Scottish composer James MacMillan’s article in a magazine called Open House was reported on a couple of weeks ago – but it’s taken this long for the actual article to find its way online.

I’m going to pull quotes from it, but you really should go read the whole thing, bookmark it and pass it on. MacMillan hits it perfectly and fairly, although he doesn’t address the broader issue, discussed on this blog over the past month, that point that takes the place of chant just one tiny step further – the hymn model, period as a legitimate option, but the least preferable one.

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The Second Vatican Council was certainly not the beginning of the Church’s desire in recent times to improve musico-liturgical practice. The Church has worried away at the question of appropriate music for centuries, dating back to its earliest days. The constant centrality in the Roman rite, though, since these days has been the chant. The motivation of the Church, since the mid-19th century, to re-establish a more fully authentic liturgical life has been wrapped up with a concern for the chant.

In 1903 Pope Pius X issued his motu proprio on sacred music. Gregorian is not the only form of the chant that has been used by the churches. One need only look to the Anglicans or to Byzantium to see the shadings of a great multiplicity. There is also great potential for new forms to suit the vernacular liturgies. Gelineau and Taizé are the most obvious examples of how the modern church can respond to its great musical calling.

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The chant, Gregorian or otherwise, has cropped up in recent news stories about Pope Benedict’s hopes and fears for the Church’s liturgy.

As to be expected, the media have given these stories a spin of bogus controversy and have traduced the Pontiff’s words and motivation. “An end to modern worship music” and “Pope abolishes Vatican’s Christmas pop concert” are two such headline examples. A number of liberal liturgists have rushed to condemn Benedict’s “cultural authoritarianism” and have found willing accomplices in the institutionally anti-Catholic BBC and other media outlets.

The Pope is presented as a stern-faced, party-pooping disciplinarian, stamping out electric guitars, pop-crooning, and the sentimental, bubble-gum “folk” music used in many of today’s Catholic churches.

Consequently we will now all have to “endure” his much-loved Mozart, Tallis, Byrd and Latin plainsong. The people queuing up to attack the Pope are the very ones who were responsible for the banal excrescences enforced on us in the name of “democratisation of the liturgy” and “active participation” over the last few decades. They claim that the Pope is forcing through a narrow, one-dimensional vision of liturgy, and imply that chant is beyond the capabilities of ordinary people. They are wrong on both counts.

First, Benedict has been quite clear that updating sacred music is eminently possible but “it should not happen outside the traditional path of Gregorian chants or sacred polyphonic choral music”.

Clearly, there are living composers who know and respect this tradition and context and can allow their contemporary work to be infused by it, and there are other composers who don’t and can’t. It is quite straightforward to understand with whom the Church can and should be working.

Secondly, congregations in and outside the Catholic Church have been singing chant in Latin and in the vernacular for centuries. In Britain, the monumental efforts to keep alive the plainchant tradition over the last century have not been nurtured by the authorities. When Plainsong for Schools was published in 1933 it sold over a 100,000 copies in the first 18 months. The Society of St Gregory organised regional chant festivals throughout the land and held summer schools. Between 1937 and 1939 congregations of 2,000 and more met at Westminster Cathedral and sang the Ordinarium Missae from the Kyriale, with a schola of male amateurs singing the Proper. This shows what can and what could still be done.

Last Sunday, we went to Mass at the parish that has the most straightforward liturgy in our part of town. By "straightforward," I mean, everyone there understands that they are present to serve God through the liturgy, and there is no nonsense, no extemporaneous chat, no egomaniacal self-referencing. I told you about the very direct statement about missions offered by the pastor, also director for the diocese’s Pontifical Missions office.

The music is okay – simple. No choir, just a cantor and a good organist. The music selection doesn’t approach the potential, though. I sat there, letting Only a Shadow drift around me, and I thought…I’m sitting here in this gorgeous gothic church, lovingly preserved by its parishioners…and Only a Shadow is the best we can do?

nast