Gregorian Chant: a Thing of the Future?

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Interesting interview on Gregorian Chant
Gregorian Chant: a Thing of the Future?
Interview With President of Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 24, 2005 (ZENIT.org).- Gregorian chant has been unjustly abandoned and its place in the life of the Church should be recovered, says a Vatican aide.

Monsignor Valenti Miserachs Grau made this declaration at a recent encounter organized by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments at the Vatican.

Monsignor Miserachs has been president of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music since 1995. This Spanish musician, who has composed more than 2,000 pieces, is also the canonical chapel director of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome.

ZENIT interviewed him about the state of Gregorian chant.

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PF
 
I have noticed that Gregorian Chant is making a comeback. I have even noticed it in pop-culture. Sarah Brightman’s song titled “Eden”, (Late 1990s) has gregorian chant style singing in the background. It doesn’t sound that bad either.

I’m hoping that Polyphony will also make a return, its mysticism is haunting.
 
Personally, I would like to see it used more. Get away from some of the stuf they use now. Of course, that would give the “Music Ministers” less control (which is fine with me:D )

PF
 
In a sense the abandonment of Gregorian Chant in the Latin Liturgy would be like abandoning the various forms of chant the Eastern and Oriental churches use.

Could you imagine if tomorrow the Russian Orthodox replaced Kievan Chant with something akin to the Oregon Press style of singing?
Could you imagine the Trisagion sung with a band playing on the altar? Reclaim it my Latin Brethren.
 
Bring it back I say. Unfortunately, as Monsignor says, they are only an academic body. Who has the authority to do it? Other than the Pope that is.

S
 
“Vatican aides” make all sorts of interesting pronouncements.

But until the Pope is willing to worry less about “collegiality” and more about exercising his power as “first among equals” nothing is going to change.

I won’t hold my breath. I don’t look good in blue. :nope:
 
**It would be fun to have some Gregorian chanting back into Churches and have nothing but an organ or piano. Every prayer in Latin…

Frankly, I can imagine right now newer styles of Gregorian chanting used in Mass. Praise and Worship chanting, now THAT’s Catholic! ;).**
 
**I think Assumption Grotto has a Gregorian Mass.

Assumption Grotto (313) 372-0762 Web Map Updated: 6/22/2005
Sat: 4 PM
Sun: 6:30, 9:30 AM [Latin]; 12 noon ;
Monday thru Fri: 7:30 (Gregorian)**, 8:30 AM ; 7 PM
Sat: 7:30, 8:30 AM ;
Holy Day: 6:30, 9:30 AM ; 12 noon; 7 PM ;
Adoration: US; Devotion: Monday thru Sat: 9 AM to 7 PM (Gethsemane Chapel in Convent).;
Address: 13770 Gratiot Ave. Detroit MI 48205
Our Lady of Perpetual Help Novena, Tue:

Haven’t been to it, but I’m planning to soon.

Maggie
 
finally, indications that there is need to establish gregorian chant as the primary music of the latin right. i’m sick and tired of debating with people with the old 60’s diatribe that latin and gregorian chant are pastorially ineffective and aren’t with the spirit of VII. or that we need to meet people where they are instead of rasing them up.

how much more must we listen to the banal and profane? like the life teen music which is a total profanation of the mass and should be reformed imediately. this is good news and the radicals like trautman of the usccb and his ilk are on the way out.
 
Gregorian chant is awesome, and characteristically Catholic.

I listen to it as a help when praying the LOH, personal prayer, and in when praying for the sick. I have it play very faintly in the backgound so that my thoughts and words are not drowned out by the singing. It’s basically prayer joined to my prayer.

Plato
 
It’s a thing of the present at Assumption Grotto in Detroit. It was one of the things that attracted me to remain in this parish after visiting in May. I began attending the daily Mass at 7:30am and it is all Gregorian Chant. Sometime the 8:30 will have chant too. We have two men in the parish who alternate. We had another, Cal Shenk, who recently passed away. He was a master of it.

All of our Masses have Gregorian Chant because the pastor is really big on it. The 9:30am Sunday Latin Mass especially, is beautiful.

I must say that when the Introit begins as the priest enters it sets me off into deep prayer. Ditto when it is sung at the offeratory and the beginning of the Communion rite. I don’t miss those grand entrance hymns at all.
 
I couldn’t help but think of this thread when I responded to a poster who said that listening to chant was like chewing tinfoil and nails on a blackboard. The poster got upset when I stated that not only had I sung chant all my life but that I routinely used it to study and work on my calligraphy. I described it as the breath of God in its rising and falling.

When I sang in the choir we did a great deal of chant and lots of sacred polyphony. People in the congregation often made more remarks about the simplicity of the chant than the 8 part polyphony.

When chant does become an extension of your breathing (being, prayer) something like Jesu Dulcis Memoria can be memorable.
 
Some people have a hard time with it, much like they would have a hard time sitting in silence.
 
I hear that. I am old enough to have sung in the children’s choir and was an altar boy pre-VII. I stopped going to Mass for many years in the early 70s because of the guitars and horrible, horrible music (i.e. Sons of God, They’ll Know We Are Christians). However, our cathedral here in Baton Rouge never adopted that kind of music (except for diocesan events).

I often thought that one had to have an “ear” for chant (i.e. have grown up with it) but there are many young people who did not grow up with it and yet sense its beauty and tranquility. We can pray that its use grows and that reverence grows along with it.
 
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brotherhrolf:
I often thought that one had to have an “ear” for chant (i.e. have grown up with it) but there are many young people who did not grow up with it and yet sense its beauty and tranquility. We can pray that its use grows and that reverence grows along with it.
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I am one of those young people that you mention. I also enjoy Polyphony, I often listen to both when I pray the rosary or when I just need to relax.
 
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