toward a gaining a correct understanding of the musical structure of the Roman Rite, so that the people are granted primary responsibility over the ordinary chants including the creed and the kyrie (both of which are sadly neglected) and the schola has a new-found appreciation for the responsibilities regarding the proper chants of the Mass.

Finally, we need a new embrace of our chant heritage as it applies to the ordinary form, to the point that people feel comfort with Latin and the truly normative music of the ritual (which is Gregorian chant), a crucial step that re-integrates the new with the old and ends this “hermeneutic of rupture” that is so widely perceived to exist.

That is a gigantic mission and its success depends on many factors. We need to re-train existing musicians and raise up a new generation that has the desire to sing music that is intrinsic to the rite and also the competence to do so. The people need to feel that their role is important and that they aren’t just being brow beat to sing pop songs suitable for selling cosmetics or mollifying teen angst. Providing music for the Mass is a serious job and it requires seriousness of mind and heart.

Whether this process of change lasts a long time or takes place immediately depends on circumstances of time and place. What matters most is that we get the process going. It must begin. And the Missal chants are a great beginning. The change in the Missal provides the opportunity to insist on the change.

If I could add just one piece of practical advice for pastors: insist that your musicians sing the chants without accompaniment. No negotiations on this point: unaccompanied only. This will make a dramatic difference in the liturgy. It will also help to end what is usually the biggest problem in parish music, the persistence of some overbearing piants, organist, or guitar player who has convinced everyone that the human voice that God gave each of us is nothing without some external contraption. It’s nonsense: the human voice is the primary liturgical instrument. Unless we get that point right, there is little hope for progress.

There are many things pastors can do to make parish music better. But insisting on these two points (sing the Missal chants and sing them without accompaniment) will go a long way in most parishes toward breaking the cycle of mediocrity. The issuance of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Now is the time to act, for the sake of the future of the faith.

20 Replies to “Pastors: This Is the Time to Fix Your Music Program”

  1. After reading this and the Winter 2010 edition of Sacred Music, it seemed to me that we and our collaborators are spending entirely too much time trying to make the Novus Ordo sacred. It is like dousing a skunk with Lovely Eau De Parfum and hoping it will never stink again. I would hope that we would address more time on the Extraordinary Form since forty years from now the Novus Ordo will be extinct anyway.

    Regards to everyone,

    Leon

  2. Leon,
    You are part of the problem. Statements like this weaken Church musicians' missions. The Novus Ordo is an officially promulgated rite of the Church. You have to start somewhere. Instead of calling a venerable rite of the Church a smelly skunk, maybe you should acquire the heart of a loving evangelist who helps his fellow faithful to grow, through our specialized discipline of music and how it serves the Liturgy of the Church in all its forms.

  3. I too find Leon's comments disdainful of the experience of 98% of Catholics for the last forty years. You might not like the new Mass – and I'm all ears on criticisms of it and have made plenty myself – but it sheer foolishness to imagine that the world of today is going to wholly embrace the old Mass without some transition that grows from existing reality. It is also completely false to say that there is nothing that can improve the liturgical experience of the new Mass.

  4. As a musican actively involved in the effort to reform the reform, I am dedicated to the changes that can be made now in the liturgical music of the Novus Ordo. Simple chant in English can and should be introduced in all parishes. One hymn can be eliminated and the correct chant replace it. The ordinary of the Mass can easily be chanted – giving the congregation a chance to sing unaccompanied for the Sanctus and Agnus Dei as a start. As an organist, I have been well trained by my excellent director, when accompanying chant, to do so seamlessly, quietly, and with utmost attention to the flow of the text. Quite different from big Mass settings designed for maximum effect.
    As we approach Advent 2011, I would hope that pastors will have the courage to insist that their music directors take instruction in chant if they lack experience. What a difference it would make if our bishops also required training for our pastors.

  5. Jeffrey,
    In your understandable zeal, your summation that 98% of Catholics in the last forty years "feel your pain" is serious hyperbole. There's a whole lotta folks out here that think things are just hunky dory.
    If there's any demographic that accounts for 98% of Catholics in the last forty years, or four hundred years, it might just be "those who don't give a rip."
    Re-read Mary Jane Ballou's Introduction to PIPs 101: they're fairly polite as they just come every Sunday and tolerate the latest change or idiom.

  6. Well, what I mean is not that 98 percent feel my pain but rather than the 98 have experienced the new Mass as THE Mass – it was a reference to the fantasy of certain people that some people is going to come along and flip a switch that reverses half a century of experience and then all will be well.

  7. After reviewing the new Chant Masses and both the "reworked" and new Mass settings, it is obvious that composer still don't get the point. The chant masses in English are unwieldy, with emphasis on the wrong syllables, and melodies that are neither singable nor memorable. The new masses are not much better. The reworked pieces have a better chance as a transition till someone remembers that the Catholic Church was the guardian of Church Music for many hundreds of years. The congregation will not participate as long as you treat them like idiots! Let's see some real music!

    Bill Antoniak

  8. A little reminder — when anyone discusses Catholics of recent years by percentage or proportions of the whole, as to who likes or tolerates or is okay with or experiences what…. he would do well to remember that 3/4 of us DO NOT BOTHER TO ATTEND MASS.
    Yes, three out of every four of us does not, for whatever reason, find the liturgy as celebrated in their environs compelling enough to get them out of bed on Sunday morning.

  9. well, the Novus Ordo, vernacular and hip music and hip priests were supposed to bring in the crowds! Ford Motor Company recognized the Edsel was a disaster but not our Catholic bishops who stuck with a loser as Mass attendance dropped from 80% of Catholics going to Mass on Sunday, pre-reform compared to 23% now. And I don't want to hear any alibis for this disaster. If the "product" resonated, the folks would be there.

  10. I do agree with the cmment that the "old" Mass would not be embraced, yet having been there, in person and up front, when the "new" Mass came in, we had no choice and for 40 years were forced to "accept" all forms of abuses. I long for the day when things are on an even keel again, with the Norvus Ordo being offered in the way it was meant to be, the "music" becomes hymns, beautiful ones, again, and we all love and embrace, and want to share our living, breathing right from Jesus Catholic FAith.

  11. Oh for the good old days when everyone spoke Latin. That would solve all our liturgical problems.

  12. This may sound a little morbid… but eventually, this problem will be solved by demographics. Most of the guitar-loving pro-Haas and Hagen crowd tend to be in their late 50s or older. Those in my age group (mid twenties) like traditional hymns or polyphany. As the hippie generation retires, the younger, more orthodox crowd will naturally take over.

  13. If the music department at our church has a mission it must be to sing hyms from the baptist church down the road. The cantor has not been in tune for the last five years. The daily masses (without music) are much more in the line of actual worship than the Sunday circus where the choir tries to imitate the Billy Graham crusade choir. Very poorly at that.

  14. In our parish, Sunday masses typically are accompanied by piano or organ. This Lent, on Sundays we ARE singing the Kyrie, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei w/o an instrument. The daily masses for the last two decades have typically had an entrance hymn – 2 or 3 verses, with the Presider (not the "celebrant" – we are all celebrants) picking and leading the hymn; and a capella. For solemnities (e.g. St. Patrick's day & Annunciation), the piano accompanies, and we get an extra hymn or two; and the Gloria is sung.
    I'm not saying that our parish sings particularly well – maybe 30% of us sing loud enough for others to hear – but we try.
    For Advent 2011, we'll adjust to whatever the Diocese prescribes.
    TeaPot562

  15. I greatly appreciate your article!!
    We are formed in what we believe by the way we pray and the music, as the greatest of the arts, has an integral role in this formation.
    I am befuddled by the lack of courage omong pasters who know better. There are some brave souls, but very few take on this challange evan though the Church has called for it repeatedly since Pius x 's moto proprio. Thanks again for saying it.
    Kevin

  16. Those who imposed the Haugen/Haas hegemony did their best to create a liturgy in the image and likeness of themselves; and until this most narcissistic of generations passes from the scene, I'm afraid I have little expectation of progress towards a "reform of the reform".

    That's the general picture; as for the more specific question of what happens this Advent…well, these people haven't exactly been scrupulous in the past in making sure their settings match the text, even of the most venerable and critical and well-known parts. (Oh Agnus Dei, how can we "improve" thee? Let me count the ways…) I'm at a loss as to how re-translating the texts they've already reinterpreted at their own whim can be expected to make much of a difference.

    Finally, while turnabout may be fair play, and while my copy of "Why Catholics Can't Sing" retains pride of place on my bookshelf, I do feel uneasy about the calls to unceremoniously junk all the music that has come before. Maybe I shouldn't…but this is the paradox that our forebears have confronted us with (and not just in the Church…the law and the academy also provide plenty of examples).

    It was an outrage that they threw away everything that pre-dated their enlightened revolution, and it is ridiculous that 90% of everything we sing at a garden-variety Mass in a Church that's two millenia old was written over a mere quarter-century span. But now we're boxed into a situation where in order to remedy the outrage, the traumatic rupture from continuity…we must repeat it?

    Don't mean to have my mood match the gloomy weather outside this morning, but that's honestly how I see it.

  17. BG, love your handle.
    Does it serve your argument well and validly to caricature any generation so blithely? "The most narcissistic…", we boomer-hippies?
    You must have missed the French Rococo era, or maybe a few episodes of "Mad Men" or "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," heck "Bye Bye Birdie" while we're at it.
    Dissing hippies, even in the churches, seems so, well…..Freudian.

  18. Charles: I take your point, and would not want it thought that I am dismissing out of hand everyone born within a certain time-frame. (My own parents were born in the 1940s, for instance, and I have nothing but praise and admiration for them.) That sort of chronological snobbery would not only be wrong, but it would feed into the sort of paradox of which I spoke: how can I disdain the generation before mine for having disdained the generation before them?

    That said, there is a certain subset of people who do tend to be of a certain age, and who live and breathe the ethos of the stereotypical narcissistic Boomer–and whose influence in the various revolutions of the 1960s and 70s is clear, and tremendously strong even by the standards of their outsized age cohort.

    I stand by my description of these people as the most narcissistic large group which has ever afflicted our society; and as Exhibit A I point to the fact that they–as I say–seized the opportunity to "reform" the Church and its liturgy and fashioned it into the image and likeness of their own selves, their personal enthusiasms, and the various circumstances and tastes and trends of one little moment in history.

    The great, fatal flaw of the post-Conciliar reforms was quite simply bad timing. Move a few decades either direction, and I posit that nothing remotely as destructive would have resulted.

  19. While I do agree that chant is a beautiful part of a Mass, I would like to refute your claim about others pushing "the human voice that God gave each of us is nothing without some external contraption." I love all music, and I believe we should use the talents God has given us. What better way to do this than to use one's musical talent, vocal or instrumental, to glorify God in the Mass?

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