The Recovering Choir Director

Ask anyone who has helped me move, and they’ll tell you that books on liturgy and music are falling off my shelves.  They are stuffed everywhere, thousands of pages worth of volumes on anything you can think of.  Some of them are theoretical, like Dom Gregory Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy; some are historical, such as Dr. Alcuin Reid’s The Organic Development of the Liturgy; Fr. Jonathan Robinson offers a philosophical outlook in The Mass and Modernity; and Joseph Ratzinger waxes theological in The Spirit of the Liturgy.

Not long ago, I was engaged in one of those crazed searches for a particular book which I knew was under my bed, but just not sure exactly where.  This space is so crammed full of junk that it’s amazing my belongings haven’t organized a government or a labor union—or spontaneously combusted.  (I should prefer the third of those options, given the limited choices.)  Suddenly, something appeared.  Not a dead animal, gratefully, but, quite unexpectedly, Thomas Day’s famous book Why Catholics Can’t Sing, dusty but in good shape otherwise.  I wondered what in the world this book was doing in this particular location.  Sadly, I must confess that under my bed is where I put books that I don’t want anyone to know that I have, paperback claptrap that I read in junior high school—stuff like (please don’t tell anyone!) Terry Bradshaw’s Looking Deep, or Penn State football coach Joe Paterno’s autobiography, and maybe even the egotistical ramblings of Harry S. Truman.  And here was Thomas Day’s book, condemned to dwell in this mess of pottage.

It took some time, but I have finally figured out, much to my embarrassment, why this book was under the bed with the sheissdreck of a bygone era.  You see, I read this book as a snotty little conservatory student, and, after initially enjoying this book, I decided after some immature reflection that, well, in my mind, Thomas Day just wasn’t consistent enough, made too many compromises, and—horror of horrors!—offered advice that contradicts the General Instruction of the Roman Missal.  He wasn’t esoteric; he wasn’t theoretical, theological, philosophical, or even very historical like all those impressive books mentioned in the first paragraph.  He just brought the wisdom, learned no doubt through painful experience, of one man who has worked for many years as a church musician, and this wasn’t good enough for my pedantic little mind.  ”We do not need practical advice,” I can hear myself fuming about a decade ago, “We need ideals and perfection.”

I wiped the dust off the cover and thought to myself, “Ten years is a long time.  Maybe it’s time to read this again.”  In the time that has elapsed, I have been to the heights of heaven and to the depths of hell; I have had talented groups and not-so-talented; co-operative and seditious volunteers; downright hostile clergy, some who gave lip service, and, thankfully now, some who are actually grateful.   Maybe in reality ten years is not such a long time, but it is long enough to undo the stupidities of a student who has no experience whatsoever. The cover opened with a crack, and I read like I was possessed; the pages turned themselves until almost sunrise every morning.

In this second reading of Day’s book, what I have found is the work of a man who is acutely aware of human nature; this seems to be his paradigm.  This outlook annoys idealists, liturgical tyrants, and other fanatics for whom reality cannot be allowed to have a say in any given plan.  Day is a musician, but his book is written from the perspective of a pew-dweller, much like Martin Mosebach’s The Heresy of Formlessness.  (These two men are miles apart in terms of their “ideal” liturgies, but ask similar questions.)  While indirectly echoing Musicam Sacram’s recommendation of progressive solemnity, Day otherwise mercifully avoids quoting “the documents.”  How many tiresome liturgy articles are out there which quote “the documents”?  It gets old after awhile, especially if the reader is aware of the fact that such positivism is a relatively new way of approaching an ancient tradition built with beating hearts and warm blood rather than the cold ink of bureaucrats.

Instead of berating the reader with the way things ought to be, the author discusses what works—and what does not work.  A cantor caterwauling into microphones does not work; the sweet songs which are the descendants of the Irish ballad do not work, at least as congregational music; and pastors, liturgists, and musicians harassing congregations into singing will not yield results, either, nor does the insistence, contained in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, that every Mass ought to have music.  Day stresses simplicity.  There was a time when this annoyed me:  I, the musician, did not want to hear about simplicity.  But Day is not talking about the kind of simplicity that is trite; he is talking about music that is simple yet profound: chant melodies (in Latin and English), hymn tunes that were written to be sung by large congregations, and the like.  One can design a beautiful liturgy with this simple music.  The author calls this a certain kind of mediocrity.  I would call it common sense, and this is a particularly gorgeous brand of it.

Beyond practical measures, however, Thomas Day dares to touch a few live wires, the first being the legacy of Irish Catholicism.  Given the crimes against humanity visited upon the Irish by the British Imperialists, there was not much of a chance for 19th century Catholicism on the Emerald Isle to develop any kind of culture as such.  The silent Mass was the norm.  This ethos was brought to the New World, where it has stirred up quite a number of quarrels with Catholics from Germany and Eastern Europe, who love to make “loud” music in church.  I suspect that, of all the politically incorrect things said in this book, Day suffered the most for this, and I dare add that it would be precisely because he was right on target.  I have worked in “mainstream” Catholic parishes, and I have also worked in a German parish, and the difference in the singing speaks for itself, even in the early years of the 21st century.

The other live wire which Day picks up concerns the egos of the “worship leaders” in the sanctuary.  The priest booms into the microphone, the cantor gargles a Psalm at the podium, and the lector impresses us with his dramatic flair.  He takes care to mention that most of the time these people are not villains, that they are just doing what they think they’re supposed to be doing.  Nonetheless, they are egotists, and the I-me dynamic of modern liturgy is destroying worship.  One interesting story is related:  A certain priest who had a tendency to begin Mass with an improvised monologue shows up one day for a memorial Mass.  The nuns, without giving Father any warning, sang the Introit from the Requiem Mass at the procession.  Suddenly, a miracle happened:  Father skipped his monologue and began the Mass with “In the Name of the Father…”  The clowns and the mountebanks who run the liturgy mills of modern Catholicism surely could not have cared for Day’s insight, and yet the conversations I’ve had with the PIP’s have always indicated that most people agree with him.

Day proves to be prophetic throughout this volume, and even now, nearly twenty years after publication, he is shamefully unheeded in many respects.  Happily, however, it seems that now much of what he wrote is outdated.  The section about Vox Dei hymns might be a good example.  Perhaps my experience is somehow blessed with an unusually low occurrence of such things, but I can report that I have not heard Take Our Bread since before I had chest hair.  (The mere reading of that title, however, got it in my ear, and I have had to sleep with the television on ever since.)  Indeed, a cursory glance at some of the titles which Day discusses will show that time has done its work in getting rid of some of the worst music that was used during the Carter and Reagan administrations.  Too much of it still remains, but improvement has happened, and I dare say that some of my so-called progressive counterparts would agree.  The future only stands to get better still.  We have survived the Era of Liturgical Lip Service under Pope John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI, not by mandates but by concrete example, has got the whole Church thinking quite differently about the liturgy.

Perhaps the most important piece of advice that Day offers is to have the celebrant sing some of his parts.  This is still an underestimated action in many places, but thanks to the leadership of many people, it has become more prominent.  Just recently at the ordination of Archbishop Augustine DiNoia, Cardinal Levada sang almost all of his parts in a silvery tenor voice.  This is crucial because, as long as the “actual liturgy” is not sung, the music will seem like an interruption, but when the celebrant’s parts are sung, a seamless garment, or perhaps a Gesamtkunstwerk, emerges.

Over the years, I’ve had a number of conversations with colleagues about Why Catholics Can’t Sing.  One of the principal criticisms of this book—indeed one that I myself have made—is that it doesn’t offer a program of how to get back on track.  Throughout the book a number of ideas are sprinkled, and there is an appendix with a short list of actions to be taken, but there is no program as such.  To think that this is a problem is foolish, and it is ignorant of how the liturgy has developed over the centuries.  The “liturgy wars” are the outcome of precisely this kind of thing, a centralized program enacted by a politburo which said, “This is what you must do.”  Away with programs!  Human existence is messy, and the way out of the chaos of the past several decades will be messy and very much unpredictable.  Thomas Day seems to understand this, and so does the pope, who has granted more freedoms than restrictions with respect to the liturgy.

Maybe by “program” people are looking for a declaration of loyalty from Professor Day, a statement on whether he stands with the Thisses or the Thats in the midst of the debate about worship.  ”Forget chant and Latin!  Do good hymns with organ like they used to do at my old middle-church Episcopalian parlor,” says one constituency.  ”No!  We must return immediately to Latin and all Gregorian chant and throw away everything else,” another group might claim.  Day strikes me as being too wise for this.  In the midst of the strife, it’s easy to fall for panaceas, but often the truth gets lost in the fog.  I myself have worked in Novus Ordo parishes, in Traditional Rite parishes, and even in Protestant churches.  I have visited others, as well.  I have heard German Catholics blow the windows out with Grosser Gott;   I have heard Mennonites wake the dead with their shape-note singing; I have been moved to tears by the sound of Lutherans singing Ein feste Burg; and on one cold February Ash Wednesday, I heard a Catholic congregation, after years of tra-la-la music, raise the roof singing Agnus Dei XVIII, unaccompanied—and they didn’t even drag.  We do not need panaceas.  We need culture and common sense.  Thomas Day’s book will do much to help us achieve these things.

And so, if you’ll permit me, I’d like to issue an apology and an admonition.  The apology goes to Thomas Day for my having underestimated his work in the midst of my adolescent hubris.  The admonition goes to you.  Read this book, right now.  If you’ve already read it, read it again.  If you’ve never read it, order it, and put it at the top of your inbox.  You’ll be a better person for it.