The demands of truly sacred music are uniquely challenging. Sacred music requires humility and a willingness to go beyond pleasing ourselves and our immediate audiences alone. Sacred music requires sacrifice and loving service to the God the Father and his Church. And what are the rewards? From the earliest days of the Church, Catholics of all times have found in the chant a glimpse of Heaven. That is what the liturgy can bring us, not just in Rome or in cathedrals but in every parish and every heart. What a wonderful rediscovery it will be.
A moving moment occurred at Pope Benedict XVI's outdoor inaugural Mass last April. During the recessional, the Marian antiphon for the Easter
season, the "Regina Caeli," was sung by
worshipers from around the world, including
the pope himself. It was beautiful and
inspiring but for one problem. Most
American Catholics under the age of 60
can't conjure even the first notes or words of
this once-popular hymn. Even the most basic
of Catholic chants-"Ubi Caritas," "Ave Maria,"
"Ave Maris Stella"-are unknown by most U.S.
Catholics.
If the U.S. is going to participate in a
revival of sacred music, particularly from
the Gregorian repertoire-which is what the Vatican has now made it clear that the Benedict wants--something has got
to change to bring U.S. parish practice in line. To
achieve the musical goal of the Second
Vatican Council-to elevate Gregorian
chant to pride of place in the Mass-will
require Herculean educational efforts and
massive dedication of musicians of all sorts.
Not that a dictate or document from
Rome is going to be enough to inspire every
parish to sing the Credo in Latin or look
away from their missalettes and toward
Solesmes, France, the center of Gregorian chant, for Psalms and Communion
chants. What this pontificate can do is
provided liturgical and theological
leadership by example. This will assist
refuting the primary misunderstanding about
sacred music today: that the choice of musical
style at Mass is a matter of cultural and
personal preference to be determined at the
parish level, on the theory that any music that is
suitably religious is appropriate for liturgy,
so long as the people can participate (in
theory) by singing along.
This misunderstanding, which is
contradicted by two millennia of
authoritative Church teaching, is widely held by
Catholic musicians at the parish level. This
is why parish music is so often reduced to a
variety show, however well intended the
performers may be. These same musicians,
however, can play an essential role in the
revival of chant and truly sacred music,
provided that they are called to a higher
standard and are willing to undertake the
effort to acquaint themselves with the
astonishing richness of what our heritage has
to offer.
Nor does Benedict XVI need to issue
new teachings. The Vatican's focus on
Gregorian chant as proper to the liturgy has
been consistent during the 40 years since the Second Vatican Council.
There has been no letup in the insistence
that chant is Catholic music, from the council document
"Sacrosanctum Concilium"'s explicit call for
chant to displace popular hymnody as the
music of the people, through Paul VI's
issuance in 1974 of "Jubilate Deo" (a
booklet of basic chants for every parish),
to John Paul II's prayer in 2000 for the
beauty of sacred music to return to our
liturgies.
Gregorian chant received new emphasis
in a series of documents that appeared in the
last years of John Paul II's pontificate. In
2003, John Paul called for renewed attention
to "outward forms of mystery" that inspire
eucharistic devotion. Among these forms,
he wrote in "Ecclesia de Eucaristia," we find
sacred music, particularly "the inspired
Gregorian melodies and the many, often
great, composers who sought to do justice to
the liturgical texts of the Mass."
In 2005 John Paul issued the apostolic
letter "Mane Nobiscum Domine." Here he set forth his "serious
concern that singing and liturgical music be
suitably "sacred." Furthermore, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, which came out in
2000, stated plainly that "Gregorian
chant holds pride of place because it is
proper to the Roman Liturgy. Other types of
sacred music, in particular polyphony, are in
no way excluded."
Immediately following John Paul's apostolic letter, the Vatican's
Congregation for the
Divine Worship issued its definitive document on the liturgy, "The
Year of the Eucharist: Suggestions and
Proposals." It is here where we find the
words of John Paul II more fully spelled out
in what was the most explicit call for
restoring sacred music to be heard from the
Vatican in decades.
The guidelines first addressed the core of
the problem: Priests are not prepared to act
as leaders in placing chant at the forefront of
the musical life of the parish. The guidelines
demanded that anyone in a position to do so
should "inculcate in the seminarians an
understanding of the usefulness of a certain
fluency in the Latin language and Gregorian
Chant, so as to be able to pray and chant in
Latin when the need arises, and so rooting
themselves in the tradition of the Church at
prayer."
The Congregation further wrote that the simple settings of Gregorian
settings of the Credo and Lord's Prayer help
"encourage the participation of various
groups in the same Eucharistic celebration
of the Mass." And so here we see Latin and Gregorian
chant being cited not as a source of division among Catholics
(as many believe), but rather as a source of
unity in order to achieve the
multicultural aims of Catholicism that
everyone agrees are centrally important.
Parishes were asked to establish
choirs that "should dedicate singular
attention to liturgical song, taking into
account the indications of John Paul II in his
recent document on sacred music."
Thus the Vatican's emphasis on chant did not begin with
Benedict XVI. In his writings on liturgy before he became pope, he merely clarified existing post-Vatican II directives, famously saying, for example, that
rock (hard or soft) music has no place at
liturgy.
All serious musicians, regardless of
personal taste, know the suffering that
comes with tackling new compositions and
traditions. Technique must be learned and
practiced and interpretive skills must be
honed. Church organists struggling with the
works of Bach and singers attempting to
master the intervals and nuance of Gregorian
chant face very similar battles.
It is not
enough to stick with the standard fare.
Musicians need to rethink their place in
liturgy and begin to think of the sounds they
create as part of the structure of the Mass and not purely
additive. That means acquiring chant books
from Solesmes and spending time every
week and every day on familiarizing oneself
with Catholic tradition.