Top Ten: Reasons People Don't Like the Latin Mass

In the years' since I've grown attached to the form of the Traditional Mass I've also encountered a variety of its critics. Most of these people have intellectual arguments about why they think TLM is bad for the church or Catholics as a whole, but I think their unspoken criticisms are more revealing.

I mention these not to point fingers but rather so proponents and lovers of TLM may find some measure of insight into people who at first might seem simply obstinate or even ill-intentioned. The grievances below vary quite a bit and few if any can be addressed by simple remedies. As Aristotle said, the orator must use all available means of persuasion to persuade the judge, and anyone you hope to persuade is your judge. Understanding and empathizing with their feelings will go further toward amity and reconciliation than any amount of citation or logic.

The Philosopher also added, as far as is possible, because some arguments cannot be won. For my part I have a long list of types of people with whom I won't even bother to disagree since I have no means of persuading them unless I learn to channel Demosthenes himself.


10. "It's so dense."

Some people need a lot of things going on. They are unaccustomed to the inwardness and intimacy which accompanies sustained contemplation of one finite, external object. People often express this as boredom, but it's an emotionally arrested state.

In my experience, these people are willfully surrounded by the din of radio or television and when without such, they fill the void with any available means of clamor. To paraphrase Guardini, words are consciously debased into talk for crowding out the intimidating inwardness of silence, and thus the silence of the Latin mass brings discomforts rather than conveys truth.

9. Bo-ring

come on, click it

Similarly, some folks just need physically to be busy. This is a way of creating the sense of importance when it is lacked and missed. Thus the hand-holding, hand-shaking, greeting, nodding, laughing, reading, and so forth, all to compensate for the fact they don't actually feel that something important is happening. These people often don't realize that they either dislike the Novus Ordo as they experience it, or simply aren't getting what they need from it.


8. Are you not entertained? 

On the other hand, some people just want entertainment plain and simple. They need to be awash in easily-comprehensible gestures which they can quickly consume and digest. Thus such people aren't bothered by priestly additions to the mass: little jokes, explanations, asides, and so forth. Anything which can jazz up what could otherwise be predicted is a real boon to the experience. Just a little more cowbell.

7. Why so serious?

This is simply a confusion of serious and solemn, the former of which is merely grave while the latter encapsulates a sense of reverence. Taste in movies is instructive: such a mind describes movies as "heavy" or "deep." It finds seriousness only in the grievous, joy only in the jovial.


6. Status Quo

Plenty of wonderful people have spent years and decades in service to a parish which has changed little. They're financially and, more importantly, emotionally invested in the status quo which they helped maintain for the lion's share of their life. They deserve a little understanding even if they've perpetuated decades of Haugenesque cultural squalor.

Passover

The philistine is one of the most curious species of our happy hominidal tribe. Sure, Erectus might impress with his haughty posture and Neanderthal may wow as the new man wanders his valley, club in hand, but for all these two brutes have fascinated scientists and pulp directors and authors, they do not fascinate me because they rose to the modest heights of their limits. Even they had wondered enough to paint their caves. No, they have my respect but not my interest. Their and our relative however, the philistine aka homo ignavus, perplexes me with his sensate indifference to his world and ultimately himself.

The most obvious characteristic of the philistine is an ignorance which resembles stupidity but in fact is simply a lacuna in his reference. This lack of tutoring is less about education, though, than about protection and conservation. No one appreciates Bach because of a predilection for counterpoint, Caravaggio because of a love of shadow, or an English garden because of a deep desire for symmetry. Instead one approaches them as an initiate who has grasped some sliver of secret knowledge and taken a step into a larger world. The philistine differs then from his wise brother simply in being asleep. The tutor's task then is less of education in the modern sense as in the ancient of ducens, of bringing up. The role of tutor is less to instruct, i.e. to equip, or to inculcate, i.e. to impress upon, than to protect and cultivate. It is of course a terrible irony that schools accept tuition from parents in exchange for exercises in "beating the SAT" and getting, "college ready."

The barrier to the high forms of expression then, is not so high. The philistine of course asks then: Why do we need to engage with any expression at all besides our own? The response on the one hand is the utilitarian reply that the expressions of others help us cultivate and resolve our own woes. On the other, though, is the need to elevate human life to realm of the beautiful. Human life is fairly ugly even in its most beautiful moments. How ugly are not birth, sex, and death in corporeal terms? Who finds joy in the sight of the old and infirm? In a terrible fight with loved ones?

Yet art presents us the possibility of raising activity to, or perceiving activity in, the world of perfected ideals. Who would not call beautiful the birth of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, the intercourse of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, or the death of Homer's Hector? How much beauty is there in the hands of Rembrandt's woman, and joy in the eucatatrophe of Mozart's Figaro?

These expressions signify as both human and sacred the experiences around which man's life turn, rendering them at once personal and universal. It is something human, or better something of human to partake in them as experiences, and something transcendent to see the activity elevated to the beautiful.

Yet all this talk of elevation and transcending is rather patently offensive to modern sensibilities and actually ripe for perversion, for high expression still implies a hierarchy. You need not think hard or long for an image of the cultural guardian who towers on an imagined Parnassus above his fellow man, or perhaps some misanthropic Hitchcockian villian, or worse. Instead, the role of cultural elite should take that form of that tutor which we discussed, conserving and cultivating high art and apprehension of it. What we have seen in the West today, though, is not the evolution of cultural elite into totalitarian guardians, or even upper crust bullies. We have not seen old ways mutate as the old Roman system of patronage, from traditions of pragmatism and beneficence into rent-seeking and degrading toadyism, but rather the elite taking on the ways of the popular culture. Far from their tailors' tutors, nobles have traded custody for celebrity, with what concern remains focusing on endeavors to improve physical health. We know the fear of disease and exercise our technological and economic powers by "declaring war on" them, but we cannot even contemplate our artistic impotence. We will not understand that creation cannot take place in slumber, and that awakening cannot be funded.

Does religion then point the way today? If instruction has replaced cultivation in education and the arts, what of religion? Should not the jettisoning of the old high forms, in practice if not print, have flung wide the gates? Where are the faithful now that the alleged aesthetic barrier has been lifted? It would seem that excluding the aesthetic has had an unexpected effect: without transcendent form, the beauty of the act relies alone on comprehension instead of apprehension. Robbed of its "poetry, mystery, and dignity" [1] it is now an intellectual enterprise. If you agree, of think you do, then you go to mass and as long as a few choice things take place, all is well. If you disagree, you disregard it as you do any unpalatable bit. The invitation to mystery, which might even persuade the skeptical more than the didactic, has been rescinded. The people are left grappling in intellectual terms with what, as Romano Guardini wrote, "Actually. . . is not difficult but mysterious." [2]  Exeunt.

It's a slick point of argument the moderns make which faithful philistines corroborate in deed: that it matters not what happens around the sacred acts. It's still mass. It still counts. Yes, of course it does. Theodore Dalrymple shares a thought about architecture which we might borrow:

Suppose you are in a restaurant and your meal is delicious. Suddenly the diner at the next table vomits copiously. Do you continue to eat with the same delectation as before, just because the food on your plate remains unchanged? [3]

No, plenty of its details don't render a mass illicit. So we pass over the disposable missalettes which render the words cheap and disposable. We pass over the microphones which distort our voices. We pass over foreign gestures from handshakes to unity candles. We pass over Bach for Marty Haugen. We nod off during ad libbed sermons. And in our arrogance we assume that because we understand the mass and because it "counts," that all is well. We look to our borrowed and reconstituted gestures and pretend that we see and feel what we think. Speaking of art and institutions in general, Roger Scruton writes how,

We're joined together to pretend. . . that we really are feeling the deep and serious things. . . even though underneath, the measure of self interest is taking things over. [4]

It's an easy leap, though. We believe in the faith and we're at mass. What else is there? I feel satisfied. I have the whole thing figured out. (The fault for empty pews and coffers, for listless immiseration amidst historic prosperity lies with the liberals, hippies, atheists, Sandinistas, and all foreign ills.) Instead of being awed, though, by the Cosmic Christianity of Titian, we're dulled by the soft kitsch like that of Thomas Kinkade, the self-described "painter of light" who boasted that, "We have found a way to bring to millions of people, an art that they can understand." [5] What a familiar argument. No mystery needed. Just add understanding, a few gestures, and poof! Mass? Faith? Religion? 

Never mind searching for the proper articulation of ideas, that'll frighten off the contingent of philistines without which the church will crumble. Never mind searching for receding meanings and reconciliations of life and faith, Roger Scruton again explains,

In a world of fakes, the public interest is constantly sacrificed to private fantasy, and the truths on which we depend for our rescue are left unexamined and unknown. [6]

Rod Dreher in his recent Time piece, picked up on the same diversionary vibe of fantasy when he wrote about how, "The 'spirit of Pope Francis' will replace the 'spirit of Vatican II' as the rationalization people will use to ignore the difficult teachings of the faith." [7]

Thus all faith and expression are smeared into a pastiche of smarmy coziness which can be molded into whatever shape we wish. The work of the progressives and conservatives is done: not the "triumph, yea the resurrection, of the Philistines." [8] The poor in spirit are pastured into dolorous ennui. The aesthetes recoil.  Exeunt.

Magnificat: Esurientes implevit bonis

–

[1] Waugh, Evelyn. Diary Entry, Easter 1965. A Bitter Trial. Saint Austin Press. 1996. p. 79
[2] Guardini, Romano. Meditations Before Mass. 1939.
[3] http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/2013/09/21/monstrous-carbuncles/
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDvg2sdbPIo (2:46)
[5] Leung, Rebecca (December 5, 2007). "60 Minutes interview". CBS News.
[6] http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/roger-scruton-fake-culture/
[7] http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/29/im-still-not-going-back-to-the-catholic-church/
[8] http://thesixbells.blogspot.com/2008/02/william-f-buckley-jr-1925-2008.html

Manus

Manus is one of the more unusual words with which the young Latinist must contend. As one might expect, manus means hand, but it also by extension can mean handwriting, and it can even mean a band of men. Never mind that, though, for the important concept for us now is that of manus as the seat of paternal authority. Ultimate power the Roman paterfamilias held in his hands over his family and property, arranging marriages, property, and all family business until his death. So too from his hands could he pass his power to (emancipate) his son, or send from his hands (manumit) a slave.

In another respect, though, were the hands of ancient man his life, for they were intimately connected with his livelihood. Across the professions the hands do the work, from the noblest farmer who puts his plow into the ground to the baker kneading dough and the soldier holding his spear. Those first Christians too must have felt the same connections as they cast their nets into the sea. In the ancient world, a man's hands were the seat, symbol, and means of his agency.

Specialization and technology have to varying degrees diminished the sense of importance otherwise obvious in the manual world. Specialization has offloaded good a deal of life's labor to others, leaving less of it for the average person. Technology has either replaced or distanced us from much work, whether it is the digital keyboard separating us from the striking of the typewriter, which itself separated us from the craft of penmanship, or firearms, which separate the act of, well, killing. Recorded music enables people to listen without playing, and cars to move, all without any sense of power, material, or process.

Sailing is perhaps the most illustrative example, for with one hand on the tiller and another grasping the sheets, you are part of the tool that is the boat. You can feel every shift, from the turbulence of the sails to the smooth groove of a good tack. With that power naturally comes responsibility, but the manual interaction forces an appreciation of the process, material, and power involved.

Is there any reason we can't cultivate such an appreciation today? Not that I can see. Apart from the general awareness it would engender, I think it would lend a little more reverence to life; perhaps people would think before getting so handsy and reckless. Most of all I should imagine a difference at mass. It's all well and good to teach children to be reverent and careful, but you can't be reverent without cultivating the skill of reverence, and you can't do that without some appreciation, however slight and inchoate, of what you are and how you meet the world.

Hell, No

It's always telling when people pounce on a piece news and promptly declare I told you so! So it was with much amusement that I watched the stream of giddy reactions to Pope Francis' comments about salvation. The approbation flowed mostly from liberal quarters, Catholic and otherwise, rejoicing in. . . what exactly?

They interpreted Pope Francis' statement to mean that atheists can get into heaven. Now this might seem a charitable and Christian sentiment, and indeed there is a reasonable path to such a conclusion. For example, it's possible to believe God's love so vast that it simply swaddles all of his children in infinite forgiveness, irrespective of creed or deed. That's variously problematic, though not patently absurd, but it and the assumptions about Pope Francis' recent statement, especially in the context of the ambiguities Fr. Z mentions above, are potentially troublesome.

Namely, because some people are known to be quite bad, few think that everyone is going to heaven. So one naturally then wonders what's worse than what, and then because people can reform, how you can make up for sin. There is of course a simple, orthodox answer: repent in the sacrament of reconciliation. There's surprisingly little need to consider details if you're as good and grateful as possible. Of course, since this discussion revolves around atheists, repentance is not an option. The only alternative then is a calculus computing what you can do in life to make up for sin, a calculation in which all actions are fungible and the result of which is that everyone's tally neatly balances so they end up in heaven. If you do good deeds, then God won't send you to hell just for not believing in him. If you do great deeds, then God won't send you to hell for minor sins. If you do certain good deeds, then God won't send you to hell for not doing certain other good deeds. The conclusion here is that no one's in hell except Hitler and Caligula.

The origins of such expectations are not hard to imagine: it's difficult fully to imagine the joy of reunification with God, therefore our most potent experiences with love and joy are with our loved ones. As a result, we really cannot entertain the idea that our loved ones will be punished, let alone infernally, eternally damned. Can you look at your wife, or brother, or parent, and hold in your mind the knowledge that they're going to hell? If you could, you'd probably be deathly afraid. Yet we moderns don't really fear quite so much, we fret and worry and sputter about minutiae, but we don't fear. My thinking therefore, is that, just maybe, we don't entertain rosy notions about salvation because we believe in God's bountiful grace, but because we've refused to confront our fears. Fears about what kind of people we are, fears about the implications of our beliefs, fears about the unknown.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila, one of the great anachronisms of the 20th century, wrote that:

The Church was able to baptize medieval society because it was a society of sinners, but her future is not promising in modern society, where everyone believes he is innocent. [1]

Guilt: what a dismal thought it seems to the modern. To him, guilt is an accident of an insufficiently liberal system of ethics, the puritanism of some obtuse positive law, rather than part of our nature, a part inextricably bound up in our salvation. And so the modern makes paeans to peace and progress and perfection, when the medieval said with humility suscipe deprecationem nostram, and with joy miserere nobis.

Unloved

Lovers of the Latin Mass make various paths in justifying the traditional form of the Roman Liturgy. It is reverent, it is beautiful, it is time-honored. We explain its structural coherence and its sense of motion. We talk about beauty and utility of Latin. True all, but such efforts are mostly useless. What is not useless, however, is our affection for the Extraordinary form.

We just plain love it. The quiet, the focus, the postures. We love the rhythm and gravitas of the Latin. We love the music, whether the ecstasy of high classical compositions, the dense webs of renaissance polyphony, or the unadorned lines of plainchant. We love the feeling of continuity with Catholics of every time and place. We love every bit and the glorious totality of the mass in which one feels at home.

In contrast, I've never heard anyone express any affection about the Novus Ordo, let alone wax poetical about it. Yes, they may like going to an NO mass, but that's because of what it is by nature, or what they think it is, not the form it takes. They like it or respect it because they know it is important, not because its form transports or enraptures them.

They may like singing at mass, but they don't like Marty Haugen. I've never heard anyone express that they love how their lector-neighbor reads the passages, or how their hairdresser distributes Holy Communion. Never have I heard someone confess a call to universal brotherhood when the cantor raises her arm to incite invite, the congregation. I still seek the encomiastic literature praising the seventh inning stretch that is the sign of peace. Now I've never heard anyone even try to defend these practices on empirical grounds, but that's the point: without reference to a principle, the only common appeal of these practices is whim.

Of course these gestures are not intrinsic to the NO and were you to strip them and follow the letter of the reform, you would find a mass resembling the Latin. Doing so of course puts off the progressives, who never consider themselves progressives, which suggests that their loyalties are not to the law of Sacrosanctum Concilium but whatever post Vatican II version of it they first embraced. It was an emotional embrace, too . They turned, and they will not turn again. Never mention that SC promotes chant and Latin and never ask them to point out where it mentions moving altars and receiving Holy Communion in the hand. They turned, but not to SC.

The old days for sure had demerits. Yet for all the degeneration of the ars celebrandi, the old masses inspired devotion. The NO, for all of the hope that it would appeal to the ethos changing times, seems not to have. Have there been more secular generations than those born in the 1970s and 80s, generations born to the boomers who got on board the reform bandwagon?

Worse than failure is the wholesale lack of culpability, a refusal that what they supported might not have served its purpose. It was the hippies or communists or conservatives who were at fault, not the reformers. When I hear such arguments I think of Gordon Ramsay's TV show Kitchen Nightmares. In every episode, the desperate owners with their business on the verge of closing have called in Gordon, who before tasting asks them first to rate their food on a scale of 1-10 and then explain what's wrong with the restaurant. The owners invariably reply that their food is a 10 and the problem is that there are not enough customers. When he tries to change the menu they predictably reply that they don't want to alienate their customers, to which an enraged Gordon replies, "There's nobody in your damn restaurant!"

Likewise, there's no acknowledgement that a flat, languid mass in a modern church, with sappy music, in the common tongue, with disposable missalettes, untrained lectors, hand-shaking, umpteen extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, a rambling and incoherent homily, and asides tossed in here and there, might be harming people. There's no sense of reverence for what worked or responsibility to make sure that what they do is working now. Progress came, and thus improvement.

Or not. Maybe what we have is a sucking lack of vitality. Empty pews, empty coffers. We have an artistic world which can't muster for the dusty paradigm any more than pop-tune wannabes every bit as forgotten and unloved as the Toronto Mass of whenever. We may have traded in the eternal for the ephemeral, but still today the most exciting work is being done in the chant world, where interest and resources are simply exploding. Funny about the timeless.

A Friend of Mine: Beyond Polyphony

As any APLV readers know, the classical music greats feature prominently on the blog. Please don't think, though, that we neglect that modern music which speaks straight to the heart. Right here we have a great 20th century hit which cuts past those nasty fugal complexities behind us for some toe-tapping elation. In a way this is purer song, finer expression through its liberation from complex harmonies and expressive means. Listen.

First, hear how the symmetry of those opening notes, three pairs of two, is broken by the seventh, lone note. One does not simply write such a groovy theme. One is inspired. Likewise, notice the triplet figure in the bass rolling on and on, as if eternally, reminiscent of a great passacaglia from Bach, Purcell, or Buxtehude. See lastly how yet another figure theme lays atop the bass, there.

Naturally we cannot ignore the text, which is deliberately emphasized by the lack of musical development. The text features rhyming couplets, emphasizing contrasting pairs such as different and same by their end-stopped placement and important concepts such as name, and same by the end-rhyme. Lastly, the imagery references everything from the ancient myth of Actaeon. "Once I tried to run," to the modern morality tales of Dudley-Do-Right, "He is like a Mountie, he always gets his man."

Complemented by the timeless look of leather vests and pelvic swaying, this video is simply electrifying. Zap!

Six Bach Dances: Part II: The B Minor Mass

And so flung wide are the doors of heaven.

IV. Gloria: Cum Sancto Spiritu

This festive trumpets-and-drums finale closes the ring of the Gloria which kicked off with another dancing D major fanfare. We begin vivace in 3/4 time with one of Bach's most rhythmically potent figures in the first of three sections of free declamatory material which sandwich the two fugues.

In the free sections dancing figures in the accompaniment leap and bound over sustained notes on patris  or ride virtuosic waves of ecstatic thirty-second notes on gloria, producing contrasts of texture and symbolism.

The two fugues utilize a variant of the opening figure for a theme against which he throws, "an animated countersubject, a weaving, conjunct idea on the word 'Amen,' which acts as a perfect foil for the leap filled main subject." [Stauffer, 93-94] The fervor and flurry of second fugue is charged by doubling instruments and false fugal entries, producing a feeling of spontaneous exuberance and, as Stauffer wisely observes, liberation.

It is one of soul's purest pleasures to be carried off in the glory of the Cum sancto stretti as they overflow into the rivers of amens and one grand affirmation: In gloria Dei Patris.

V. Credo: Et Resurrexit

Where the Cum Sancto Spiritu flowed easily and graciously from the noble bass aria Quoniam tu solus Dominus, the trumpets-and-drums Et Resurrexit is an epoch-making break from "the crown of thorns" that was the dissonant Crucifixus.

If the swelling elan of this movement, with rising figures every which way and a positively irresistible downbeat, don't quicken your pulse, check it. Bach has here combined the dignity of regal galanterie and the verve of spontaneous festal feast into a hymn of purest praise.

VI. Credo: Et Expecto

Like the Cum Sancto the Et Expecto flows without delay from the previous movement and like the Et Resurrexit this follows one of great gravity. Bach links the movements with an adagio bridge where a simple and declaratory anapestic figure on A in the first soprano which no sooner begins to fall through the voices than it falls into tempo Vivace e Allegro against a rising fanfare as the movement proper begins. 

After the orchestral ritornello of the fanfare figure the voices rejoin for a short fugato and every factor conspires to paint a clear sense of gesture, space, and scale. First, the leap of a fifth in the figure itself suggest the raising of one's senses to the celestial and divine. Second the rising entrances from the tenor to the second soprano draws the scale and gives a sense of graded escalation while the leap from the bass to first soprano suggests a spiritual vaulting to the heavens. 

The final fugal section achieves a similar sense of space and scale but here a contrast in both sustained and melismatic lines on saeculi, suggesting both the roll of ages and the constancy of the eternal firmament, all complemented by the heraldry of the paired fanfares in the trumpets above.

–

Bibliography

Stauffer, George B. Bach: The Mass in B Minor: The Great Catholic Mass. Yale University Press. 2003.

Six Bach Dances: Part I: Passion Sarabandes

The rhythms of dance are at once wax earthly and celestial, calling the listener to join his corporeal form to a timeless continuance. No dance wants to end and no composer understood this innate property better than Bach, whose dances not only in suites but also sacred choral works remain sculptures of rhythmic perpetuity as they within hold the most expressive harmonies. 

Here on this Good Friday I would take a look at three movements from Bach's two surviving Passions. All three are built on sarabande rhythms in 3/4 time and make use of the room within the sarabande for both gentility and passion.

I. St. John Passion, BWV.245: Tenor Aria, Ach mein Sinn

Score & Text @ Bach Cantatas Site

The St. John Passion's counterpart to Matthew's more famous Erbarme dich, the tenor aria Ach mein Sinn is Peter's turmoil after his threefold denial of Jesus. Yet where the Erbarme dich is a haunting, twining torment in the memory, Ach mein Sinn is an extroverted display of furious self abasement. Where the twists and turns in the Erbarme dich seem as Peter's sin again and again trickling into his mind, they here seem daggers amidst the din of dissonance, halting dotted rhythms, and rising and falling phrases. 

II. St. John Passion, BWV.245: Chorus: Ruht wohl

Score & Text @ Bach Cantatas Site

The stately sarabandes which close both of Bach's surviving passions have been variously referred to as  lullaby-like. This is somewhat appropriate, given the gentle flute and oboe parts above and the falling figures, suggestive of laying-down, which both pieces also share. Rising-and-falling figures, the lullaby-rocking, if you will, also contribute to the soporific mood, but the grieving leaps in the chorus and descending chromatic bass are bitter contrast to the sweet gentility of the rhythm.

III. St. Matthew Passion, BWV.244: Chorus: Wir setzen uns

Score & Text @ Bach Cantatas Site

Here the more regular sarabande rhythm creates a more persistent, sepulchral tone while the sudden shifts into dissonance draw an expressive interiority within the scene-painting of Christ's burial. The contrasting emotions of grandeur in the sarabande rhythm and tenderness in the falling figures, of personal grieving in leaps and communal grieving in vertical dissonance, and the death of Jesus the Man and Christ the Lord coalesce into one unfolding both immanent and transcendent.

–

Bibliography

Little, Meridith & Jenne, Natalie. Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach. Indiana University Press. 1991, 2001.

Stapert, Calvin R. My Only Comfort: Death, Deliverance, and Discipleship in the Music of Bach. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Co. 2000.

Steinberg, Michael. Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide. Oxford University Press. 2005.

The Long Road

I was in my youth a terrible procrastinator, putting off everything from making beds to writing papers. Only rather recently did I learn to plan ahead and work on projects over time. That my own change of habit seems to have coincided with Pope Benedict XVI's Pontificate is surely coincidental, but not without meaning.

You see my own discovery was not one of utility or efficiency. I didn't learn to take the long path for the purpose of doing better work, although that would have been sensible. Instead I came to realize that I neither enjoyed nor came to a full understanding of the task when I pressed it out in an afternoon. Where once I had pride in my ability to work with little time, I grew to feel cheated. I could finish work and well, but I never lived with ideas until I learned to make a joy and journey of them.

I see in many ways a similar path and love in the Pontificate of Pope Benedict. What could result in the short run, I asked at the time, from Summorum Pontificum? (Much, but still more in time.) Of Anglicanorum Coetibus? (Much, but. . .) Yet theirs is not the path of revolution or reactionary restoration, but of building the good, slowly over time. It is the work not of monument building but of cultivation, and cultivation must be done over time for it consists not in conversion by intimidation or legislation but by inspiration, inspiration at the highest level by the mass, and at the human level by the serene, joyful, and abiding spirit of His Holiness.

The confidence he gave to those in sympathy with his spirit, Catholic in every way and open to all truth and love and beauty, will be seen not in any one, grand gesture, but bear fruit in good lives and beautiful things. To have had as Pope such a kindred, though far excelling, spirit as Benedict is to have been validated as an intellectual and scholar, as a man and humanist, and excited as a Catholic.

–

Sacred Music VII: Canons and Constraints

At the heart of our various essays on the liturgy and musical style has been my argument that certain musical procedures, namely polyphonic ones, are by nature the most appropriate for liturgical music.

To further this point I would like to compare two contrasting developments of a theme from Johann Pachelbel. The first is the composer's own, the famous Canon/Chaconne in D, and the second is a contemporary arrangement by pianist George Winston. Please note that I'm not suggest Pachelbel's piece is by any means the ideal liturgical piece, but rather that his technique creates a far different effect with the theme than Winston's, and that effect is more amenable to the liturgy's needs.

Studying Pachelbel's work we observe two features at work: a canon in the violins over the ground bass in the cello.

These two procedures will provide an overarching sense of stability throughout, the counterpoint of the canon constraining the elements and weaving them into a texture and the ground bass serving as a rhythmic and harmonic touchstone. None of the variations steals the show. All of the energy is focused and balanced.

The effect is in great contrast to that of Winston's set of variations, which feels like a series of riffs and subdivisions rather than a cohesive whole with a sense of direction. Here the rhythms are unchecked and we are jerked by the variations rather then embedded in the texture. The result is a profoundly more free-wheeling feel, despite, incredibly, the presence of Pachelbel's ground bass.

Again, this comparison is not qualitative by a study in contrasts. How much more contemplative is Pachelbel's piece with it's Baroque aesthetic of constrained expressivity than the contemporary variations which seem to seize at you with every jingle and jangle. Pachelbel's rhythm's are vigorous, yet it is a fire refined by an aesthetic of balance, of harmony in the non-musical sense of conformity and congruity.

The Impossible Task

Throughout most of the year, arguing for traditional Catholic liturgical music, chant, is a difficult task. You have to contend with indifference, ignorance, philistinism, and, most fiercely, the inertia of the status quo. Yet Advent inertia is a whole different beast from the habits of the rest of the year. Advent is not like Lent, when you might be able to slip a solemn tone in amongst the usual assortment of dour hymns, or Ordinary Time when dropping On Eagle's Wings one week won't ruffle anyone's feathers. No, during Advent people have expectations, namely that of yuletide cheer peppered with a few minor thirds. Never mind the miracle and implications of incarnatus est et homo factus est, one must serve up the usual sweet fodder. The details don't seem to matter too much, as long as you serve the following courses:

• twelve toe-tappers
• eleven pop tunes
• ten minor melodies
• nine cheery carols
• eight bobbing ballads
• seven gooey lullabies
• six wintry airs
• five golden oldies
• four rhyming refrains
• two merry rounds
• one Old Testament anthem
• and Handel's Hallelujah chorus

You'll know you've pleased everyone if you see Fezziwig come jiggering out of the sacristy.

Now I'm not usually persuaded by the claim that parishioners want the music that's played at church. I don't think people would miss the Mass of Creation were it suddenly to disappear. Many people expect some kind of music, not unreasonably, but they don't care too much about style or content. Yet during Advent and on Christmas. . . So what to do? How does one finagle a sacred mass without a yuletide revolt in the pews? I have a few suggestions.

The first is to stay calm. There's a place in the world for people who have no musical taste (Arctic penal colonies), so don't get apoplectic because they prefer The First Noel to Puer Natus Est or some bird's nest from Rutter to a Byrd Gloria. This isn't the time to give lectures about textual primacy or voice leading to such parishioners. Just tie them up and leave them somewhere for the winter.

Second, be practical. This is also not the time to push your ideas, however beautifully developed and presented, on choir directors. They tend to be busy and frazzled during December. By now you're probably out of time to persuade them, so instead just throw away all the music you don't like. They're not organized enough to have extras.

Third, if you manage to incorporate proper music into a mass but expect Occupy Schola to show up demanding Go Tell It on the Mountain, consider ending the mass with something popular. If you give them what they want at the end, they might forget about what came earlier. A compromise.

Fourth, try offloading the cheesy music to a Lessons and Carols concert. You might not want to yield this occasion to the philistines, but better it than mass.

Lastly, people slip back into old habits, so you'll probably never improve things once and for all.

Review: Gardiner Conducts Beethoven

Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. The Monteverdi Choir.
Conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. 
Carnegie Hall. November 17, 2012.

Beethoven's Missa Solemnis holds a well-earned reputation for taxing singers with its tessitura, dynamics, and length. Period players like those of The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique run against additional challenges, with horn players swapping bits and violinists fiddling delicately against gut strings. Tonight even Sir John Eliot sweat up a storm as he led his ensembles through Beethoven's massive missa. The humble audience, however, receives little credit for following this exhausting piece for its duration. I did commit this time, and as close to fully as ever I have. Such may sound strange, "this time," but we fallible, distractible, humans, even music lovers, scholars, and aficionados, even performers, don't live in the whole piece every time. Cares intrude, fatigue sets in, wrappers are crinkled. Last night, however, Sir John Eliot, his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and The Monteverdi Choir were in full form. They made something special, and I went right along, note-for-note, now toe-a-tapping, then water-eyed, here a goofy grin on my face, there jaw agape. It was quite a night.

The woodwinds shone throughout, first bringing the Kyrie to intimate life, a life of presence but not activity, from their tender, luminous opening and the warm halo they add to the invocations of Kyrie, to the doom they herald and to which the soloists reply in imperiled urgency, Christe. Sir John Eliot meticulously shaped the remainder of the Kyrie giving weight and height to the impeccable declamation and intonation of the soloists, in particular Tenor Michael Spyres and Bass Matthew Rose. Without explication or philosophizing we heard what it means to call someone Lord and Christ.

The soft, tapered end of the Kyrie throws the forte opening of the Gloria into relief sharp enough to raise the hairs of the most casual listener. The dynamics here are so controlled that one never dulls to the forte or gets stuck in a rut of loud alternating with soft. The dynamics are rich and unified by a firm sense of forward movement, moving from the soft, fragile pax hominibus to an adoramus te of such power and volume I winced, then to a fleeting, pious adoramus te, and ending with the brazen glorificamus te.

After the four praises the winds again set the tone, this time with the oboes hollowing out a warm and gentle space for the gratias agimus tibi within this massive, rollicking movement. What the woodwinds shape in tone Gardiner shapes in time, and with this shaping the gratias becomes a discrete, personal prayer within a larger more grandiose movement. The same applies to the sections Qui tollis.
Gardiner keeps the finale, a flourish of fanfares and entrances of in gloria Dei Patris, full but not ponderous, and always finely articulated. This dense section easily collapses into a a brassy avalanche but Gardiner kept it light yet forceful.

The brass and winds launch the Credo in exceptional form. The bassoons were particularly nimble, neatly shifting from sprightly steps and walking lines to tortuous counter-melodies and plosive fortes. They not only gave the movement, especially its opening, a full, almost brusque bottom, but also, under Sir John Eliot, brought out figures that often remain on the page.

The glories of the Credo are twofold, though. First are the vigorous rhythms which give confident, joyful expression to the faith declared. From the steady, petrine Credo figure itself to the agressive de Deo vero and non factum, these figures animate the movement and bring to vivid life the text, in this case the faith itself, reaching an apotheosis in the dauntless, even strident fanfares ending with the great fugue on et vitam venturi saeculi. The courageous playing here adds a veritable sense of risk and pride in the growth of this timid figure from its humble origins nestled up with the sopranos through its brassy, celebratory climax.

Second is the incarnatus est, one of the glories of all music. It's also another wicked shift of dynamics and mood, from the swift descending figures of descendit de coelis to the soft basson pulse. We move in the space of a few bars from literal word painting, a descending figure to represent descent, to re-creation. While we perceive much of the movement as depiction, the symbolic language of this scene, the coming-into-being in the flickering bassoon, the hovering flute trill and the glimmer at de Spiritu Sancto, and the departure to the ethereal world of the Dorian mode, not only mimics but makes. We feel as if we have borne witness, and hence the power of the epoch-ringing declaration, et Homo factus est. The solo vocalists here were so soft and tender I leaned in as if trying to hear the news as it spread from part to part.

The winds and horns again made the moment in the opening to the Sanctus, which was as peering into a cloud waiting for someone to step from the mists, a wait fulfilled in the Benedictus. Here Concertmaster Peter Hanson coaxed a pure tone and a sweet, songful prayer from his instrument over the soft footsteps of the drums and strings in the highlight of the evening.

While the prayer for peace and military music are rightly said to characterize the Agnus Dei, its opening struck me the most tonight. The steps of the Benedictus continue on, but here as the lamb and through the cries of miserere and peccata. Gardiner's balanced touch and forces kept the two elements in joint relief, never overshadowing one another.

In the pre-concert talk Sir John Eliot noted how the score is only part of the piece and that the instruments themselves hold much of the music. The score, he said, is the butterfly pinned to the board, and music is the cloud of them in the sky. Last night, they took flight.

Rilling on the B Minor Mass

Kyrie | Gloria | Credo | Sanctus & Agnus Dei

Haydn: Three Choral Fugues

The choral fugue has long been the crown with which composers consummate their greatest works.  From the leaping dances of Bach's B minor Mass to the flashing fugatos of Handel's Messiah, these choral coronations become the most memorable moments of the works. Such is in part due to their functions within the pieces as celebratory climaxes, but we need look only as far as Theodora for a finale grand and sombre.

Bach and Handel have in these pieces, with their expressive harmonies and vigorous rhythms which threaten to break free from all restraints, the perfection of their geniuses. For this good reason the music is much and well commented upon. Yet Haydn's genius too saw in the choral fugue's counterpoint not just the frame for a grand finale but the potential for depicting and amplifying an idea. Haydn would find for the nature of the fugue, with its many contrapuntal variations, ideas which themselves would flourish in such development. In his oratorio The Creation he found some ideal subjects and set to work.

I. The first of the three great choruses of the oratorio concludes the Third Day of Creation.

Stimmt an die Saiten, ergreift die Leier!
Lasst euren Lobgesang erschallen!
Frohlocket dem Herrn, dem mächtigen Gott!
Denn er hat Himmel und Erde
bekleidet in herrlicher Pracht.

Haydn's choral fugue for, "Denn er hat Himmel und Erde / bekleidet in herrlicher Pracht," is not simply a ride over thrilling rhythms, but the many entrances are appropriate to the logic of the text: the draping of magnificent garments. With each entrance we feel the hand of the Maker twirling pure splendor around his creation.

II. The choral finale to the Fourth Day is well-known to English speakers as "The Heavens Are Telling" and it fares translation better than other movements. By what better way to display the myriad wonders of creation than by counterpoint's manifold arts of inversion, diminution, augmentation. . .

Die Himmel erzählen
die Ehre Gottes
und seiner Hände Werk
zeigt an das Firmament.

III. Effective though it is, Haydn's conclusion does not seem to live up to the previous movements, at least with respect to putting the counterpoint to inventive pictorial use. Perhaps the concept of praise doesn't admit to much development or lend itself to any contrapuntal expression other than, "every which way, forever," perhaps it's simply a perfect, if obvious, fit. 

Des Herren Ruhm,
er bleibt in Ewigkeit.
Amen.

Sacred Music from the Middle Ages to Today

Update: This video after several thousand views was blocked by several companies, evidently because they don't understand the concept of fair use.

Sacred Music V: Of Praise and Petition

Sacred Music: Part I | II | III | IV | V

I'm guessing that Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man got your attention just now. Doesn't he look happy? Look at those flailing arms and that big grin: he's ecstatic! He's ecstatic and he wants everyone to know. He just can't contain himself. Look at him!

In the course of affairs I have often heard the charge that Catholic sacred music is dolorous and depressing. It is not celebratory enough. Chant in particular is too serious. In place of such music Catholics should use big loud happy pieces during mass. Preferably this music should be in four parts and feature as much tinkling and thwacking accompaniment as possible. Mass should be HAPPY. After all we are "celebrating" the eucharist. Psalm 43.29 and the "sacrifice of praise" is then duly trotted out.

Now this sentiment is surely not to be condemned in toto any more than, say, the happy heart of Joseph Haydn that wrote his great symphonic masses should be castigated. The sentiment must, however, be moderated and for two reasons.

Foremost we must be reminded that prayer, all prayer, fundamentally maintains an element, even a prevailing element, of petition. We never simply praise God but always ask and hope that He be praised both to the utmost and per omnia saecula saeculorum. We hope that our humble offering of praise, subject as it is to our foibles, exalts. We hope that our love is pure and our craft refined. Thus even a laudatory prayer is not simply an effusion of joy but a hopeful request. All prayer, then, should maintain some spirit of supplication even as it exhorts or expresses.

Modern man of course has difficulty with this necessity because requesting implies submission and submission humiliates him, that is, it makes him humble. Petition seems to provide no vehicle for him to express himself or demonstrate the extent of his own genius and vast material resources but rather forces him to acknowledge his smallness and weakness.  Such an admission is uncomfortable for the modern man who has conquered so much and such brings us to our second reason that one must praise as supplicant, that otherwise the offering becomes a vehicle for the aggrandizement of the individual than of pure praise for God. This is a problem for much great music simply because the music is forever tied to its composer. In some way when we hear Handel will always hear not just music but Handel. Only the church's ancient and anonymous chants overcome this hurdle.

Now this imperative that prayer praise and petition God alone, what we might call the SDG imperative after the famous saying Soli Deo Gloria that  Bach appended to all of his music, has a profound implication, namely that all elements must focus on and only on a divine end. In other words, Christian worship is the worship of God. This means each element of sacred music must either directly contribue to a divine end by way of its overt meaning or by way of beautifying the work. For example, a text might worship in words and music might beautify it.

All else, by definition, serves another purpose. This implication itself has another: such music must be excellent. That which fails to be excellent contains, perhaps only in part, what is extraneous. Such is extraneous by virtue of having what is purposeless, and it is purposeless because it does not solely address God, is not beautiful, or accomplishes one of these aims but at some greater expense. For example, we might add words which unbalance the musical phrase or we may add notes which obfuscate the words. Too we may add either notes or words which are redundant and therefore undesirable as disruptive to the work's overall symmetry and logic.

The greatest works of sacred music contain the most excellent texts with no poor or extra words, the most excellent music in which all elements are necessary and meaningful, and harmony between these two elements.

If you enjoyed this essay you may also enjoy:

External:
Theological Problems of Church Music by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
Liturgy and Church Music by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

At APLV:
The Anonymous Artist
Causa Pulchritudinis
On Gratitude
Music and Community
Would You Sing it on a Boat?

Sacred Music IV: An Unfair Comparison

Gloria de Angelis vs. Gloria Bossa Nova

Is it fair to compare the ancient Missa de Angelis with the Missa Bossa Nova, circa 1966? Nope. Yet I make it to provoke a question in those who are not onboard the chant express.

1. If you don't like the 1966 piece but do like other non-chant music at mass, what's the difference between the Bossa Nova and what you do like?
2. Your answer to #1 has established has established a criterion for sacred music. What are its implications?

My Point

I would guess most people don't like the Bossa Nova mass and with good reason. It's hokey and lacks expressivity. It lacks anything of musical or structural interest. It's jingly and irreverent. These observations are all criteria for sacred music, criteria I think many people have. When one compares most popular liturgical music to the Bossa Nova I think most people will consider the Bossa Nova worse. Yet if this criteria exists then one most compare the music one does like to the same standards. One must ask, "If the Bossa Nova is less reverent than what I like, is there anything more reverent than what I like?" The answer I'm trying to suggest is of course, "chant." The next question I'm trying to suggest is of course, "then why not sing it?" Can it be too reverent, too expressive, too interesting, too good? Again, I think most people would say, "surely not," so I ask again, why not chant?

Bach: Quia fecit mihi magna

Quia fecit mihi magna, qui potens est.

One of the most brilliant and  bafflingly simple moments of music and an example of Bach's oft-cited "one-part" counterpoint, this is a priceless gem. Yes it is a masculine moment for the Magnificat, but has any other piece ever so captured the personal element of the Christian faith? Has one ever felt so guided, so gently rocked, so nestled, has the world and beyond ever seemed so ordered, so prepared, has all ever seemed so firm as in these thirty four bars? And has one ever then been so grateful?

Handel: But who may abide the day of His coming?

Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven greatly admired George Frederick Handel. That ought to be enough to convince the rest of us, no? It does not seem so. Praise of Handel usually takes the form of "appreciation" of "effects" and "craft" and "harmoniousness" rather than awe at inspiration. Indeed in our recent installment of our "Sacred Music" series we praised Handel for a most appropriate setting of a text in his Messiah. I myself commented on its "appropriateness" and not his genius. Well, here is something inspired.

In Part I of Messiah Handel sets the following text:

But who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner's fire.

To gain some appreciation for the task we may ask ourselves how we would set it? What tempo, meter, key, voices, and instruments do you use? What is the essence of the piece and what should it convey? What impression should it leave us with? Handel, appropriately, takes his cue from the source, the quotation's origin in the Book of Malachi.

Handel imitates the mood of the prophet with a setting for solo virtuoso. The detached longing of the opening andante yields to a sudden prestissimo as the speaker is seized in prophetic ecstasy, crashing and thrashing in a series of virtuosic leaps and runs. As is often the case with Handel this piece is moving in its simplicity and directness. Regardless of how often the piece was edited or transposed it demonstrates the composer's consideration of relationship between the form of the piece and the nature of the text and, in this case, a perfect marriage.

Kozena's performance, both musical and pantomimed, here is certainly channeling the prophetic and ecstatic current of the work. So does the direction with its extreme close up, a  direct and simple trick perfect for this piece.

Lastly, the opening images are provoking. This clip is from William Klein's filmed adaptation which features various videos contrasting and complementing the music. What is Klein suggesting here? Are the men in the opening charlatans? Does their presence suggest Malachi was also? Are the people fainting fools? Are we fools for being moved by Handel, or is it the artistic act that elevates, or creates, the true transcendent experience? Very provoking.

Bach's Cantatas as 21st Century Chamber Music

To those who wish to get to know these priceless works [i.e. Bach's cantatas] in bulk, [Albert] Schweitzer's advice is invaluable---to gather a few friends together round a pianoforte and sing them through. The inadequacies of performance are compensated for by the intimacy of common music-making. Let all the sopranos sing in unison the recitatives and arias for that voice, and so on. Afterwards the student, in the solitude of his sanctum, with the great score in his lap and the memory of the actual sound of the great music in his mind's ear, can attune himself to the spirit of the noblest master of all time.

W.G. Whittaker The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach (Vol 1, pg. 433)

W.G. Whittaker's words are music to the amateur musician's ears. I have often wished to do just what he recommends, not only with Bach but with the Renaissance masses and madrigals I love little less.

The musicians who rendered the music in Leipzig's Lutheran liturgies might justly be called amateurs (a word undeservedly maligned and misused today): Bach's difficulties in getting his works adequately performed with the resources to hand are well-documented.

Bach composed in such a way to buttress his poorly-trained singers, doubling their vocal lines in the strings or winds. His vocal music, difficult though it is, is within the compass of an amateur's abilities. And with the help of a piano, to fill in the harmonic gaps, other instruments might be added as available. And although most of the Baroque instruments will be unavailable to the amateur, reasonable substitutions of modern instruments might be made, with due allowance for style and ensemble.

The Petrucci Library contains the complete scores of the cantatas, from the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe, as well as vocal scores with piano reductions. In short, the musical resources are easily accessible. Go ye therefore and sing!