The Recovering Choir Director

The Catholic Answer publishes an article from Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker about this sung prayer form. This can serve as a brief overview of what the Church asks of her musicians when she proposes Gregorian chant’s primacy of place in sung worship.

A particularly fitting coda closes this piece (my emphasis added):

The renewed emphasis on chant in liturgy is a call for humility above all else. Musicians are being asked to serve rather than perform. The motivation must be love of liturgy and its source, love of sung prayer and its purpose, and a genuine desire to hear the people of God united in one voice in praise and thanksgiving.

Rome has been thoroughly consistent on the matter of liturgical music and the importance of using Gregorian chant in worship. But genuine change in response to these directives must begin in the parish community. It must come from the people and their pastors so that it can truly take root once again in the life of everyday Catholics.

[H/T: New Liturgical Movement]