Posted on 06/27/2006 10:00:12 AM PDT by Ebenezer
The Pope has demanded an end to electric guitars and modern music in church and a return to traditional choirs.
The Catholic Church has been experimenting with new ways of holding Mass to try to attract more people. The recital of Mass set to guitars has grown in popularity in Italy; in Spain it has been set to flamenco music; and in the United States the Electric Prunes produced a "psychedelic" album called Mass in F Minor.
However, the use of guitars and tambourines has irritated the Pope, who loves classical music. "It is possible to modernise holy music," the Pope said, at a concert conducted by Domenico Bartolucci the director of music at the Sistine Chapel. "But it should not happen outside the traditional path of Gregorian chants or sacred polyphonic choral music."
His comments prompted the newspaper La Stampa to compare him with Pope Pius X, who denounced faddish classical and baroque compositions and reinstated Gregorian chants in 1903.
The Pope's supporters argue that the music played during Mass is a vital part of the communion between worshippers and God, and that medieval church music, with the liturgy, creates the correct ambience for perceiving God's mystery.
Cardinal Ersilio Tonini, the Archbishop of Ravenna, said:"Mass is the presence of Christ and the music adds so much more when the harmony allows the mind to transcend the concrete to the divine."
But Cardinal Carlo Furno, grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, said it was "better to have guitars on the altar and rock and roll Masses than empty churches". The use of modern music was a "sign of the vitality of the faith".
The argument is part of a wider debate about the Latin Mass, restricted in the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s because it was seen to be putting worshippers off going to Church.
The Pope believes that if Latin Masses are reintroduced, more Catholics will learn the words to the Gregorian chants that he advocates.
be nice, he's trying. He's one of the victims of rotten '70's and '80's catechesis.
You are in our prayers, mikemach5. Welcome home. ...but maybe it is time to decide about proposing to the young lady. God bless you both.
LOL! Although I must say I always thought there were some concepts so flawed it didn't matter who performed the work - and the Bossa Nova Mass was one of them!
Actually, he doesn't argue that popular music is fundamentally "bad" but rather that it is not the optimal medium for communicating intact sacred texts in a meditative manner.
That being said, let me retire from the discussion with a bit of encouraging advice I once got from a confessor: "Pray as you can; not as you can't."
'you know, you can listen to electric guitars anywhere. That's not what Mass is about. And there really is no such thing as "Youth Mass." There is only Mass.'
'Well excuse me. I guess I'm just not good enough for your Church.'
Well, now you know.
had to be said.
Fair enough...I must consider myself luck and eternally grateful for Monsignor Dan Tierney (my parish priest).
"... really look forward to the youth Mass ....because the priest is really good."
The focus of the Mass should be on Christ, not the personality of the priest.
Amen. I'll second that.
Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
Praise Him in His mighty Heavens.
Praise Him for His acts of power;
Praise Him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise Him with the sounding of the trumpet,
Praise Him with the harp and lyre,
Praise Him with tambourine and dancing,
Praise Him with the strings and flute,
Praise Him with the clash of cymbals,
Praise Him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord
Praise the Lord.
Psalm 150.
Doesn't sound like a Gregorian Chant to me.
I am assuming, if you consider it for awhile, you'd agree with me that such joy would have been out of place given the occasion.
Would you have been in the garden at Gethsemane, close to the Cross, upon which our Lord and Saviour was dying, shouting for joy, banging a tambourine, blowing a trumpet, etc?
**However, the use of guitars and tambourines has irritated the Pope, who loves classical music.**
I don't think Pope Benedict XVI is the only one who has been perburbed by this kind of music.
"Doesn't sound like a Gregorian Chant to me."
That's because you have probably never heard it chanted in Latin using one of the psalmtones.
Don't read the Bible much eh catholic? The Bible specifically states "loud crashing of SYMBOLS" making a great noise proclaiming Christ. Look it up yourself.
Show me in the New Testament where Jesus worshipped by crashing cymbals.
Never said Jesus worshipped by crashing symbols.
I did say to look it up yourself.
I did say to look it up yourself.
maybe you can look up the word "cymbals"
Jewish Encyclopedia.....MUSIC, SYNAGOGAL
It has been shown in the article Cantillation (Jew. Encyc. iii. 537b) that the desire to read the Scriptures in the manner indicated in Neh. viii. 8 has from time immemorial resulted in the use of some sort of musical declamation for the passages uttered aloud in the synagogue. For reasons very similar to those there discussed, the prayers and praises equally with the lessons have always been thus musically declaimed; and this declamation, developing in many lands under the influence of varying tonal surroundings through the long centuries, has gradually become extended into the vocal melody, solo or choral,in which the whole of the traditional services are now presented. The earliest synagogal music was founded upon the same system and method as prevailed in the orchestra of the Temple itself. Joshua ben Hananiah, who had served in the sanctuary as a member of the Levitical choir ('Ar. 11b), told how the choristers went in a body to the synagogue from the orchestra by the altar (Suk. 53a), and so participated in both services. As the part of the instruments in the Temple musical ensemble was purely that of accompaniment, and the voices could have given an adequate rendition without accompaniment (comp. Suk. 50b et seq.; 'Ar. 11; Num. R. vi.), the absence of instruments from the synagogue in no way modified the system of the song itself. This presented little that to modern ears would appear worthy the name of melody, being, like the Greek melodies which have been deciphered, entirely of the character of a cantillation; that is, a recitation dependent on the rhythm and sequence of the words of the text instead of on the notes of the tune, and influenced by the syntactical structure of the sentence instead of by the metrical form of the musical phrase. Nor would the style of singing, nasal, shrill, and alternately full of intricate graces and of sudden pressures on emphatic notes, altogether commend itself to Western ears as graceful or harmonious.
The dispersal of the Temple singers and the cessation of the performances of the musicians in the sanctuary influenced but slightly the synagogal cantillation, since the desire of many authorities that song should be abstained from in lasting mourning for fallen Zion, was never generally heeded when it became a question of song in worship (comp. Giṭ. 7a; Soṭah 48a; Alfasi on Ber. 25b; Asheri on Ber. 30b; Shulḥan 'Aruk, Oraḥ Ḥayyim, 560, 3). Indeed, from the earlier centuries there had been evident a desire to enhance the importance of the singing in the synagogal ritual. The officiant was required to have a pleasant voice and a clear enunciation (Ta'an. 16a; Pesiḳ. R. 25 [ed. Friedmann, p. 127a]; comp. Meg. 24b, 32a; Yer. Sheḳ. 1; Yalḳ., Prov. 932), and the voluntary assistance of good vocalists was regarded as meritorious. Among such Ḥiyya bar Adda is prominently mentioned (comp. Pesiḳ. 97a). Women were from the first entirely silent in the synagogue (Ber. 24a). The Shema', known to all, was chanted in unison; but the "Tefillah" (Shemoneh 'Esreh) was intoned by the officiant only, the congregation responding loudly in unison, as also when Ḳaddish was read (Soṭah 49a; Shab. 119b). The Psalms were chanted originally in a responsive antiphony (Soṭah 30b; comp. Graetz in "Monatsschrift," 1879, p. 197); but soon the antiphony developed into a general unison, as became the case, too, with the other passages gradually added to the ritual (Cant. R. 27a, end; Rashi on Ber. 6a; but comp. Zunz, "S. P." p. 61).
Later Amplification.
Yet it was only with the Piyyuṭim that music found scope for development within the walls of the synagogue, as the ritual began to crystallize into definite form, and prayerful verses took the place of didactic and dogmatic texts (comp. Zunz, l.c. pp. 7, 8, 59, 60). The Ḥazzan now became primarily the precentor. He sang the piyyuṭim to melodies selected by their writer or by himself, thus introducing fixed melodies (see below) into synagogal music. The prayers he continued to recite as he had heard his predecessors recite them; but in moments of inspiration or emotion he would give utterance to a phrase of unusual beauty or power, which, caught up by the congregants, would be repeated and preserved as a worthy expression of the thought underlying the day's service, coming at last into the form of a definite and well-recognized musical sentence, and so forming the substance of a prayer-motive (see below). There was little need to prompt him to greater energy in this direction; from the first it became more necessary to keep his intensity in check (comp. "Sefer Ḥasidim," §§ 158, 238, 251, 768).
Ancient Elements.
The music may have preserved a few phrases in the reading of Scripture which recalled the song of the Temple (comp. Ashirah; Shema'); but generally it echoed from the first the tones which the Jew of each age and country heard around him, not merely in the actual borrowing of tunes (of which there is continuous evidence from the days of Ibn Ezra; comp. his commentary on Ps. viii.), but more especially in the prevailing tonality or description of scale on which the music was based. These elements persist side by side, rendering the traditional intonations a mass composed of details differing immensely in age and in style, and only blended by the gradual modification of each by what must be regarded as the old and constant flux of their rendition. The oldest element is the parallelism which runs through all the traditions, according to which chants divergent enough in detail of tune, and systematically so in tonality or scale-structure, are applied to corresponding passages after a similar method. This peculiarity appears to have been recognized as early as the days of Hai Gaon (d. 1038; comp. Zunz, "Ritus," p. 11). It has already been shown (see Jew. Encyc. iii. 539, s.v. Cantillation) to be very ancient, and possibly to date back to the method of rendition utilized for the Psalms in the Temple ritual. The underlying principle, according to the present writer's formulation, is the specific allotment in Jewish worship of a particular mode or scale-form to each sacred occasion, because of some esthetic appropriateness felt to underlie the association. In contrast to the meager modal choice of modern melody, which is fettered within the range of two modes, the minor and the major, the synagogal tradition revels in the possession of a number of scale-forms preserved from the remote past, much as are to be perceived in the plain-song of the Catholic, the Byzantine, and the Armenian churches. And it draws its supply not alone from the same sources as these Christian traditions: it finds itself enriched also from the origins from which proceeded, on either hand, the Hungarian-Wallachian Gipsy melody and the music of the Perso-Arab system. In this way the music of the synagogue enshrines elements of the theory and the practise of western Asia, which centered in Babylon, and which have left their effects in all landsbetween Moorish Spain and Dravidian India.
..... Instrumental Music.
Instrumental music is quite a modern feature in synagogal worship. Owing to the rabbinical "fence" which prohibited the use of an instrument on Sabbath and festivals because of the probability that it would require tuning or other preparation
*The musical ball is in your court. Ciitng the Jewish Encyclopedia, I have shown that the Synagogue did NOT feature crashing cymbals etc. It was prohibited on the Sabbath.
Jesus did NOT do that either. He is in the line of KING David, not Davey Jones of the Monkees.As we are Christians, presumably following Christ, why would we do what He didn't?
I seriously doubt that 'the Pope's supporters' meant to exclude Faure and Peeters' music, written in the 20thC...or that of Mozart, or any one of hundreds of OTHER 19th/20thC composers who wrote "in the tradition of Chant/polyphony."
But this is a newspaper, after all.
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