Becoming Tradition

Tradition and Ideals by Adam Wood

Think about this in any other context. You can’t (reasonably) say that pasta isn’t authentically Italian just because it was invented in China and didn’t get there until the Rennaisance. It makes no sense to champion cabbage as the ideal Irish cuisine and dismiss potatoes as an innovation from the New World. How would somebody even try to make rules about this sort of thing? “All cultural cuisine in use as of April 15, 1875 is to be considered the ideal representation of each country’s national gastronomic habits.”

…

If God the Son became a real human being in a real culture, and institued a Church which was to be guided by real human beings through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and revelation provided by Scripture and Tradition, I would suggest that we can’t simply ignore what “tradition” is like everywhere else that real human beings are involved. (Not to mention the fact that the history of liturgical practice is similarly messy and varied.)

…

When will Gospel music, or Praise and Worship pop styles, or anything else become a legitimate part of the musical tradition of the Church? It will not be when some professional thinker finds a convincing argument for its inclusion, or when some piece of written legislation appears to allow it. It will only be when musicians who are deeply connected with the existing tradition of liturgical practice, who understand it in a way that cannot be set down in legislation or academic papers, find a place for it.

Wood summarises his essay at the Chant Café in this way:

There is no such thing as ideal liturgical praxis, only a lived tradition. This means that rather then theorizing about what is the essential aspect of the ideal (the Proper texts, the original melodies, the Latin language), we rather must live with and live into the received tradition (Gregorian Chant, the Graduale Propers, Sacred Polyphony, etc) before we can even begin to think about what new treasures should find a place in the storehouse.

Sing the right text, then the music will follow

Via the Chant Café, here is part two of the interview with Jeffrey Tucker published on the blog of the Sacred Music Programme at the University of Notre Dame. (Part one is here).

Tucker explains the origin of the Simple English Propers, an adaptation of traditional melodies of the Propers (chants which change with every Mass) to sing the English texts.

So then, I took the next question: “well if we’re going to sing them English, what’s the resource we should use?” Now up until that point in history, I was cutting and pasting things: I was using a little bit from the Anglican use gradual, there was some book published in 1965 that has some introits, and I found some scrappy little pieces here and there for communion. I was able to piece it together with a great deal of trouble and effort. Suddenly though, I found myself in the position of saying something along the lines of what I just said to you, to a group of 200 musicians, most of whom are volunteers, and I couldn’t just rattle off a bunch of internet links. Suddenly I felt discredited, I felt like everything I had said for the last hour had no action item at all. I stood there with my mouth open, staring at this person in silence for what seemed like ten minutes (it was probably 15 seconds). I turned white, and I said to the person: “you know, I’m going to get to work on that.” I left the room and I immediately called up my friend Adam Bartlett with whom I had been feuding with for two years over some idiotic, irrelevant problem concerning the rhythm of chant or something like that. I said Adam: “you and I have been at each others throats over this idiotic issue that, turns out, nobody cares about, why don’t we work together and finally do a book of English propers”, and he was happy to bury the hatchet and get to work on it. That was October and by March the book was in print. 

In Tucker's view the big hurdle is getting people to sing the Propers at all.

I want to mention one more thing before I close: I think it’s really urgent that we stop thinking about the problems of the music in the Mass as a war between styles. It’s not that styles don’t matter, but if that’s all you’re thinking about you’re really missing the point. To my mind, if you’re able to accomplish the propers of the Mass with a guitar then that’s a gigantic improvement. Even if it’s using pop styles, it’s a huge improvement. I don’t think that we’re on the right track if all we’re doing is arguing about why type of music needs to be played in Mass. What we need to be talking about is the texts and that’s where it has to begin.

One way to do it

In November last year, the New Liturgical Movement published an interview with Cardinal Bartolucci about the Liturgical Reform and Sacred Music. The interviewer came to something many wonder about:

In the implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium’s precepts on music, what went well, and what went badly.

And the reply?

[His Eminence declined to answer this question.]

That's one way to deal with it.

It cannot begin with Latin

Via Chant Café, the blog of the Sacred Music Programme (oh, all right, Program) at the University of Notre Dame has published the first part of an interview with Jeffrey Tucker. Much as we might regret it, we cannot just launch straight back into Latin everywhere, more's the pity:

JJ: One of the things that we are constantly asking ourselves at Notre Dame is how to take the repertoire that Catholics have grown up with since Vatican II and use what’s already there to build off of towards a full experience of the Church’s musical tradition. Where do you think the inroads are?

JT: I think what we are doing has to build off of the current experience and repertoire. I can tell you from long experience, because the question you are asking right now has been at the core of my strategic and theoretical thinking for the last ten years. It cannot begin with Latin; it has to begin with English. The reason is that language is absolutely essential to the way we think, who we are, and how we regard ourselves as a people. It’s so closely tied to our identity that it’s non-negotiable at this point in history. The church gave us the gift of vernacular with the Second Vatican Council, and it’s not a point to regret, but something we have to deal with. For me, the ideal is always Latin, but it’s ridiculous to think you could start there. You can try to implement the singing of the Mass in Latin and there will be a core of people that will love everything you’re doing, but it will not last because there will be a different core of people that will be deeply offended because they just aren’t ready for it. This is the great mistake, I would say, that was made in the years following the council. There’s a reason why this didn’t happen, but there’s also a tremendous confusion about how the vernacular applies in the liturgy. On one hand you had Vatican II clearly elevate the role of Gregorian chant above which it had ever been elevated in the history of the Church. On the other hand, you had the council give permission for the vernacular, but it was left open exactly how this was to be applied. It is obvious to me that the tension between these two things was not fully anticipated and the Council Fathers were not aware of the tremendous difficulties this would create. Suddenly all the Gregorian chant seemed irrelevant, mainly on the grounds of language.

A few notes for the organist

I suppose a parish priest might give a few verbal pointers to the organist. Play here, don't play here, that sort of thing. Fr Adrian Fortescue went a little bit further. 
The Liber Organi is an incredibly beautiful hand-written book which Fortescue wrote to provide the organist at his church, St Hugh’s in Letchworth, with everything needed to accompany the liturgies. The inside front cover contains a photograph of the church taken in 1916 and the inside back cover contains the author's dedication 'in perpetuity' to St Hugh's.

An Allegory

I have this brother. He's very overbearing. Our mother arranged for us to receive three delicious meals every day. They are delicious and nutritious. The balanced diet everyone is always talking about. Nevertheless, every day at every meal – EVERY DAY, EVERY MEAL, WITHOUT FAIL – when these meals arrive from the delivery service, he just throws them away and goes to get cheap, takeaway food. He never asks me. I don't think it even occurs to him that I – or for that matter our mother – might object. She hardly ever raises her voice in protest. She is worried she will drive him away. It is true that sometimes the food Mum has arranged is an acquired taste. You have to get used to it. Above all you have to take it all in, meal after meal, and then you begin to understand the subtlety of the flavours and you see the larger picture. In any case the food never tastes *nasty*, it is just not what we are used to. And it is always very nutritious and exactly what our mother planned for us.

As I say, come meal time, he never even looks at the food which Mum arranges. Often he just ignores the doorbell while on hold for the Pizza delivery. Sometimes he has no idea what we are going to eat until just before the meal is about to start. The delivery man with the food from Mum could be knocking and my brother will call out – over the knocks – wondering what we are going to eat. Sometimes he is still putting together the rest of the meal when we have started eating the first course of whatever reheated, possibly e-coli ridden, pap he has thrown together.

Occasionally. Very occasionally. He takes a tiny scrap of the food Mum arranged for us. He doesn't treat it correctly. It might be left to go cold. Or covered in tomato sauce. But that is still a big deal and a MAJOR concession. Usually it is just McDonalds or tinned soup. Occasionally he goes on a health bender and we eat fresh fruit and vegetables for a while. Then it is back to Pizza, sugary cereal and Maccers.

When I raise the matter he points out that Mum actually said that in emergencies, under special circumstances, we can arrange suitable food ourselves. It is true, she did say this, but it is *always* an emergency, these circumstances are *always* special and the food he prepares is *always* suitable.

Apparently I am not even supposed to complain. That would be elitist.

Look. I realise you don't want your inheritance. But why do I have to do without it also?

Last night, for the procession with the Blessed Sacrament at the end of the Evening Mass of Maundy Thursday, we had the Taizé chant "Stay with me". You wouldn't think there was a rich, beautiful melodic song, written by the greatest ever Catholic Theologian (n.17), proposed by Holy Mother Church for the procession. We had one of the weird English translations of the Tantum Ergo when they got to the tabernacle.

I cannot fathom the mind that makes these choices.

The Pride of Place

Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments,  General Instruction of the Roman Missal (2003).

41. All other things being equal, 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, provided that they correspond to the spirit of the liturgical action and that they foster the participation of all the faithful.*
Since faithful from different countries come together ever more frequently, it is fitting that they know how to sing together at least some parts of the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin, especially the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, set to the simpler melodies.**
* Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 116; cf. also Sacred Congregation of Rites, Instruction Musicam sacram, On music in the Liturgy, 5 March 1967, no. 30.
** Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium,  no. 54; Sacred Congregation of Rites, Instruction Inter Oecumenici, On the orderly carrying out of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 26 September 1964, no. 59: AAS 56 (1964), p. 891; Sacred Congregation of Rites, Instruction Musicam sacram,  On music in the Liturgy, 5 March 1967, no. 47: AAS 59 (1967), p. 314.

Mgr Richard Schuler: A chronicle of the reform

I had never heard of him but Mgr Richard Schuler is a big wheel among proponents of a traditional liturgy in the United States. Alexander Sample, the new Archbishop of Portland, specifically mentions him in an interview with the Catholic World Report.

In 1988 he published a long article on the history of the reform of sacred music, especially in the United States. It was reprinted as an appendix to a festschrift published in his honour in 1990: Cum Angelis Canere: Essays on Sacred Music and Pastoral Liturgy in Honour of Richard J. Schuler Robert A. Skeris, ed. A Chronicle of the Reform [pdf] can be found at the website of St Cecilia Schola Cantorum in Auburn, Alabama.

It does not have the satirical verve of Klaus Gamber or László Dobszay (scroll down), but it is a good read.
Page 2: An agreement with the Holy See granting Pustet exclusive rights for the sale of the chant books of the Church delayed the publication of the Solesmes editions which finally were adopted as the official texts and printed as the Vatican Edition in the first decade of the twentieth century.
A similar deal I believe is the reason we were stuck with out of date editions of the Roman Missal in English before the new translation. For all I know yet another stupid deal has been struck regarding the current translation
Page 3: With the introduction of these materials it was hoped that the secular, cheap and sentimental music that was so prevalent in American churches would be eliminated.
"It was hoped" … in 1906. Still waiting!

He discusses the 1958 instruction of the Sacred Congregation of Rites De musica sacra et sacra liturgia, which of course cannot be found on the Vatican website (probably because the SCR no longer exists, its functions being taken up by CDWDS – not that that is a good excuse) but can be found at Adoremus.
Page 10: Use of instruments, questions of radio and television broadcasts [nn.74-79], remuneration of professional musicians [n.102], establishment of schools of music and diocesan commissions are explained.
The foolish refusal to compensate expensively trained musicians properly (in the way that electricians, plumbers, builders ect all get paid) is in fact against Church law.
Page 16 n.4: A meeting was sponsored in Kansas City, Missouri, November 29 to December, 1966, by the American Liturgical Conference. Opposition to the sixth chapter of the constitution on the sacred liturgy was voiced by Archabbot Weakland who said that “false liturgical orientation gave birth to what we call the treasury of sacred music, and false judgments perpetuated it.” Those “false judgments” seem to have been made by the fathers of the council who ordered that the treasury of sacred music be preserved and fostered. At the same meeting, Theodore Marier, president of the Church Music Association of America, was unable to get an indication from the assembled liturgists that they accepted the constitution, including the sixth chapter.
(My emphasis). Chapter VI of Sacrosanctum Concilium (nn.112-121) covers sacred music.

He is not a fan of the Graduale Simplex:
Page 27: An effort to introduce a simpler chant for the Mass produced a Graduale simplex, which was a failure from the beginning. It neither pleased the progressive liturgists who wanted only the vernacular, nor the musicians who pointed out that it was a mutilation of Gregorian chant as well as a misunderstanding of the relationship between text and musical setting with reference to form. They objected to the use of antiphon melodies from the office as settings for texts of the Mass. An effort at an English vernacular version proved to be even a greater disaster.

Chant Café has good word for promoters of Liturgical pop

Music that Broadens the Mind and Spirit
Over the years, I’ve had many people say to me, when discovering that I’m a Catholic musician, some version of the following: “I’ve learned to wince whenever I see that a chosen hymn was composed after 1965. I shut my book and try to brace myself until it goes away.”
I’m supposed to agree with this point of view, and I do sympathize with the feeling because I felt this way for years. But more and more, I find that these sorts of comments bother me. Most of the musicians singing post-1965 material are doing their best to make a contribution, and loathing their output can tend towards cultivating divisive antipathies.
Few of these musicians have any idea how many people are rubbed the wrong way by varieties of pop music at Mass. Plus, it seems like an odd demand that Mass should only have music written between, say 1850 and 1965. In the long history of the faith, that is a very small slice of time.
More substantially, the debate over hymns completely misses the essential point that has become more obvious over the last few years. The truth is this: the hymn war distracts from the core issue, which is whether we will sing what the liturgy is asking to be sung or whether we will sing something else. The Mass assigns texts throughout the year for the precise parts of the liturgy where hymns are often inserted.
The solution of course is the Roman Gradual (after all, this is the Chant Café) and use of the Mass propers, not the hymn sandwich.

[The Mass propers are those bits in the Mass which change from day to day. Here it refers to those parts sung by the choir or people (not the priest), printed in a book called the Roman Gradual. They are invariably replaced by a hymn or simply spoken.]
Christ the King propers are different from Advent which are different from Christmas and so on. They are all chosen with precision by the Church for a particular liturgical purpose. Therefore, they not only open the word of God to us; they also provide another means of spiritually accessing the overall liturgical experience in a way that accords with the calendar.
Discovering the Mass propers is a liberating experience, very much along the lines of what people feel when they first discover the Catholic faith itself. We don’t have to make stuff up. We don’t have to manufacture our liturgy from our own sense of how things should be.
Our main responsibility is to bury the ego, defer to the Church’s wishes, allow ourselves to become part of something larger than our own time and place, and serve the faith. This is a huge responsibility. Singing the propers makes being a Church musician and honor and a serious apostolate.

The fad of folk music

A while ago the Chant Café posted a link to an essay by Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo C.S.J. at the Catholic News Agency on Church Music and the Fad of Folk Style, the following week they published a sequel. The essays are rather disjointed: more like a collection of useful quotes for such an essay than the completed work. But they do contain some zingers.
‘Folk’ style in church music is amply represented in The Music Missal (OCP), a flimsy, unattractive, and disposable handbook, which enjoys widespread use and influence. It contains other music like Ordinaries of the Mass, Reformed Protestant hymnody, and Gregorian chants. In no way does this ‘folk’ style, a misnomer, resemble authentic folk music. Whereas genuine folk songs were written by the community and were transmitted by the oral tradition, this material has been written by individuals. Genuine folk songs have a simple, limited melodic range as well as simple rhythm with little or no accompaniment. 
Bingo! She also has some good words to say for the guitar, but not as it is presently used.
The guitar needs to be defended.  It is a serious instrument, not to be trivialized. Belonging to the lute family, the guitar is first and foremost a solitary, gentle, soft-spoken plucked instrument with limited sonority. The lute and the lyra, the kithara and the harp are all related to the guitar (chitarra).  These string families were used in ancient and biblical times to sooth and console their listeners. They can foster meditation and can even mesmerize audiences, but they were not meant to rev them up to a frenzy, whether in a concert hall or in church. Whereas classical guitar is difficult to master, elementary guitar requires a minimum of formal training, and it thrives on basic chords, strumming, thumping, and pounding.
She quotes a reference in Benedict XVI's Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977 to "the disintegration of the liturgy" and comments:
Disintegration is not a pretty word, but Benedict XVI uses it to capture the liturgical crisis in the Church today.  A thing deteriorates when its natural form is so disfigured that the purpose for which it was intended is no longer recognizable. It is not simply irreverent music. At issue is that the faithful have become ‘the church,’ an alternate church, and they are celebrating themselves through the folly of faddism.

The non-existent taboo against composing new Gregorian chants

It is obvious to anyone who attends a Catholic liturgy that despite repeated attempts by those in authority Gregorian chant is far from being "given pride of place in liturgical services". One problem is that it is not a form of music that can be easily and readily played by ordinary musicians. It requires specialist training. Another problem is that the chants themselves are complicated. Many of them can really only be sung by a choir. One way to overcome this was the Graduale simplex in usum minorum ecclesiarum. As its full title indicates, it was meant for the use of Churches too small to sustain a full Gregorian choir. Judging by the present situation that would be pretty much all Churches, including most Cathedrals.

According to Archbishop Bugnini, when the Graduale simplex was first presented, there were loud objections. In his memoir of the reforms he quotes an objection and answer document published by the Consilium.

II. "New forms would be introduced that are not adapted to the faithful and not in conformity with the art of the Church and with the liturgical renewal."
Answer: Not in the least! the melodies of the Graduale simplex are all in the present chant books. None of them is new. The manner of singing, in which one or more cantors alternate with the congregation, which sings a refrain verse, is the oldest and most traditional in the Church. Its use has shown how easy and possible this kind of singing is; the truth of this claim was seen at the fourth session of the ecumenical Council and can be seen every time the congregation responds to the chant with an easy verse, as often happens even in televised Masses. This manner of singing is completely in conformity with the Church's art, as is shown by the venerable tradition dating from the time of such Fathers as St. Ambrose and St. Augustine [presumably referring to Augustine, Confessions ix.7]. It is also consistent with the liturgical renewal, since one of the reform's basic principles is the active participation of the faithful in both the actions and the singing of the sacred rites. (Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975, chapter 58, p.894).
(Jeffrey Tucker discusses the Graduale simplex at the Chant Café).

This suggested to me that there is some kind of taboo against composing new plainchant melodies. I have seen it held against the Graduale simplex that it uses melodies from the Divine Office, so a fortiori one would expect there to be some rule against composing entirely new ones. It should be noted that Urban VIII's revisions of the Breviary hymns (mentioned the other day) to make them more Classical and in accordance with Classical metres, are criticised by the Catholic Encyclopedia (§VI) partly because in fact more recent scholarship has shown their Classicism to be defective. Perhaps the fear is that in composing new melodies unknown rules of composition would be broken.

On the other hand the Pope's Mass for the opening of the Year of Faith "used new compositions in the Gregorian tradition for the introit and communion".

Where got'st thou that Geese Book?

Via the Chant Café, behold the Geese Book, a Gradual from 1510, prepared for a parish in Nuremberg and now in New York.
A multisensory work of the past is explored through multimedia technologies of the present. A team of experts headed by Volker Schier and Corine Schleif opens the Geese Book to scholars and provides a window for broader audiences. Completed in 1510 for the parish of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg, this large-format gradual preserves the mass liturgy that was sung by choir boys until the Reformation was introduced in 1525. Provocative and satirical illuminations include the one from which the book takes its name. Many medieval manuscripts are too valuable and vulnerable to be handled. Digitally, however, these 2 volumes can now be touched by everyone.
This is an example of the sort of thing I meant when I said that once upon a time parishes would spend their income on a proper celebration of the liturgy, not on grandiose side projects.

Paying for Church music

I used to attend Mass at parish in a suburb close to the centre of a particular city. I nearly called it "inner city" but that would suggest poverty when, in fact, the suburb was inhabited by a number of well-heeled young professionals. The land was valuable and the parish leased off part of it in return for a lucrative income. Some bright spark thought it would be a good idea for the parish to spend some of that income on a drop-in-centre for young Catholics working in the city centre. The idea was that they would come in and socialise after work. It was an unhappy decision. The parish was not far from "downtown", but it was scarcely convenient for anyone to come after a hard day's work and before making their weary way way home. The plasma TV and attached games console were barely used and I think the centre is now closed. It occurred to me that, in the old days (at least as far back as the later middle ages), the money would have been spent on paying for a choir. There would be stipends, and clerks, and funny titles, and the rest of it. By now it would be the name of a style to which learned musicians would allude. It might be a famous choir school. At the Chant Café Jeffrey Tucker has a post on How to Have a Good and Stable Choir in your parish.
You need four strong singers who are committed. If you do not have that, you will not have a consistent provision of liturgical music. That’s just the way it is … People with this skill set are not willing to sing consistently without any pay whatsoever. They might do so for a while but they burn out, feel used, and eventually give up. It is all the more annoying that the priest and others look down on them when they throw in the towel, completely forgetting about the countless hours they have spent in the past without pay.
The whole post is interesting, but what really struck me were some of the comments. First some more of Tucker's post:
If you talk to any professional or just experienced music who knows the world of churches, you will find one consistent complaint about the Catholic Church: it does not pay its musicians. Parishes will sometimes pay an organist (not often a full-time salary) and sometimes pay a nominal fee to a director of music (many parishes even expect this to be done by volunteers). But very few pay singers … It is not necessary to pay ever singer. What every choir needs — and here I’m only reporting what every musician knows but very few priests understand — is four solid singers who can lead each sector. These solid singers are called "ringers" or just "section leaders."
These people also make good solo cantors. These can lead the other singers. This doesn’t mean getting rid of volunteers. The amateurs can be great. In fact, I’m constantly amazed at how good non-readers are at mimicking the sound of those they stand next to. They can’t sing a note alone but sound great as part of a section. They desperately need strong singers around them to give lift to their talents … The parish should employ four singers to play this role, chosen mostly by the director. Each singer can be paid $50 per Mass plus rehearsal once per week. This is terrible pay, to be sure. But it takes the sting out the time commitment. It makes people feel valued. It allows the parish to expect things from the singer. Everyone is happy. The music problem goes away — or perhaps the biggest problems in the music area go away.
One commenter suggests that ringers might encourage laziness and that volunteers are probably the way to go.
But the best solution is also the hardest: a cheerful, welcoming, religious, and encouraging director with the Holy Spirit willing to invest several years to develop, and willing also to be patient with the journey to get there. 
And you hope this Music Director you have been lucky enough to find, doesn't have to move away, get sick, die, lose the faith. Because if any of those things happen you have to try your luck again. Another suggests that Tucker (as the Germans say) sucked this one out of his fingernails.
Have you ever managed college kids at a McD's or KMart? Their work ethic, voice or music majors or not, isn't exemplary. Imagine you've planned and rehearsed all year for Allegri's MISERERE for G[ood] F[riday], and your section leader soprano has the C3 [i.e the top C which occurs several times in that piece, starting just before the two minute mark in the linked video], and you've got the rest of the quire all pumped up to do this high water mark. And Wednesday, she calls you and informs you her mom wants her in Reno on Thursday for Easter weekend. This kind of thing goes on with our volunteers, for sobbing out loud, not to mention kids getting a paltry 50 for Sunday AND a rehearsal? Oh, and they tend to move around a lot, whether in 2 or 4 year programs. Oh, and some of them never pass Theory 1A or sight singing because they've skated by in MS/HS being coached and coddled by teachers who don't teach and parents that know they'll be on and WIN American Idol, the Voice, or the X Factor.
And then there is this.
I have always found it ironic that the church expects musicians to spend thousands of dollars getting trained and then volunteer their services. The guy painting the sacristy is not volunteering ... the plumber? the person who shovels the snow? There is also no expectation on the numerous people the church regularly hires to prepare for two or more hours prior to coming to work today. Maybe if I had to haul my voice around in a truck with a sign painted on it, or bring it out of a special carrying case so that it looked as expensive as it really is. 
Unless your parish has a large stable income through historic real estate acquisition or something (see Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992), passim) the answer is probably monks and lots of them. Mind you that seems to be my answer to everything at the moment.

Proper Treatment of a Blessed Pope and a Blessed Cardinal

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Breviary Propers for the Diocese of Cologne. Blessed John Paul II has, with the consent of the Holy See, been inserted into the Liturgical Calendar of the United States as an optional memoria. That page has links to the Mass Propers in Latin and English (and Spanish) and to the Breviary Propers ditto, all from the Vatican website. These are all within the pages of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Nevertheless there is no mention of these Propers on the English page. I mention that because in all the other languages of the Vatican site there is a link to all the material pertaining to John Paul II's beatification and liturgical cult: Italian, German, Spanish, French, and Portugese. Even the Latin page has a link to the decree of 2nd April 2011 De cultu liturgico in honorem Beati Ioannis Pauli ii, papae, tribuendo.

Anamnesis, the bulletin of the Liturgical Commission of the Polish Bishops has a pdf of the decree and another one of the Mass and Office Propers combined into a single document. ("Dekret o kulcie bł. Jana Pawła II, papieża" for the decree, "Teksty liturgiczne o bł. Janie Pawle II, papieżu" for the propers).

The Liturgy Office of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales has inserted the optional memoria of Blessed John Henry Newman for October 9th. This is seen in the Recent Additions page last updated (it says here) on 24th September 2010. Newman does not appear in the National Calendar for England. The Recent Additions page links to a pdf, without preamble or explanation, of the liturgical texts in Latin and then in English of the Propers for Mass and the Divine office of Blessed John Henry Newman (pdf).

Recent Additions also has links to an index page for downloadable resources for Gregorian chant in the form of extracts from Jubilate Deo. Something seems to have happened in the Liturgy Office. It was thanks to a scathing review on its site that I discovered Laszlo Dobszay's The Bugnini-Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform (2003). From the reviewer's contempt it sounded like the sort of thing that would be just my cup of tea – and it was. From there it was a short step to Dobszay's recordings with the Schola Hungarica.

But if it is now publishing propers in Latin, as well as materials for Gregorian chant, there must have been some kind of change of attitude.

It will make everyone extremely happy

About a month ago I posted something on a pair of articles by Jeffrey Tucker discussing the baby steps for the (re)introduction of Gregorian chant. At the Chant Café he reviews the Lumen Christi Missal. This is an ambitious missal, including chant settings in English for every Mass of the year (including the Proper of Saints) with the Simple Gradual, various ritual and devitional chants and scarcely a hymn in sight. So far as I can tell there isn't anything not in English. The publishers have posted a preview. It is superb.

Jeffrey Tucker is very enthusiastic..
Perhaps the most thrilling single fact I’ve found about the Lumen Christi Missal: it is a book that could right now be put in the pews of any parish and make everyone extremely happy. It doesn’t matter what the outlook or traditions of the parish or the parish priest are or have been. This book is a viable replacement for, and an upgrade to, all the seasonal missalettes and resources that parishes pay for now. It is the one book that a parish would need. If the pastor bought it and left for another parish, his successor would thank his predecessor for years to come. And I really mean that it could go into any parish, without shock or alarm but rather great relief.
Make everyone extremely happy? In a parish, nothing makes everyone happy and of all the parishes I have attended, I think only one had a music director who might agree with such a project as replacing hymns with English adaptations of the Propers. Tucker also asks, à propos some YouTube videos of organa (plainchant with harmony lines), whether it is viable in today's parishes. I am going to say…no, sadly, no.

Learning from the experts

It's funny that  they only hire total morons, who know nothing about liturgy, to organise the Papal Liturgies, especially when these liturgies are not even taking place in the Roman Rite. Consider the Pope's visit to the Basilica of St Paul of Harissa in Lebanon (Melkite I believe) and thank goodness the real experts are on hand to provide criticisms in the comments to this post:

Papal Liturgy and Music in the Maronite Rite.

The despotism of Gregorian chant

In advance of our wedding, my wife and I agreed that I would be responsible for making decisions about the liturgy. I reached for the Roman Gradual and started selecting chants. We hired a church musician to put together a choir (he wept for joy when we told him what we wanted) and who helped us with choosing some polyphony.

I was discussing it over the telephone with the priest who was to be chief celebrant. I said that the point is that there are different chants for pretty much every Mass in the Church's year and ritual life (one offs like weddings and so on)*. The effect is almost "it's the introit 'In voluntate tua', it must be the 27th Sunday per annum".  My idea was simply that we "plug in" to that. As I spelled this out, our minds tumbled to the same point. Since as a matter of fact this is not the liturgy of our parish, and not particularly the liturgy of the Church where we were getting married – in fact despite all the laws to the contrary it is very rare anywhere in the Church – this appeal to Catholicity was not completely firm.

*(This is not quite true, in fact there is a fair amount of repetition but not according to a pattern on a smaller scale than a year.)

In the end of course we stuck with what I had planned. You have to pick something and it might as well be good. And for another thing I liked the idea of showing what was possible.

What is not always acknowledged is that there is something rather foolish about simply adding a Gregorian element to a musical pick 'n' mix.  If you have an Introit, then it does not make much sense not to have a Graduale, an Offertorium, and a Communio as well. Gregorian chant is imperial in its tendencies. Newman would call it – not intending a rebuke – despotic.

Per Jeffrey Tucker at the Chant Café:
But you might say: people have been ignoring Mass propers for years. That is true enough. It is astonishing that you can flip through even the most recent editions of the all the mainline music resources from mainline publishers and find next to nothing that obeys the strictures inherent in the rite. That is a tragedy. But that’s just the point. The approach these people are using is unstable and based on demonstrably false premises.
And again at Crisis Magazine:
And how to decide between the hundreds of such songs in the mainstream pew resources? The answer, we are told, is to look at the theme of the week, which is given by the readings. Flip through the book and find a song that seems to match in some way. Check out the theme index. Then consider and anticipate the congregation’s reactions to the pieces of your choosing and give it your best shot. Sadly, nearly everything about this is wrong. In this model, the musicians are being charged with making the liturgy happen on a week-to-week basis. The Church struggles to provide liturgical books with deep roots in history, but the musicians show up and put five minutes of thought into making decisions about styles and texts that have a gigantic effect on the overall liturgical ethos. It is too much responsibility to put on their shoulders, and no one is competent to pull it off.
 …
The trouble is that hardly anyone does understand this. Most everyone today think that Gregorian chant is a style or a genre, one marked by a monkish solemnity. They figure that, given that, it is enough to sing Pange Lingua on Holy Thursday, or sprinkle in a bit of Latin during Lent. Surely that is enough. But this characterization completely misses the point. Gregorian chant’s distinct contribution is that it is the most complete and robust body of music for the ritual of the Roman Rite that elevates and ennobles the word of God in the liturgy itself. The point is not to sing chant but to sing the liturgy itself, meaning the text that is assigned to be sung at the place in the Mass where this particular text is intended to be sung. The notes are important but secondary to the word, which is the word of God.
(My emphasis). And now comes the pitch:
But thanks mostly to the efforts of the Church Music Association of America, we now have the beginnings of a growing repertoire of music that is both accessible to parishes and seeks to do what the Church intends with regard to the liturgy, which is to say that these new resources set the liturgical word to music. There are new books of sung propers appearing every few months, books such as the Simple English Propers (2011) and the Parish Book of Psalms. 

Start with it in English and get people away from the hymn sandwich. Then you can move to the Gradual.

When the Triplex isn't enough

A few weeks ago I had occasion to mention the Roman Gradual. The Monks of Solesmes are responsible for the modern edition. For various technical reasons [insert flannel] to do with new discoveries in the correct interpretation of the notation of plainchant, they also produce the same book with the neumes (the signs) from the earliest manuscripts added. This is called the Graduale Triplex – because it records the notation of the manuscripts of Laon, St Gall and Einsiedeln. The introit for the Mass of Christmas during the Day looks like this:

(Credit to: Karen Thöle of Mittelalter-Recherche).

But, you know, sometimes I find the Graduale Triplex just doesn't tell me enough. 

On those days I swiftly repair to Charles Cole's post of a list of Semiological Sources. There are links to online facsimiles of all the major chant manuscripts. God bless the internet, and all who sail in her.