Catholic World News News Feature

The Uneven History of Church Music April 15, 2003

By Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker

There is no shortage of people ready to bemoan the tired state of music in the Church today. And the reasons for the complaints are clear. Too many liturgies are dominated by the standard fare that first became popular in the 1970s, which can inspire torpor and even despair.

But one mistake that critics might make stems from thinking that our present confusion over music is unprecedented, or that it cannot be remedied. There have been many periods throughout Catholic history when liturgical music drifted far from its roots. But with urging from popes, guidance from pishops, and enthusiastic cooperation from musicians and the people themselves, many bad situations have been corrected and clarity has been restored.

The first documented case of trouble comes from the 1st century, when Pope St. Clement discovered that church musicians were singing psalms from the Christian liturgy at pagan festivals, probably for a profit. The Pope intervened with a letter that forbid the practice, for fear that Christian musicians would appear as "wandering minstrels, singers tellers of tales of high adventure, who perform their art for a mouthful of bread."

In the 4th century, St. Augustine himself complained that sometimes music in church seems "directed to the sound rather than the sense" of the faith, in which case he "would prefer to hear no singing at all."

Five centuries later, Pope Leo IV discovered that just 26 miles from Rome, one of the most important monasteries in all of Italy had been completely neglecting the Gregorian chant for years. The abbot, the Pope had heard, found the whole genre "distasteful." Leo IV upbraided the abbot for this opinion:

We command under sentence of excommunication that, in the singing and readings in your churches, you carry them out in no other way than that which Pope St. Gregory handed down, and We hold that you cultivate and sing this tradition always&

The eventual advent of polyphonic singing presented a new problem: singers who use the liturgy to improvise their own songs during Mass. In the 12th century, the Bishop of Chartres complained that much singing in church is "full of ostentation." "Such is the facility of running up and down the scale," he wrote, "the ears lose their power of judging."

In the same period St. Aelred, a Cistercian abbot in England, described in detail the alarming developments of the period. "To what purpose is that terrible blowing of bellows, imitating rather the crash of thunder than the sweetness of the human voice?" he asked. The saintly abbot continued: "Sometimes, and I write it with shame" the singing "is forced into the whinnying of a horse" and even "imitates the agonies of the dying." "And this ridiculous trifling," he said with disgust, "is called religion."

THE 14TH-CENTURY CORRECTION

In the early 14th century, Pope Clement the V noted that "many ministers of the Church," in addition to neglecting their prayers in favoring of sports like falconing and fox hunting, "do not fear to dance licentiously in the church cemeteries, and at times& sing silly songs." To correct the problem, he decreed that the liturgy should be "devoutly chanted" in all Cathedrals and churches.

One author from the mid 14th century (Jacob of Leige) complained that Catholic singers "contrive to sing a little in the modern matter" but

have no regard for quality; they sing too lasciviously, they multiply voices superfluously&breaking, cutting, and dividing their voices into too many consonants; in the most inopportune place they dance, whirl, and jump about on notes, howling like dogs. They bay and like madmen nourished by disorderly and twisted aberrations and use a harmony alien to nature herself.

Pope John XXII, ruling from Avignon, put a stop to all this with his encyclical Docta Sanctorum Patrum. He criticized composers who know "nothing of the true foundation upon which they must build& the mere number of the notes, in these compositions, conceal from us the plain-chant melody, with its simple, well-regulated rises and falls& These musicians run without pausing, they intoxicate the ear without satisfying it, they dramatize the text with gestures and, instead of promoting devotion, they prevent it." Pope John said that new music was fine, so long as it kept within the framework of Catholic tradition, but he legislated "to prohibit, cast out, and banish" music that departed too far from the purity of the chant.

During the period of the Reformation, the Bishop of Vienne, France, wrote to Pope Paul III to say that the Catholics needed to improve their music for fear of losing too many people to the Protestant sects. He said that many Catholic musicians "do not even know one note from another" and are generally "unskilled." They "permit themselves to roar than to sing in the choir" and "permit in the churches songs and organ music which arouse wantonness rather then piety." In response, the Council of Trent encouraged music that draws listeners to the "desire of heavenly harmonies, in the contemplation of the joys of the blessed."

POPE PIUS X INTERVENES

Similar problems were encountered again in the 17th and 18th centuries, and, by the 19th century, much of the chant and polyphonic repertoire was lost and displaced by popular music and the symphonic treatments by famous composers. It took the 20th century Pope Pius X to intervene and rescue the tradition--writing more encyclicals on music than all previous popes put together. Though it took Herculean efforts, he brought about a revival of chant and the music written in the tradition of chant.

A final attempt to repair the problem came with the Second Vatican Council, which decreed that that Gregorian chant is "specially suited to the Roman liturgy; therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services." Worried about the loss of tradition, Pope Paul VI issued a book of simple chants for parishes that he hoped (in vain) would enter into widespread use.

In all but the most recent attempts, the efforts by the popes and saints managed to bring about a revival of sacred music. But it was not only the legislation that wrought the change; the most powerful case for great Catholic music comes from the listeners.

The bulk of post-conciliar music is based on popular and commercial successes. People hang on to these newer compositions, not because they are musically sound or in some way integral to the faith, but because their sound is something familiar, and, through repetition, easily accessible. These works are not based on anything in Catholic tradition, but rather, on rhythms and melodies coming from the secular world.

Chant and polyphony, on the other hand, are the Catholic tradition, and upon being reintroduced to the ears and hearts of the people, will once again begin to sound familiar and welcome. It is precisely because it is not played or heard that the beautiful sound of chant and its polyphonic offspring are unfamiliar to Catholic congregations, and this lack of familiarity is what impedes its acceptance. With a minimum of exposure, ordinary parishioners would come quickly to accept chant. Truly sacred music is spiritually compelling from the first note.

All who complain about the present state of Catholic music: lift up your hearts! The beauty will return, if only we have will and desire to bring it back to the ears of the faithful, parish by parish.

[AUTHOR ID] Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker are respectively the president and director of the St. Cecilia Schola Cantorum in Auburn, Alabama, which has recorded two CDs of chant and polyphony. They would like to thank Thomas Day for his comments.