If you haven't already done so, brush up on your Latin!

  • Thread starter Thread starter WBB
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
W

WBB

Guest
This was the part that just thrilled me:
The document would also encourage a greater use of Gregorian chant and classical polyphonic music; the gradual elimination of the use of songs whose music or lyrics are secular in origin, as well as the elimination of instruments that are “inadequate for liturgical use,” such as the electric guitar or drums, although it is not likely that specific instruments will be mentioned.
Click to expand...
The entire article is here

If this is a duplicate post, please forgive.
 
I feel the need to point out that prior to Vatican II, the state of music in the Catholic Church in the US was already pitiful, at least at the parish level and often even at the level of, say St. Patrick’s Cathedral. There was no time in US history where one could easily find anything other than the maudlin, the sentimental, and the meretricious in music accompanying the Mass. If you had told the average parish choir that they were going to start doing Gregorian and serious polyphony, they would have laughed at you, and if you had tried to enforce it, they would have quit. They only wanted to do Albert Rosewig’s Mass in F and hymns from the St. Gregory and St. Basil hymnals. As far as the organ was concerned, and I am an organist, the only way you ever got a good one was if some individual rich person donated it. Most US Catholic churches had, and still have, organs that are no better than Wurlitzers.

Now we have, forgive me, junk of our own time instead of junk from another time, and only a miracle will get US parishes to put that aside in favor of what is truly a beautiful service to the Lord. The pipe dream of a service consisting of well-performed chant supplemented by well-performed polyphony will never be realized in the US, “On Eagle’s Wings” and “I am the Bread of Life” are here to stay.
 
40.png
jbuck919:
There was no time in US history where one could easily find anything other than the maudlin, the sentimental, and the meretricious in music accompanying the Mass.
Click to expand...
No time in U.S. history? That may be putting it a little too strongly. At the parish where I attended parochial elementary school, the children’s choir sang Gregorian chant from the Laudate Hymnal at daily Mass before school; the Men’s Choir sang Gregorian Chant for the Sunday High Mass, with the Gloria, Credo, and responses rendered movingly and with sufficient beauty that I can recall it to this day. At Requiem Mass, the Dies Irae could move you to tears even if you were not among the grieving.
 
40.png
JimG:
No time in U.S. history? That may be putting it a little too strongly. At the parish where I attended parochial elementary school, the children’s choir sang Gregorian chant from the Laudate Hymnal at daily Mass before school; the Men’s Choir sang Gregorian Chant for the Sunday High Mass, with the Gloria, Credo, and responses rendered movingly and with sufficient beauty that I can recall it to this day. At Requiem Mass, the Dies Irae could move you to tears even if you were not among the grieving.
Click to expand...
I knew that some people in some places would be able to cite exceptions. I intentionally did not anticipate them but rather waited for them. It is a sign of hope that there have always been such. But they were a drop in the bucket compared to the norm when I was growing up, and I lived in more than one town becayse my father was military. For some reason, Americans did a great job with church architecture (considering the kinds of European models they were trying to build up to) but by and large they fell down in the aesthetics of music in worship.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top