The Recovering Choir Director

Jeffrey Herbert at The Authentic Update has been following the discussion at the Gotta Sing Gotta Pray blog post highlighted yesterday on this site, and has commented on it at length (reproduced below with links, footnotes, comments, and emphases):

A commenter asked the following question after listening to several clips from the latest settings of the Sanctus, etc… from WLP that had been posted:

“What would you say to a Death Metal version of the Sanctus? Yes, this is actually a serious question about where to draw the line, and on what basis.”

Dr. Galipeau, taking the questioner at his word, answers:

Death Metal is regarded by most, I believe, as an extreme and underground form of heavy metal, with music and characters associated with themes focused on the Satanic and the like, to say the least. This genre, in and of itself, appears completely contradictory to the Christian message. I don’t believe that any of the clips that I posted come anywhere near this genre.

OK… but if the Satanic lyrics and such were replaced with “Christian” lyrics, would the musical style be acceptable?  I think that was the point of the question. Dr. Galipeau goes on to relate his struggle since first reading in Music In Catholic Worship (we all have struggled) that decisions about musical style were to be left to “competent musicians”.^[1]

Ahhh… the Competent Musician.

I submitted a reply that read something like this:

The Church, in her wisdom, decided to put the readings for each Sunday in a book called the Lectionary, and insisted that that be the only source for the readings.  What would our liturgy be like today if the selection of what to read each Sunday at Mass was left to “competent literary experts”? Would we have readings from Shakespeare perhaps? Maybe selections from the Koran, or the writings of Camus or Sartre?  No, the Church decided to make those decisions for us.^[2]

My point was this… being a competent literary expert doesn’t make one competent to select readings that are appropriate for use in the liturgy.  Similarly, I would claim that being a “competent musician” doesn’t qualify one to make judgments about liturgical music either. If I were going to plan a “70′s Rock-N-Roll Fest” at the local Crab Shack, I might be more inclined to rely on the judgment of the lead singer from the local 4-piece 70′s band….that is clearly his area of expertise.  But could he step into the choir area on Sunday and select the music for the liturgy?  Maybe he could… but being an excellent rock musician has no bearing, either positive or negative on his competence as a liturgical musician.  That would have to be determined by the choices he made.  If he made competent choices, it wouldn’t matter that he was the lead singer in a rock band.  But the music would have to be suitable by some criteria independent of his qualifications.

The converse is also true… an individual might have a PhD in Musicology with 30 years of experience in conducting a Chant Schola and serving as Organist at a prominent Cathedral.  If they were to suggest that the above mentioned “Death Metal” version of the Sanctus was as acceptable in the liturgy as the Mass XVI Sanctus, I would question their competence as well.

Competence isn’t about experience or what degrees a person has. It’s about the judgments they make being competent ones.  [Read that sentence again, aloud.  Then contrast it with the rest of the paragraph.] The progressive view would have us believe that there is this wide spectrum, nearly limitless, of possibilities for liturgical music just waiting to be made acceptable by virtue of being favored by “competent musicians”.  All possibilities have equal footing… it is the decision of the competent musician that determines their suitability.

The result of such an approach is that once so-n-so Pastoral Music Expert signs off on the Serbo-Croatian/Afro-Caribbean Gloria it becomes admissible in the liturgy.  But how is that any different from the situation of readings being selected by a literary expert?  Would passages from Les Mains Sales be acceptable in the liturgy just because the PhD in 20th Century Literature from the local University says it is?  I don’t think so…

The answer to this is, of course, right in front of us.  There is a body of music for the liturgy that requires no “judgment”, from either competent musicians or anybody else. It is found in the Graduale Romanum (and other sources if need be…) and the only competency required is in musical ability, not stylistic judgment.  If a liturgical music needs any competence, it is in the area of executing liturgical music.  [This paragraph is worth reading again, and aloud.]

At one point, Dr. Galipeau says “Frankly, I grow tired of hearing people say that ‘Chant is the only way.’” He then follows this with “I also grow weary of hearing others say, ‘The Mass has gotta rock if there’s going to be any life or meaning in it.’”

I’ve been from one end of this country to the other….I’ve been a Church Musician for nearly 32 years now… and lately I’ve heard lots of the former and very little of the latter sentiment. Looking at the replies on Dr. Galipeau’s blog (and I give him the highest marks for posting comments without any editing!)  I think he is seeing the same thing as I am.  The question is…as the Associate Publisher at WLP, will he listen to the competent musicians?

His final question leads me to a couple of contributions by Jeffrey Tucker on the MusicaSacra Forum in a discussion centered around “Deficiencies with OCP”, which can certainly be applied to other publishers of liturgical music.  In this response to another forum participant who questioned the profit motive of the publishers, he states:

The problem to my mind is not so much that private enterprise is providing the music but rather the absence of boundaries [stylistic, perhaps?] and the predominance of the profit drive over the evangelistic drive.  [Excellent.] They are supposed to be publishing music for liturgy.  What comes out are advertising jingles and the like.  This is due to a lack of discernment over the purposes of liturgical music.

To another forum participant, he replies:

Most Church musicians look to publishers for leadership.  More accurately, they look to them for cover in confusing times.  If GIA/OCP/WLP publishes it, they musician figures that he/she has a rationale for deploying it in liturgy.  Given this reality, publishers really do have a responsibility.  I can’t fathom the cynicism of people who happy to dish out schlock knowing full well that it is bad music and knowing that they would never attend a parish that used it.  You are precisely right that the managers and employees [of the major publishing companies] are not stupid.  They are actually well versed in the documents.  But they see their commercial interests and the aesthetic responsibilities as separate. This reminds me of a restaurant I used to work for, in which the employees were routinely disgusted that anyone would eat the food they prepared much less pay for it. The restaurant eventually closed, and rightly so.

Also, there are serious problems here from the point of view of marginal profits. They are able to make a higher margin by selling new works under copyright rather (or so they believe) than public domain music, and a culture has developed within these firms that fears all free distribution as a threat and any un-protected music as a grave danger.  Well, that so happens to include, well, the whole of our music tradition. The publishers [and to the same degree, the composers in their fold] need to release themselves from their IP [intellectual property] model in the course of reform.  The PBC here is the model.  It is a bestseller, based entirely on public domain music, and why?  Because it is well edited and well produced.  People are getting some real value for their money.

I would gladly fly anywhere to talk to the management of these companies about reforming their business model.  [But will his offer be taken up?]

And in another response, he writes:

I don’t entirely buy the line that “we can do no other because this is the stuff that people want.”  First, giving people what they want is not always the right thing. JPII wrote in Centesimus Annus that “even the decision to invest in one place rather than another, in one productive sector rather than another, is always a moral and cultural choice.”^[3]  If that is generally true, how much more true when it comes to providing music for liturgy?

Second, from an economic perspective, the job of entrepreneurship is not only about discerning people’s existing wants.  It is also about enlightening people as to needs they never thought they had.  It is about education also. Five years ago, no one wanted a Wii. Now, it seems like no American family can do without one.  If Nintendo were only looking to fulfill EXISTING market demand, they would have never come up with the Wii and their profitability would have stayed moderately average.  [Actually, analysts were sounding Nintendo's death knell if memory serves me right.] They saw rather that there was a need out there that was not only unmet but UNKNOWN and thereby changed one aspect of the American way of life by rearranging the they way people order their own value scales.

This is how truly great and truly successful entrepreneurship works.  It is not a matter of fobbing out as much cheap schlock as people are willing to buy.  It is about creating a new sector of demand by changing the value scales of potential customers by imagining what might be possible and then achieving it through educating and marketing.  So I might suggest that the core problem of the Big Three is not so much their commercialism but rather the apparent absence of their own willingness to go from good to great in the area of product entrepreneurship. They aren’t doing as good a job as they could do even in the area in which they supposedly specialize.