The Recovering Choir Director

In the second part of the third chapter of Catholic Church Music, Paul Hume addresses the issues of choosing, introducing, and mastering music worthy for the liturgy. As this is a lengthy part of the book, this is a lengthy post.

The following selections focus on the chant.

• When you are choosing Masses for your choir, there is only one place to start. Any choir worthy of the name will have a good supply of chant in its repertoire.
• If you are trying to do a serious, grown-up job with your choir, you don’t even nod at all the tired, creaking old cliches about how people don’t like Gregorian Chant because it’s so dull. Such an attitude would not be worth mentioning except for one unfortunate fact: there are still some pastors around who have it.
• Be sure that [your choir members] hear a number of examples of good chant singing. And be sure that they understand just what it is they are hearing.
• The chant is not a vehicle for the display of the singer’s interpretative powers. Unless a singer really understands this, the best in the world will produce pathetic results.
• Even if we omit the exhortation of the Church on the use of the chant, the advantages of singing it remain overwhelming, both from the musical and practical viewpoints….On musical grounds alone, it seemed to me unthinkable for my choir to ignore so splendid an area of choral music….The chant can be beautifully sung by three or thirty…It requires no accompaniment…It makes no demands upon the singers as far as maintaining absolute fidelity for inflexible pitch is concerned. And once its primary rules have been mastered, it is the easiest of music to sing. It is also the cheapest to buy, if you want to be really practical about it.
• The chant is the Church’s most expressive voice and must be sung with a musical as well as a personal conviction.
• Don’t scare an amateur choir with the professionally exhibitionist terminology sometimes thrown around by those who have spent long years in studying chant.

Later, Hume briefly addresses sacred polyphony, how to select it, and how to approach it.

• Certainly no choir that is able to master the style of the Renaissance masters should neglect these unique compositions. Perhaps you have a choir whose abilities you question when it comes to tackling polyphony. Don’t underestimate them, though, for if they are hard workers, and if they can concentrate, then the easy-paced learning of a great polyphonic Mass might be an inspiring experience for them.
• It might be wise to introduce your choir to polyphonic music through the shorter motets used at the Offertory.
• Be sure that you use editions faithful to the originals. Steer clear of all too numerous “versions” of great masterpieces that have been watered down into mediocrity by those who lack either musical conscience or musical intelligence.

He then focuses on modern settings of the Mass, warning us in Pope St. Pius X’s own words:

Since modern music arose mainly in response to secular purposes, greater care must be taken with regard to it, on order that those compositions in modern style which are admitted to the Church may contain nothing of a secular character, be free from echoes of theatrical motifs, and be not, even in their external form, based on the movement of secular pieces.

Among all kinds of modern music, the theatrical style which was so much in vogue during the last century, for instance, in Italy, is the one least fited to accompany the functions of public worship…

After giving us actual recommendations for relatively newer Mass settings. Hume exposes the error of incorporating an excessive number of settings into a choir’s repertoire, emphasizing quality over quantity:

The average choir with the average rehearsal time (one to two hours a week) needs no such extensive repertoire…Four or five Masses, well learned, six or seven at the outside, should serve each year’s needs very nicely.

Lastly, on the difficulties of introducing new music into the choir’s repertoire, Hume shares some stories from choir directors, as well as his own strategies:

• “I would tell of my own initial distaste, or of my own inability to enjoy some of the music and of how repeated performances at home had brought me to realize that there were hidden beauties, in some cases a mystical beauty inherent in the composition.”
• “When introducing new music to the choir, if their first reaction is negative I ask their patience: ‘Give the music a chance!’ By the time they have learned it, they accept it and like it….When introducing new music to the congregation for the first time, I try to place it between familiar numbers and then repeat it the following week.”
• “[New music] must be learned thoroughly in sections before putting it together. It is only then that the men begin to accept it.”
• “In handing out [new] music, I do not play it through for them…I make them learn it practically measure for measure, concentrating on the part instead of the whole. Before they know it, they have it learned, and then hearing themselves do the whole thing, they like it.”
• “It is much more authoritative merely to announce the fact of the choice and hand out the copies.”
• The more unfamiliar the work, the more important it is to learn the parts thoroughly before attempting to put it together. Otherwise the choir might try to blame the music instead of themselves, in case it sounds awful.