Theology’s aural side
Scelata highlights a recent ZENIT Letter to the Editor:
A response to: Theology’s Visual Side
When one reads this article I believe you could easily replace the words “icon/iconography” with “liturgical music” and the same principles should apply. The principles described in this article are so often lacking when it comes to the arrangement and visual side of the interiors of many of our newly built churches and the rearrangement of our older churches.
Iconography and liturgical music should aid in the configuring of our minds and dispositions toward Christ, not toward ourselves. Some modern “religious art” and “liturgical music” is often so overwrought with personal expression that the sense of the person of Christ is obfuscated and the personality of the composer of music or the artist is exalted to the point that the sense of Christ’s presence is diminished. Good iconography and liturgical music does not make Christ more present, but it certainly does make us more attuned to his presence with hearts more open to his graces.
Ruben Soto
The more one delves into the vast ocean that is the Gregorian chant repertoire, the more this musical iconography becomes clear. Besides the eight church modes, there are different rhythmic and melodic patterns exclusive to Office antiphons, Office hymns, the Propers of the Mass (most especially the Graduals, Alleluias, and Tracts, but also the Introits, Offertories, and Communions), and so on. Even the Psalm tones, the formulas for readings and prayers, and the simplest recto tono Amen, are forms of musical iconography.
Other religious music, too, has a certain iconographic quality to it. But to extend the letter writer’s thoughts, if a certain iconographic formula, marketed (for lack of a better term) as sacred, calls for a high dose of personality or secular influence on the part of composer or performer, or effectively denies the existence of a more ancient iconographic musical language (in the case of the Roman Rite, Gregorian chant), the formula is less effective, and in fact, is hard to define as sacred in anything other than positivistic terms.
For more on this, see my 2002 entry, “Ruminations on Sacrosanctum Concilium 116.”
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[...] — in our particular rite, Latin, and (3) set to Gregorian chant, the Church’s most ancient musical iconography. The Catholic Church is a church of both/ands, and in this case, the chant of the church serves [...]
[...] There is a problem here. We live in a culture that puts a natural priority on reading over hearing. Our eyes can shut out our ears. [I experience this constantly during my schola's rehearsals. When I tell them to shut their books, listen to the melody and words of a chant, and then have them repeat it, invariably the sound is much more unified.] It may just be that the fewer words aloud of the old form present the most hopeful way forward for the new form. In any case, in both the old and the new form, we must speak so that the words be not just audible but carry meaning. [As an advocate of the Sung Mass, regardless of the form, I contend that we must sing the Mass to that its meaning can penetrate our very being. To merely speak the words of the liturgy is to stylistically render them no different than our everyday words; this is especially apparent when the vernacular is employed. Liturgical singing, especially when closely adhering to the forms handed to us by the liturgy, is an audible form of iconography.] [...]