The Recovering Choir Director

Hmmmmm……Yes.

Not necessary, but fun, perhaps? (It gave me a needed laugh after the zillionth forced listening to “Now We Remain.”)

Daniel, I love to read your posts.

If I may suggest, there is already such a Society as that mentioned above in existence. It is the society of those many people, myself included, who no longer go to Latin Catholic masses because they find the experience of such music to be painful to them. I would not be surprised if a fair number of those who have left the Roman Church have done so because of the banal and unsingable music which the two named above have perpetrated upon an unwilling people.

It has been years since I have willingly gone to a modern Roman liturgy, because of such noise as that mentioned above. I had thought that the Episcopal Church was safe (although I had not visited such churches in a long time), but at the funeral of a friend of mine (a juvenile diabetic who died untimely at 50 of a heart attack secondary to his disease), I attended an Episcopal funeral service in which a guitar group provided the so-called music. It was tolerable until they began the “Sanctus”, to music which for the first 12 bars was identical to the theme song from the motion picture and television series “MASH”. Unfortunately, the title to that song, which was running through my head at the time, was “Suicide is Painless.”

I believe that His Holiness, John Paul II, is absolutely correct in reiterating earlier Catholic teaching that Roman liturgical music is best when it resembles Gregorian Chant. Most of the attention paid has been on the meditative and transcendent style of the music. Overlooked, but equally of value, is the fact that Gregorian Chant takes as its texts either Scripture (the Psalms especially), or hymns written by Saints who have been spiritually informed by Scripture, Tradition, and the teaching authority of the Church. Liturgical music becomes banal and, in fact, poisonous, the farther away the musical texts which inform it depart from Scripture and the hymns of the saints.

As such, I am happy to dwell among the Eastern Catholic churches, where I am able in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom to be fed with the riches of Scripture, Tradition, and Church Authority. It saddens me that the rational sheep in most modern Roman churches are not so fed.

Miss Geri,

You are very sweet to a curmudgeon.

Mr. Tucker,

The 1979 St. Gregory is the “Abridged Edition: Unison, Two and Four Voice Choirs with Organ Compiled by Carroll Thomas Andrews.” It has no new music and in fact very little new typesetting; I would say that almost if not all of it is therefore in the public domain. The 163 mostly but not overwhelmingly Latin selections, despite the 1966 copyright gratuitously applied to the front page, are on the whole from the (1920 and) 1940 edition. I think that it is a nice selection and probably useful as an ancillary choir book, and, as you can see, the organ accompaniment is included. Available spiral bound for a dollar more.

However, if you have the complete 1940/1941 edition, you have at least 96% if not all of the music in this abridged edition.

Mr. Brandt,

Come back home to the Latin rite and do your part! What about the Anglican Use? Check out the new DVD from Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio! I was disappointed that all the music was congregational (except for a stray Agnus Dei during Communion!), that it was outwardly a very “common” Sunday (the propers seem to be from Christ the King), and that I could not see myself in the congregation (I must have been there the following weekend). Still, after attending Mass there hundreds of times and singing in the choir just a little less often, I definitely had to stay up past my bedtime the very first night I had the DVD.

Dear Geri and Mr. Muller:

Thank you for your comments. As regards Geri’s comments that “things are getting better”, it really depends upon where one is, or more particularly, in which diocese one dwells. I have heard good things taking place in Oakland and San Francisco, where a friend of mine was ordained as a priest in the Dominican order. The ordination Mass, and my friend’s first Mass, were interwoven with Gregorian chant, polyphony, and sound modern hymns, in accordance with Vatican II’s “Musicam Sacram”. It was a moving, beautiful, and unfortunately, a rare experience for me.

Not so in Los Angeles, where I live. While matters here are in some ways getting better (e.g., I recently attended a part of a weekday mass during Lent at the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, and heard a nice english chant setting of the Our Father, Proulx’s “Sanctus” and “Communion Acclamation”, and even the Agnus Dei in the tone proper to weekdays in Lent [or funerals]; the liturgy was marred only by a communion song out of “Worship and Praise”, at which point I left to go back to research at the County Law Library), in some ways, things are getting worse (e.g., St. Charles Borromeo Church, where Paul Salamunovich has been directing beautiful music for the last 50 years, now has a new pastor who is interfering with Salamunovich and is attempting to deface the interior of the church building). In the main, though, the poor education of the priests, and the heterodox agenda of the liturgists and most supposed church musicians here, combine to prevent any deeper understanding of Scripture, Tradition and Church Authority which would be essential to true liturgical reform.

Regarding Mr. Muller’s question “What about the Anglican Use”, I am forced to point out that Los Angeles once had a church, “St. Mary of the Angels”, which was attempting to become an Anglican Use parish. I attended that church for several years, and was a member of its choir. Unfortunately, due to the refusal of the late Cardinal Manning (of otherwise blessed memory), and the present Cardinal Mahony, to receive it as a Catholic Church (in spite of Vatican directives to the contrary), those who at St. Mary’s had wished to become truly Anglo-Catholic were ousted, and St. Mary’s is now a part of a splinter Anglican group.

As regards Mr. Muller’s directive that I “come back home to the Latin rite and do” my part, unfortunately, I have long ago come to the conclusion that there is no home for me to come back to. All the attempts that I have seen here to bring something of holiness and beauty to liturgical music (Dennis Fitzpatrick’s English Chant Schola or Paul Gibson’s liturgical masterpieces are just two of the attempts that come to mind) have been rejected and dismantled by the Worship and Praise song-fuehrers and the folk fascists.

I was tempted to speak of my own attempts to introduce Gregorian chant settings in English, and the opposition and rejection I received, but I do not need to: the posting on this weblog of “A Church Musician’s Lament” (originally posted on April 16, 2003, and well worth re-reading, or reading) has said it all for me.

I would prefer to spend my time worshiping in peace, and working in coordination with our choir director at St. Andrew’s, in studying and in bringing into English various slavic, greek and arabic chant traditions. I also hope that from the perspective that I have as an Eastern Catholic, I might be able to help the Latin rite, or at least, those in it who wish to help make it truly Latin and Catholic.

The Rabbi Hillel’s maxim appears appropriate at this point: “If I am not for myself, who will be? if I am not for others, what am I? and if not now, then when?” I have found that if I am not in a place where I am spiritually fed, I cannot help others. And looking around, I have found that St. Andrew’s is an oasis in what otherwise is a spiritual desert.

I am glad for Mr. Muller that he also has found a spiritual oasis; I have heard good things about Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, and I fully intend on buying a DVD for myself, as well as another for a friend who would appreciate it. But as one curmudgeon to another, I suggest that we both choose the battlegrounds where there is the greatest likelihood of success. St. Andrew’s is mine. May you have good fortune in yours.

-Bernard Brandt

I was delighted to discover, via your “Blogs I Read” link that Michael Gilleland is now blogging.
Always grateful to read the words of other Curmudgeons, though I prefer what I think of as the feminine version of curmudgeonry — I am a “virago” (or a “scold”, I guess, depending on ones point of view.)

I am not sure who the CIMS are. Some new punk rock group?

Dear Mr. Brandt:

How could you know that I used to be a punker? Do not be alarmed; such things are highly diluted by the time they wash up on the Third Coast.

The CIMS is the Consociatio Internationalis Musicae Sacrae (Have you paid their dues yet?), whose American affiliate is the Church Music Association of America (Have you …. ?). I mainly referred to their 1998 Symposium, which was held at Holy Spirit University in Kaslik, Lebanon, where Father Louis Hage, OLM, one of the praesidium, lives:

“L’Esprit Saint dans la Musique Sacrée des Eglises d’Orient et d’Occident”

sous le haut patronage de

S. Em. R. Mar Nasrallah Boutros Cardinal Sfeir, Patriarche d’Antioche et de tout l’Orient pour les Maronites

Unfortunately, now that I look past the program, I cannot see where many of the addresses, on the iconographical, Byzantine, Armenian, Latin (!), Ethiopian, Syriac, and Maronite traditions, have been preserved. All that I have at hand is actually about liturgical music in China!

Blind alley? Sorry. But there is interest.

To paraphrase Ludwig Wittgenstein, …

Shh! I never in eighteen years cracked that book!

A living western latin experience of these things in church life is all but impossible in Los Angeles.

That is what I am hearing. The “pastoral letter” and recent anti-liturgical directive are infamous. Then there are those catechetical congresses (but then that nonsense is widespread …) And in a city with such fantastic heritage and patronage.

We must pray more that we pray better.

This topic is long cooled off so no one may ever see this, but I can only urge those of you in the LA area to treat yourself to St Mary of the Angels Anglican church if you long for gorgeous music lovingly and intelligently employed within traditional liturgy. Plus you get all the smells and bells and a friendly congregation.

http://www.stmaryoftheangels.org is the url.