Music at Mass is theological warfare by other means

Saturday, 28 September 2013

9:04 a.m.

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Music at Mass is theological warfare by other

means
4 Comments 28 September 2013 Damian Thompson
How many battles have been fought over sacred music throughout history? The noise you make
when you worship is a big deal: those who control it can shape everything from clerical hierarchy
to intimate spirituality. And there are patterns. Deep suspicion of music is the mark of the
puritan. Fundamentalist Sunni Muslims teach that all music except for chanted Koranic passages
is forbidden; instruments in particular encourage lust. Strict Calvinists take a similar line.
Even the Catholic Church considered banning original compositions during services after the
Council of Trent. Legend has it that polyphony was saved only by Palestrina’s Missa Papae
Marcelli of 1567, which demonstrated that rich harmony could also highlight the words of the
text. (A fanciful version of this story is the subject of Hans Pfitzner’s 1915 opera Palestrina,
whose more ponderous moments
make Parsifal sound like an advertising jingle.)
Conversely, lovers of opulent worship, and the hierarchical theology it implies, use music to
achieve their ends. In the Church of England, High Church clergy who don’t want to describe
their Sunday Eucharist as a ‘Mass’ will gently push proceedings ‘up the candle’, as they say, with a
Mass setting by Byrd or Mozart. In today’s Roman Catholic Church, too, musical style is loaded
with significance. But matters are complicated by the fact that Catholic priests aren’t supposed to
be High or Low, or impose their theological preferences on a parish. Music at Mass therefore
becomes the continuation of theological warfare by other means — a nasty state of affairs that
I’ve witnessed at first hand.
When I was a teenager, I was organist of Christ the King, Reading, a red-brick barn of a church
run by a tyrannical but warm-hearted Irish priest, Fr Nugent. His taste in hymns didn’t extend
much beyond pre-conciliar favourites such as ‘Soul of My Saviour’ and ‘Sweet Sacrament
Divine’ — sentimental numbers often incorporating octave swoops that made the tiny choir
sound like ancient Valkyries. Still, they were good tunes and Fr Nugent was happy for me to play
the odd 18th-century English voluntary (the easy ones, without pedals).
Then Fr Nugent moved to another parish. Disaster. He was replaced by a priest from Cork who
insisted that every hymn had to be ‘popular’ — i.e., set to a bogus ‘folk’ tune with overtones of
fake plainchant, nasty enough with guitars but a fairground travesty when accompanied by
organ. So I left, and wasn’t surprised to learn that Christ the King’s only interesting architectural
feature, its baldacchino, had been demolished to make the sanctuary more ‘simple’.
The story was similar all over the Catholic world: clergy infused with ‘the spirit of Vatican II’
would hand over responsibility for parish music to bossy primary school teachers and other
‘empowered laity’. They could be relied upon to perform antiphons and Mass settings written by
diocesan-approved composers whose work sounded as if Hildegard of Bingen had met Joan Baez
in a 1970s cocktail lounge. I won’t single anyone out, because that leaves me free to say that some
of these composers trousered very large sums of money thanks to viciously enforced copyright
laws and a flow of commissions from their mates in the diocesan curia.
There has, however, always been a resistance to this racket from trained Catholic musicians and
it’s gathering pace. To see the battle played out, look at the archdiocese of Glasgow. The
magnificent Scottish composer James MacMillan has founded an organisation called Musica
Sacra Scotland that aims to carve out a new vernacular of parish worship by teaching people to
sing English-language chant. Where possible, Musica Sacra will also encourage the return of
Latin chant and polyphony — and commission young composers to write congregational music to
replace the cod-Celtic garbage forced down the throats of Scottish Catholics since the Council.
Crucially, this is not some high-camp exercise by reactionaries: Musica Sacra is orthodox rather
than traditionalist, which is why the middle-of-the-road new Archbishop of Glasgow, Philip
Tartaglia, has given his blessing to its inaugural conference at Glasgow University on 9
November.
That should settle matters — but it hasn’t, since sacred music and power have always fed off each
other and this is no exception. The producers of cod-Celtic garbage have patrons among the
senior clergy of several Scottish dioceses. These trendy old priests (and at least one bishop) have

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 senior clergy of several Scottish dioceses. These trendy old priests (and at least one bishop) have
employed this populist material — which encourages the ‘community’ to worship itself and its
pastor — to reinforce their own personality cults. A move towards a more mystical, God-centred
liturgy threatens to dilute their influence. For the first time in 50 years they have been forced on
to the defensive in the Catholic culture war. Their reaction to Musica Sacra? A gigantic cry of
‘feck!’ worthy of Father Jack Hackett on the night of a full moon. Music to my ears!
This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 28 September
2013
Tags: Catholic Church, James MacMillan, Musica Sacra Scotland, Sacred music

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• I am a Catholic and I have played music in Church with a small group in the past. I think that the old
hymns are great and contain a lot of truth BUT the Catholic Church is haemorrhaging young people.
The older chant-like music simply does not attract young people; it isn't what they're used to and it
doesn't move them emotionally or spiritually.
Praise & worship music like that of Australian church Hillsong has a lot to offer. Now, I'm not saying
that Mass is totally the place for all Praise and Worship (by that, I mean the music style), but it
should be the place to worship God in the Eucharist. In the liturgy, the priest says the words, "the
CELEBRATION of the Mass". Mass *is* meant to be a celebration.
Your story about bossy primary school teachers strikes a chord with me - in reverse. We have one
who has taken over the liturgy here and has made it almost nothing but old-fashioned hymns. The
people here are crying out for the music my guitar-based music group used to play. We didn't play
all new stuff - we had a good mixture of the new and the old but in Australia and New Zealand all
songs must now be vetted under the new rules. We had to send in a list of songs we wanted to play
and they had to be OK'd before they were allowed to be played. In the end I think we only got a third
of the way through the list of stuff we wanted and never heard back.
Even the new liturgy music is - well, unmusical, due to the fact that the *exact* translation of the
words must now be used for the Gloria, Holy-Holy and other Mass parts. Just try fitting music to
prose like the Gloria; it doesn't really work without any verse/chorus structures or rhyming, and
strips all musicality and rhythm from those parts.
People here are starving for music that touches the soul - young people aren't being touched and
aren't coming (and yes, I know that music is not the point of Mass - that Mass is valuable no matter
if it has music or not, but that isn't the point).
I've seen how music can help lift parishioners souls to God. It makes a HUGE difference. Chanting
and older hymns have their place but so does the newer praise and worship type music - even just
for an entrance or exit hymn or during Communion.
At the moment I can see this older stuff stifling the Holy Spirit.
Just look at the music played during World Youth Day recently - that was GREAT! And that wasn't all
old, chanting hymns. And if the Pope was there, surely he approved of it. We need more of that kind
of thing in the Church.
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• Athelstane Fletch
• 5 hours ago • 0 0

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• The older chant-like music simply does not attract young people;
All I can say is that this has not been my experience.
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• Ray Boyle
• 11 hours ago • 0 0

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• Having read the article a few times I'm still trying to understand what is being said. I appreciate the
support for innovative music and the desire for greater diversity of musical choice but I have always
viewed attendance at mass as a celebration which has prayer and music as its way of delivering that
celebration, irrespective of the type of hymns being sung or the way they are sung.
As I attend mass in Glasgow I understand what you are saying but the quality and delivery of the
hymns at mass in St.Andrews Cathedral is superb and the singers are quite extraordinary, they fill
the Cathedral with music and song as it should be and that is with both traditional as well as
contemporary renditions of hymns. But I think that the choice of the hymns is organised with great
uniformity by both the clergy as well as the laity and delivered quite brilliantly. I agree with the
saying that singing at mass means that we are praying twice.....
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• Christian LeBlanc
• 17 hours ago • 0 0

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• Lex orandi, lex credendi; and how we sing is how we pray.

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