The Recovering Choir Director

Chapter 3 of Paul Hume’s Catholic Church Music is titled, “What Shall We Sing?” and is focused on settings of the Ordinary of the Mass. The first paragraph of this chapter hits the nail on the head, then and now.

The problems of Church music do not exist in a vacuum. They share the same troublesome cause that is presently undermining not only the arts in this country but even our most down-to-earth educational processes: the triumph of mediocrity as the standard to which American living is geared.

Part one of this chapter focuses on the problems of writing and approving worthy musical settings of the Mass.

• For the choir director looking at modern settings of the Mass, there is almost too much material at hand. The market is flooded with it. Some of it is wonderful. Some of it is a scandal. Most of it is simply mediocre.
• There seems to be a widespread and quite ill-founded rumor floating around that Masses are easy to write. People who would not dream of attempting any of the standard larger musical forms (like symphonies, concertos, sonatas, etc.) will take a shot at writing a Mass, with or without benefit of any training in composition.
• It is significant that the worst offenders often have the largest output. They can turn out Mass after indistinguishable Mass with the facility of greeting-card verse writers.
• “To ignore the technical achievements in the music of our age, while clinging to the hackneyed, the trite, and the insipid is to miss a salient statement of Pius X…’that the Church has always recognized and encouraged all progress in the arts.’”—Omer Westendorf (emphasis in original)

The last three paragraphs of chapter 3, part 1, regarding the White List are quoted in a comment by George. Today’s analogue would be: Just because a selection is included in a missal/hymnal doesn’t mean it’s worthy of inclusion into the repertoire.