What the commission really needs to take on is the issue of the Mass
texts themselves. Can we freely dispense with them and replace them with
texts of our own composition and choosing? Or must we defer to the
liturgy as we have received it and ennoble that liturgy with music
appropriate to the task? This is the real question. To put the matter
plainly, the Vatican needs to rewrite its own legislation as regards
music. It must make the propers of the Mass the mandatory sung text.
Mandatory. No exceptions. It must absolutely forbid them to be replaced
by something else. This change in the legislation alone would do far
more than yet another cautious statement about the lasting value of the
Church’s treasury of sacred music.
To review the history here, the idea that the propers of the Mass can be
displaced has absolutely no precedent in the history of our faith. I
can hear the critic now attempting to correct me on the point: “before
the Second Vatican Council, we never sang the propers; at Mass, we sang
various hymns at the entrance, offertory, and communion, and it is no
different today.”
That’s true enough but here is the major difference. When the people
were singing hymns in preconciliar times, the celebrant was saying the
propers of the Mass. He said the entrance antiphon, the communion
proper, and so on. They were not neglected completely; they were part of
the Mass but at low Mass, they were restricted to the priest alone.
There can be no question that a major ambition of the liturgical reform
was to do something about the problem that the low Mass had become the
primary form of the Mass that nearly all Catholics experienced week to
week. The goal - and this comes through in the writings of the
liturgical movement dating back to the early part of the 20th century -
was to raise the bar and make every Mass a sung Mass. The Mass was no
longer to be the private preserve of the celebrant but rather those
prayers and those propers were to be publicly shared and made part of
the audible experience of the Mass for everyone..
For this reason, it really was a catastrophic concession that the
propers of the Mass can be replaced by the other songs that we alone
decide are appropriate substitutes. The concession was made as an
afterthought, the option four that was thrown in to deal with the
unusual contingency, but it proved to be a moral hazard of the worst
sort. It quickly became the norm, and suddenly we found ourselves in an
even worse position than we were before the Council convened. Not only
were the propers not sung, they were not said either. They completely
dropped out of the picture.
Many people have pointed out that the new edition of the flagship hymnal
of the GIA, called Worship, contains for the first time an index item
that draws attention to the entrance antiphon for Mass. People have sent
this to me and said it represents progress. I suppose it does. But
consider the irony. A mainstream book of some 1000 pages that purports
to offer music for the Mass has a few inches in the way back that
actually addresses the sung proper of the Mass - and this is cause for
celebration? It’s incredible to think that this is what it has come down
to.
If you want to see a vision of the future, take a look at Jeffrey Ostrowski’s Vatican II Hymnal.
Here we have one book that is all about music and all about the
liturgy, a book in which the two are not separate but a united whole.
The propers of the Mass are there in English and Latin, along with the
readings and plenty of music for the whole of Mass. It also provides
some traditional hymnody but clearly as supplemental material designed
to enhance our experience at a Catholic people and give us additional
music with which to praise God. The balance is correct here. The title
itself sums up the point: this is much closer to what the Council
fathers envisioned.
Read the rest here.
11/30/2011
Stage Two
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