Bishop Sample and the Future of Catholic Music

Chant Cafe ^ | February 1, 2013 | Jeffrey Tucker

[dfwgator]

Yep, tired of all of the “Jesus is My Boyfriend”-type songs.

[AnAmericanMother]

I don't know if I agree that things went downhill after Palestrina. Victoria (his pupil), Byrd, Sweelinck, Purcell, Monteverdi, Schutz, Bach - the whole Baroque period has some great stuff. And even the Classical period, despite its refocus on secular music, has some great church music and much of it is appropriate for Mass (how can we leave out Mozart?).

My personal opinion is that things started going downhill after 1805 - generally the big guns of the Romantic era do not produce appropriate music for Mass (there's still some good stuff - e.g. St-Saens' and Bruckner's choral work. But you have to pick and choose).

[Biggirl]

Well it should ONLY be sung by those who are Quaker anyways, in their places of worship since that is its origins.

[paterfamilias]

We have done some Palestrina, Dufay, and da Vittoria, others that I have never heard of but which our director comes up with.

Many of the hymns are right out of the Liber Usualis, but then we will add parallel organum parts in fifths and thirds.

I have come to learn how really beautiful and spiritually transporting this music is, especially when sung in the intended context (Holy Mass).

[Biggirl]

You got it.

[AnAmericanMother]

He really didn't intend for it to be sung even in a Quaker meeting house (he was startled though pleased when a lady stood up in meeting and sang one of his songs).

Sydney Carter's work is for secular performance - kind of like "Christian Rock" which doesn't belong in church either in my opinion (my husband the old rock guitarist says "It ain't Christian, and it sure as heck ain't Rock.") In the parish hall or at a youth meeting - go for it! (although 9 times out of 10 it's not music the actual youth like, it's music that makes the 60-somethings feel nostalgic for their youth.)

I'm always telling the story of the Worst Church Music Ever - in a Jesuit parish run by Franciscans (go figure) where the priest thought he could play guitar (he couldn't, couldn't even tune it - thought my husband was going to go over the pew and take it away and tune it). The rest of the "band" was a screechy lady of a certain age and an old gray-haired dude with a beard, ponytail and tambourine. And the priest's cellphone went off in his pocket . . . )

[Sirius Lee]

Still, the Romantic, Schubert, while a bad Catholic, penned what is possibly the greatest sacred aria of them all in his Ave Maria. His Masses however are merely serviceable, but not on the level of Verdi or even Dvorak.

Strange that one of the greatest composers of Lieder would have such a hard time with Masses and opera.

[Sirius Lee]

Still, the Romantic, Schubert, while a bad Catholic, penned what is possibly the greatest sacred aria of them all in his Ave Maria. His Masses however are merely serviceable, but not on the level of Verdi or even Dvorak.

Strange that one of the greatest composers of Lieder would have such a hard time with Masses and opera.

[AnAmericanMother]

The chant with parallel organum is indeed characteristically medieval - our choir does that a lot too, especially with very lengthy antiphons. And by the time you get to Dufay, music is starting to settle down into something that sounds relatively familiar.

It's the stuff in the middle, when Leonin and Perotin started experimenting with "florid organum" and clausulae, up until about the time Ockeghem was playing around with multiple simultaneous canons, that makes modern singers go, "Wait . . . what?"

I would say that Palestrina and Victoria* are the backbone of good appropriate music for the Holy Mass. You could sing nothing but Palestrina from now til the trump of doom, and never run out of good material.

*The English renamed Tomas Luis de Victoria to "da Vittoria" because they were annoyed that his name was the same as that of the Queen. Hey, guys, it's not his fault!

[Biggirl]

Good comment. That made my day, as I get ready to go to the store to stock up for my cats and I ahead of a winter storm which could become a blizzard.

Goes to show that if cannot carry a note for a non church crowd, why try to make worship really very, very bad with a bad voice in church?

[AnAmericanMother]

But he wrote it as part of the "Lady of the Lake" song cycle. The fact that it fits the "Ave Maria" is sort of coincidental (even though it's a prayer to the Virgin in the original).

Schubert died so young, it's hard to say how his art might have developed given more time and experience. But his Lieder are just simply spectacular - Mahler is the only composer that I think even comes close, at least in that Germanic vein.

[AnAmericanMother]

Hope you weather the storm all right! We were looking at it on the Weather Channel and saying that it looked pretty bad . . . .

I think that even if somebody has a good voice, the style and delivery of that sort of music is inappropriate for church.

A church singer is supposed to be transparent and let the music just pass through. Pop and art song singers add all sorts of "personal touches" (the way so many of them murder the National Anthem instead of just singing it).

[Heart-Rest]

Can any of you provide this convert with any "youtube" or other links with examples of this earlier, more beautiful liturgical music?

And, NYer, do you know any links where I could hear some of your Maronite liturgical music examples? (On my path to the Catholic faith, I attended some American "Orthodox Church" services, and found their "Divine Liturgy" music/chanting to be very beautiful.)

If anyone can provide those kinds of links, thanks in advance.

[ArrogantBustard]

Canto Gregoriano

Benedictine Nuns

For starters ....

[AnAmericanMother]

Hoo-boy, do I have some stuff for you! (I write the music column for our church bulletin).

Chant and early medieval developments. This music is going to sound strange when the variations begin. It really is another world from ours. In a minute, I'll post you what is usually considered the "standard music of the Church" - from a much later time (the 16th century, mostly):

chant Ut queant laxis Source of syllables that became ut-re-mi-fa-so-la - i.e. do-re-mi. Invented by Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo.

Organum - the first development of polyphony out of chant

chant Justus ut palma (free organum)

Here's some of the medieval polyphony that grew directly out of chant:

Guillaume de Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame (ca. 1360):

Kyrie

This is the first “through-composed” Mass, predating others by a generation.

A very well-staged dramatic performance of the entire Mass, with contemporary Introit and prayers added from other sources, sung with great style by l’Ensemble Gilles Binchois:

Messe de Notre Dame

Another interpretation by Ensemble Organum. Some people theorize this may be closer to the way choirs actually sounded 700 years ago: a rather raucous, nasal voice quality, with Eastern-style ornaments and slides between the notes, and lots of throat articulation. Definitely not to everyone’s taste, but it may remind you of Southern mountain folk singing or Sacred Harp, or perhaps Slavic folk music.

Messe de Notre Dame: Gloria

[AnAmericanMother]

Now, bouncing forward into the 16th century and beyond, here is some "classic" Renaissance polyphony with the chant on which it is based. If you listen to the plainchant and then to the polyphonic motet, you can hear the chant melody go by:

Chant “Sicut Cervus”: Chant "Sicut Cervus" "Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks, so longeth my soul after thee, O Lord."

The motet by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Sicut Cervus

Chant “Ave Maria” and Thomas Luis de Victoria, “Ave Maria”: Ave Maria

Here's an interesting one: Mr. Thomas Tallis, an exemplary English 16th c. composer, combines Sarum chant and polyphony in this lovely motet. Sarum (Salisbury) chant is different from Gregorian chant -- you'll notice the use of triple meter and also the very formal structure and limited range. Audivi vocem de caelo (I heard a voice from Heaven).

And from the 20th century: Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986: Ubi caritas

[Heart-Rest]

Thanks! (I hope the return to this kind of liturgical music spreads quickly to the whole country through Bishop Sample’s influence.)

[Heart-Rest]

Thanks so much, AnAmericanMother!

You've given me a lot to listen to, and I'll have to try to carefully step through the links you've provided and your accompanying notations, to follow your points about them. (From all you've said here, I believe you could probably teach a whole course in these kinds of historical music forms, and it would be great to know all those things. Maybe you should set up an online school about them, for newer Catholics.)

  :-)

[VermiciousKnid]

Here is our girls’ schola singing St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Ecce Panis Angelorum”.

This was recorded in June 2008, about 10 minutes before many of the girls (ages 12-14) were Confirmed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9DDi64ah9E

[AnAmericanMother]

You're very welcome!

I'm on a mission to convert the folks in our parish to what I keep calling "the magnificent treasury of Catholic music".

And I'm going to keep talking about it every week until somebody appreciates it! :-)

This week, the column features Jacob Obrecht, one of the Netherlands composers from the second half of the 15th century. He stands in the shadow of the great Josquin, but his music is lovely and is getting something of a revival right now.

Obrecht, "Salve Regina"

This is the prayer from the end of the Rosary - "Hail, holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, O most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us, and after this our exile, show us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary."