Musica Sacra: Sacred Art?
In August 2003, the Vatican Secretary of State, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, stated publicly that 40 years after the liturgical changes introduced following the last Vatican Council, "it is right to ask what the liturgical reform itself has represented for the renewal of Christian communities," in other words, to examine the way in which it has been implemented, in order to relaunch it. Participants in the Italian National Liturgical Week were urged by the Cardinal "to ask oneself with clarity and sincerity if the reform has experienced some weak point and where, and, above all, how it can be relaunched for the good of the Christian people ... perhaps some of the principles of the Liturgy Constitution have to be better understood and more faithfully applied." The fundamental considerations which follow may be understood as an attempt to respond in a constructive way to this official invitation.
I.
Not only when it is explicitly religious or sacred, but by its very nature, music (like the other arts) is theological. By this, I mean that the arts constitute a distinct kind of what one might call "natural theology." A musical work of art is a complex metaphor which can, in its own way, convey the "real presence" of God, even when not labeled as such. One thinks of the Bach's St. Matthew Passion, or Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, along with other great works of musica religiosa. In their own way, such works of art anticipate the new creation (cf. Apoc. 21:1-4), thereby suggesting a Trinitatian account of the God present in the creation and reception of such works (A. Monti, A Natural Theology of the Arts, Aldershot, 2003).
One of the essential characteristics of art is its affinity with religion, which in certain ways renders artists interpreters of God's infinite perfections and, in particular, of the beauty and harmony of God's creation (cf. Pope Pius XII, "Allocution to Italian Artists," April 8, 1952). If this be true for art in general, it is even more true of religious art: art that serves religion, art that is inspired and promoted by religion, art that turns to religion for its themes and subjects - and such art has always existed. The fact of this relationship between art (and hence the reality of a religious art) becomes questionable only when the two attempt to exclude each other and confine themselves to their own separate spheres. Though born in the age of the so-called Enlightenment, this problem is still a pressing one in our own time. The connection of art with worship or liturgy, must be viewed in the broader context of the relationship of art to religion.
A work of art manifests the creative spirit of the artist, some part of whose inner life penetrates and marks his or her work. There is an analogy between God's creative activity and the artist's creative talent since both are, in a sense, life-giving, though of course God creates extra-divine entities out of nothing by His will alone, whereas the artist needs matter already created and ready to be formed with the help of implements. The work of art is a new and different expression of something quite familiar, created according to the pattern engraved into the artist's mind and soul by the Divine Creator.
The artist serves as God's particular tool, whose supreme task is to present and reveal to his fellow men the Infinite in definite form: the Timeless in the time-bound; the Permanent in the temporary; the Essential in the accidental; the eternal Ideas of God in the ephemeral matter of this world. When a work of art succeeds in transforming heavy and opaque terrestrial substance into a transparent showcase of God's eternal ideas materialized in this world, then it automatically becomes a message of God, a road sign pointing to Him. The stronger the impact of the creative talent, the clearer is the message, the wider the road.
Some four decades ago, the Second Vatican Council frequently used the term ars sacra, sacred art, which though more specific than "religious art," is somewhat more inclusive that the term "liturgical art," which applies to the objects (e.g. sacred vessels, vestments, books) or to the organization and decoration of space used for worship (e.g. architecture, painting, sculpture, stained glass). Sacred art is the highest manifestation of religious art (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 122); it is the art that serves the official worship of the Church by providing for use at worship things that are worthy signs and symbols of supernatural realities.
The Church has not officially adopted any particular artistic style for her exclusive use. Rather she allows free access to the sacred precincts of the temple for styles of every epoch, provided they evince the reverence and honor due the holy rites in sacred buildings (S.C., n. 123). Since sacred art furnishes the "implements" and places of worship used for the celebration of the divine liturgy, it is to that extent conditioned by the ministerial task it must fulfill, a task that can be at once symbolic and instrumental. Thus it is clear that the Church has always claimed the right to pass judgment on ars sacra, and to decide which works are in fact to be regarded as suitable for sacred use (cf. Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, Instructio De Arte Sacra, June 30, 1952). Plainly, artists and architects as well as authors and composers must have both the skill and the will to find in religion the inspiration of methods and plans best adapted to the needs of divine worship (cf. Pius XII, Mediator Dei, 1947).
One of these needs is surely that of exciting in the worshippers sentiments of piety and devotion. The Church, mother and teacher, created in the course of almost two millennia an enormous artistic patrimony, including a proper and high artistic liturgical language with which she speaks to souls and souls speak to God. "It is not lawful for Christian artists to ignore such a language; they must learn it and respect it, so as worthily to express their conceptions. It is not the Church for art, but rather art for the Church" (Circular of the Holy Office, February 25, 1947). As Pius XII reminded us, it is not easy for men to pass from the sensible to the spiritual, to raise themselves from imperfect beauty to preeminent Beauty. But the effort needs to be made because souls ennobled, elevated, and prepared by truly sacred art are thus better disposed to receive the religious truths and the grace of Christ the Lord (cf. Pius XII "Allocution to Italian Artists," April 8, 1952). The legitimate liturgist cannot fail to note here that for the realm of Musica sacra, every single one of these points was anticipated in an authoritative manner at the beginning of the twentieth century by Pope St. Pius X in a famous document whose centennial we have recently marked.
Ars sacra is at bottom a pastoral art, at the service of the praying community whilst expressing genuine Catholic truth in the vesture of beauty. Even in the field of music for worship, this effectively rules out "the gaudy, the ornamental, the petty, the ostentatious" and "all stereotyped commercial imitations" abusively termed sacred art, such as the hee-haw anthems of countrified sacro-pop which can be heard in all too many Catholic sanctuaries on any given Sunday ... with sackbut, organ, pipe and drum - ad terrorem omnium.
II.
A phenomenon which recurs in the history of Catholic worship and of its music, has been the struggle to maintain and intensify the interiorization of divine worship, especially the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice. In the early years of the nineteenth century, a great bishop, Johann Michael Sailer of Regensburg (1751-1832) recognized that one of the main factors contributing to the deterioration of Musica sacra was the fateful chasm which had opened up between religion and art. His thesis is simply stated: Religion is leagued with art through an alliance which is neither accidental nor preconcerted, but rather necessary and essential, and which did not arise yesterday or today, but which is everlasting. By "religion," Sailer means "the one, true, eternal religion ... which revealed itself in the incarnate Christ with all the fullness of that brilliance which will ... remain until the end of the world." So understood, religion is more than a dead concept, an empty sign or a hollow phrase. It is a vital, interior existence, a "form of life," a sharing in the life of God Himself through grace. Such religion, as spirit and life,"has an ineradicable instinct to reveal itself, to make itself perceptible, visible, audible, palatable," indeed to form for itself a "body," because this religion "is a flame from the higher and everlasting world which simply cannot remain concealed." It must move and penetrate man's receptive heart. And so religion holds within itself the predisposition and "the driving force to become Church, to appear and to live as Church in this world," the while "christening with the fire of its spirit the religious predisposition present in men."
Now, according to Sailer, whatever renders a man's interior life externally perceptible to eye and ear, and represents externally the Incomprehensible and the Ineffable, is "art" in the broadest sense of the term. And whatever permits the life of interior religion to become "exterior," is "sacred art" in the widest sense of the term. Such "sacred art" does not rest content with having "expressed the life of interior religion ... through buildings, paintings, statues and the like," but "impelled by a fullness of enthusiasm,... it does not rest until it has made the convictions of religion more audible in sacred speech, and the emotions of religion much more stirring in heavenly songs, consecrating the human voice as the interpretive organ of religion, so that singing and instructing,... she proclaims only the wonderful works of God... sacred art does not rest until she has made a wonderful mutual consonance out of the tones produced by men, by the organ, and ... by other instruments, tuning them all to the song of the spheres until the whole has become heavenly music, and the mighty Hallelujah of the higher choirs of Heaven echoes and re-echoes in the lower choirs on earth."
As the epitome of all the fine arts, this "sacred art" fulfills its highest calling by serving interior religion and depicting or expressing it externally. This takes place in architecture, sculpture and painting, in poetry and in music. But the sacred flame which spontaneously reveals itself from a thousand overflowing hearts "falls back even more inflammable upon the hearth from which it arose." The alliance between religion and art is therefore twofold: art does not merely assist religion in an outward fashion, but she also assists religion in an inward direction. "The selfsame music, for example, which reveals inner devotion also preserves, strengthens, and heightens devotion wherever it is present, just as it arouses devotion wherever it is not yet present."
In Sailer's words, this twofold alliance of religion with art is both essential and necessary. "A religion which were to give up this alliance with the fine arts" would be contradicting itself, indeed is dead. "Just as it is proper to eternal Love to utter Itself in an eternal Word, the Logos, and to make this eternal Word known through creation, the governance of all things and through the Redemption, so too it is impossible for religion to shut itself up within itself - the impulse to reveal itself is quite as much a part of religion's nature as it is part of the Father's very nature to utter the eternal Word," which was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.
The conclusion appears inescapable: "Mankind cannot eradicate religion from the earth because religion is eternal, and mankind cannot separate sacred art from religion because the concordia of religion with art is essentially necessary....Just as the Christian religion once was born from the blood of the martyrs as from a divine seed, so too will sacred art once more be recalled to life from amid the ruins of the arts - and that despite the vandalism of all ages."
III.
Even the untrained observer would agree that the fine arts can also become unholy, since they are also a human product. Consequently, the fine arts, music included, "must have deviated from their inborn nobility to the precise extent that men themselves have done so. In other words, men have fallen away from the idea of art just as much as they have fallen away from the idea of religion. If the Whole collapses, the parts collapse along with it." Before we conclude our reflections, let us recall Sailer's striking image of the threefold garment with which art can be clothed, and let us ponder the question: which garment fits the music which resounds in Catholic churches today?
"There is an art which wears the garments of the slave, which lives in a state of the most profound abasement, which serves death....As soon as fine art permits herself to be degraded by flattering the folly of the age and by singing the praises of vice, then instead of a free princess she has become a vile slave.
"In addition to this degenerate art there is also a fine art in everyday garb, which serves the cause of ... merriment ... in order to help people forget their troubles for an hour. With frisky tunes she banishes care, and beautifies social life with happy jest and pretty pictures... .This is the fine art which remains at the midpoint between her high origin and her precipitous downfall.
"Finally, far removed from art in slave's garments, and immeasurably more sublime than the art in work-a-day garb, there stands art arrayed in festive raiment; she quaffs from the springs of the primeval homeland. This daughter of Heaven serves only the Sacred; she is resonant praise of God."
And now we conclude.
Religion and beauty belong together. The world will only appear to us in its full beauty when we view it as God's work of art - God Whose Spirit in the very beginning "hovered over the waters" as the principle of all formation. For a religious believer, artistic meditation easily and spontaneously passes over into religious adoration. If beauty be harmony, and beauty of soul be harmony of soul, then we are justified in saying that no power is able to create the harmonies and produce the beauty of soul which religion is able to call forth. A human being is never more beautiful than when he is adoring. A child at prayer, a mother at prayer, a praying man whether scholar or unskilled laborer - each is a picture of uncommon beauty. In religion, and above all in the most essential act of religion: in prayer, all the powers of body and soul are concentrated upon Almighty God, and thus the repose of recollection here matches the tension of the highest activity. There is no other power capable of awakening such perfect consonance as in the souls of praying communities.
In the Catholic liturgy, religion enters into a most intimate alliance with art, above all with music. When a religious community comes into existence as a praying community, it can find no more fitting expression of its religious attitudes and feelings than that purposeless play in which some have also located the essence of the Beautiful: dance in the case of the primitive peoples, music and drama at higher cultural levels, and in the Roman Catholic liturgy, the realization of the perennially Paschal Exsultent divina mysteria, the jubilant celebration of the divine mysteries in sacred music, in an artistic language which all men can understand because it knows no bounds. Such music has become in the wonderful expression of Cardinal Faulhaber, a fiery tongue of the Holy Ghost which speaks eloquently down through the ages, bringing to all men the good news of redemption and eternity, of love and security, of forgiveness and everlasting Paschal joys!
Fr. Robert A. Skeris is president of the Church Music Association of America and is with the Center for Ward Method Studies of the B.T. Rome School of Music at the Catholic University of America. He has written extensively on Church music and liturgy.
This item 6027 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
