Jazz music is not sacred music

[Sarabande]

With polyphony, I believe the problem was that it had been corrupted by secular principles, not that polyphony in and of itself was secular.

The thing is polyphonic music was originally a secular form that made its way into sacred music. People considered harmonization too frivolous at the time when it crept into mass, but that was because it was being performed in a “secular style” rather than in a more solemn one. I’ve mentioned this in other threads, but there are actually contemporary writings of people who felt that polyphony was a bad thing at mass. Some even thinking that it incited “lascivious” thoughts and actions. The understanding of the words was also very important for sacred music at that time and many felt that having the harmonization would interfere with the understanding of the Latin.

It finally became acceptable in the 1300s by the Church when Guillame de Machaut ***refined *** polyphony so that it would be right as sacred music for the mass. It became much more solemn and composed in a way so that the words can be understood even if many voices were singing various lines. They also made rules on what kind of chords could be written and how it had to be “performed”. Thus it lost it’s secular origins became a sacred form of music.

Jazz music and other forms would have to do the same kind of transformation in what is considered “refinement” in order to be more acceptable for mass. They have to take the secular out of it. They would also need to make rules in how to write for the sacred. For forms which don’t have as much of an organic connection with chant, it can be harder to refine.

 

[Guitar]

I’d rather hear a well-played piano in church than a toy spinet operated by a left-footed organist with mittens, as is so often the case.

I absolutely agree, and spinets played badly was the sum total of my experience of organ playing until I was about 20. It would have been relatively easy to put very good quality pianos in many of these small churches and there were enough piano teachers around who could have played them decently. I do not know why we had these flea-powered loungeroom-grade apologies for instruments … I think someone missed the PIPE bit in the statement that PIPE organs were to be held in high esteem … (Of course this was before today’s vastly-improved electronic organs were available.)

 

[Guitar]

Jazz music and other forms would have to do the same kind of transformation in what is considered “refinement” in order to be more acceptable for mass.

The same thing has had to happen, if my understanding is correct, to some of the instruments that are now fully accepted. The fiddle/violin very early on didn’t have the social standing it does now - many paintings show it as a popular instrument amongst itinerant tavern and dance musicians or being played in the company of other instruments of low reputation.

There do seem to be plenty of cases where secular instruments and styles have been brought *over time * and with adaptation into the sacred arena. The trouble is when folks try to use that as an excuse for carte blanche next Sunday.

 

[LilyM]

Clearly the good folk of the African Orthodox Church of SAINT John Coltrane (I kid you not, website is at coltranechurch.org/ ) would disagree with most all y’all.

 

[CTA1967]

What about the clarinet? I play the clarinet at mass. Isn’t it a relatively new, and secular, instrument?

 

[Sarabande]

The same thing has had to happen, if my understanding is correct, to some of the instruments that are now fully accepted. The fiddle/violin very early on didn’t have the social standing it does now - many paintings show it as a popular instrument amongst itinerant tavern and dance musicians or being played in the company of other instruments of low reputation.

There do seem to be plenty of cases where secular instruments and styles have been brought *over time * and with adaptation into the sacred arena. The trouble is when folks try to use that as an excuse for carte blanche next Sunday.

Yes, I totally agree with that. Although I prefer organ or a capella for a mass and believe that is the ultimate for mass, I also believe a piano and even a guitar when both are played well and with refinement (meaning no strumming and sounding like a rock band or honky tonk bar - basically adapted to play for mass) can be decent substitutes if the church does not yet have the money to install a pipe organ or fix the one they already have. Nothing is worse than hearing a hack on a pipe organ and especially on one of those horrible electric organs. It would be the same for any other instrument. I’d rather hear a classically-trained guitarrist or pianist or just plain voice. (Which I have been hired to do for funerals when the family of the deceased didn’t want the “organist” at the church to muck up the music for the funeral. Everything was a capella, some of which was English plainsong chant, since singing a hymn without accompaniment is always a little strange.)

And we can still see the differences with how the fiddle/violin (as well as other instruments) is used today in the secular and sacred areas whether the music was a dance gigue from 400 years ago, a Paganini violin masterpiece or a rock song that calls for an electric violin. The way the violin is played for those forms are secular in nature.

I think another one of the problems with some of the forms of music being played at mass today is that many haven’t been “refined” or “adapted”. They still sound too much like a rock song, a folk song, etc. rather than a sacred piece of music. They are religious songs, but not sacred music. It would be the same comparing “O Divine Redeemer” by Gounod. It is a piece of music composed in the classical genre, and something I love hearing performed as I feel it has so much spiritual expression of love for God, not to mention just a beautiful piece, musically. BUT although it is a religious “aria”, it is still not sacred music because of how it has to be performed - like an operatic aria - a completely secular form of singing.

 

[Guitar]

What about the clarinet? I play the clarinet at mass. Isn’t it a relatively new, and secular, instrument?

Clarinet has its origins in the “rustic” chalumeau, which Vivaldi and others gradually brought into the chamber music arena, and before long the clarinet was a standard orchestral instrument. (You probably know all that! )

As an orchestral and band/wind ensemble instrument, has been used at Masses. I’ve used a pair of clarinets as part of a larger instrumental group and they worked very well. They were played by classically-trained players, though, not by Acker Bilk.

Rather than get into it here though and wander away from Japhy’s topic, which is jazz rather than specific instruments, maybe we can start another thread to discuss particular instruments.

 

[PaixGioiaAmor]

I absolutely agree, and spinets played badly was the sum total of my experience of organ playing until I was about 20. It would have been relatively easy to put very good quality pianos in many of these small churches and there were enough piano teachers around who could have played them decently. I do not know why we had these flea-powered loungeroom-grade apologies for instruments … I think someone missed the PIPE bit in the statement that PIPE organs were to be held in high esteem … (Of course this was before today’s vastly-improved electronic organs were available.)

Vastly improved? I think they all still sound like garbage …

There’s no substitute for pipes.

 

[pnewton]

Vastly improved? I think they all still sound like garbage …

There’s no substitute for pipes.

But not all churches can afford them. I agree for cathedrals, shrines and rich parishes, but at least there is a substitute out there.

 

[Guitar]

Vastly improved? I think they all still sound like garbage …

There’s no substitute for pipes.

Did I suggest there was?

Do you seriously think a GEM Ahlborn, Johannes or later-model Allans does not sound better for classical repertoire than a Hammond, Baldwin or Kawai?

 

[Jean_Anthony]

Please stay on topic. If people wish to discuss instruments in the Mass, please start a new thred. Thank you all.

 

[Sarabande]

Here’s a question for those on here who might be jazz musicians. Although I’m a musician, I don’t play or sing jazz and don’t quite understand the concepts of jazz composition even though I enjoy listening to it. and have a lot of respect for the musicians. (I’ve always been in awe of jazz improvisation.) I do know that the musicians have to go through practically as rigorous of training as classical musicians, having known some jazz performance majors in college.

Anyway, how would a jazz composition be adapted to make it suitable and acceptable for liturgy - if it is at all possible? Polyphony was adapted, as well as music in the classical genre. I still have yet to see and be convinced that it can be truly adapted in other genres, but I’m also not saying that it definitely cannot be. Perhaps they haven’t gotten the right composer to do it yet. At the same time, I think other genres, and perhaps even jazz, are so enmeshed with the secular that it is very difficult to refine in such a way to make it be organically evolved from chant.

If any of the jazz musicians or even other musicians think that it could never be adapted and can be adapted for sacred music, why/why not?

 

[japhy]

Anyway, how would a jazz composition be adapted to make it suitable and acceptable for liturgy - if it is at all possible? … I think other genres, and perhaps even jazz, are so enmeshed with the secular that it is very difficult to refine in such a way to make it be organically evolved from chant.

PoliSciProf mentioned (in post 6) “Paul Horn’s Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts”, but I don’t have it and can’t find easy access to it.

But when I think of Jazz, a few things come to mind: first, instruments like saxaphones, pianos, (muted) trumpets, double bass (plucked, not bowed), drums; second, a rhythm, tempo, and beat not suitable to liturgical music; third, smoky bars, women in long slinky dresses, improvisation, scat.

I’m not a musician nor a musical scholar, but I’m curious how much can be “stripped away” from Jazz to render it suitable for use in the liturgy and yet have it remain identified as Jazz.

 

[agapewolf]

Here is more of a fundamental question:

What is the genre of Jazz? Same as Rock.

Jazz contains SO many genres within the main title of jazz that cover a HUGE spectrum:

be bop, swing, shuffle, cakewalk, blues, ballad, etc, etc.

Same with rock:

metal, alternative, ballad, classic rock, mo-town, etc etc etc.

A Praise and worship ballad versus marilyn manson death metal are two absolutely completely different genres, yet, they still both fit under “rock.”
And the problem is that each country defines music with different terms on top of that. People say that rome says “no rock music” in mass… well, in Italy, the definition of “ROCK” is vastly different than USA.

Jazz music does NOT have to fully instrumentalized to be jazz. It can just be using different chord structures that use disonance and chords that pull without resolving. Check out Vince Giraldi’s Mass.

Japhy said:

But when I think of Jazz, a few things come to mind

Here is another problem. Everyone has different “personal” filters and feelings associated with instruments/names of genres. Some people walk into a church, see a drum set, and think “concert”. Where in the world does that come from? No one has even played it yet, and they have automatically typed it as they are going to perform a rock song for an audience. So no matter how it is played, it doesn’t matter because the person already has a filter wall up. My drummer absolutely NEVER performs. He even tells me he things he shouldn’t play on certain things. His function is to pull us to the chorus so that congregation belt out the singing louder. and I’m here to tell you it WORKS! Holy Thursday, the whole church drowns us (including the drummer) out that I can barely hear him play.

I think we need to put aside our filters and prejudices (not trying to use a hot word…just the literal definition) about things regarding music.

Here is an example: so many people who like the traditional song “let all mortal flesh keep silent” don’t know that it has a lot of similar melodic and chordal qualities as the standard “caravan”.

 

[japhy]

What is the genre of Jazz? Same as Rock.

The Holy Father (writing before his election to the papacy, yes) wrote negatively about the possibility of a relationship between “rock music” and the liturgy. I know you know this (as it has been mentioned time and time again), but it bears repeating in this thread (for the benefit of those who have not seen it) since you have brought up the linking of “Jazz” to “Rock”; here is an excerpt from The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 147-148:
[T]here are two developments in music itself that have their origins primarily in the West but that for a long time have affected the whole of mankind in the world culture that is being formed. Modern so-called “classical” music has maneuvered itself, with some exceptions, into an elitist ghetto, which only specialists may enter – and even they do so with what may sometimes be mixed feelings. They music of the masses [p. 148] has broken loose from this and treads a very different path. On the one hand, there is pop music, which is certainly no longer supported by people in the ancient sense (populus). It is aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal. “Rock”, on the other hand, is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe. The music of the Holy Spirit’s sober inebriation seems to have little chance when self has become a prison, the mind is a shackle, and breaking out from both appears as a true promise of redemption that can be tasted at least for a few moments.

Jazz music does NOT have to fully instrumentalized to be jazz. It can just be using different chord structures that use disonance and chords that pull without resolving. Check out Vince Giraldi’s Mass.

I’m not a musician, so I don’t know what you mean by “chords that pull without resolving”; could you explain? Instruments aside, what is the effect (or intention) of these different chord structures? What do they seek to convey that the chord structures of chant and polyphony do not?

Can you provide a link of some sort for Vince Giraldi’s Mass? A quick search in Google was unsuccessful.

Everyone has different “personal” filters and feelings associated with instruments/names of genres. Some people walk into a church, see a drum set, and think “concert”.

That depends entirely on the drumset! At the parish I grew up at, on Christmas day there would be two kettle drums and some brass (trumpet and trombone). They evoke a completely different image (granted, they were firmly within a definite liturgical environment, by which I mean a church which “looked like a church”) than the drumset (with plexiglass barrier) and guitar stands and mics and amps that I have seen at the non-denom “Princeton Alliance Center” near where I live.

“let all mortal flesh keep silent” … has a lot of similar melodic and chordal qualities as the standard “caravan”.

Maybe I have to see it on paper, because listening to both I simply don’t see – er, hear – it.

 

[agapewolf]

I did NOT link jazz to rock. It appears my point was missed entirely.

My point is that the jazz genre is actually an umbrella for many different genres.

Rock is the same way. I used rock because I think more people understand those terms than the jazz ones.

This quote you posted proves my point entirely. Rock has so many genres that do NOT fit what is described there. The genres that are described there are not fit for liturgy…but there are many genres commonly held under the umbrella of “rock” that are not being described in this document.

It is difficult to try to hold deeper conversations without music with folks that merely just evaluate by listening to it and then make an opinion.

If you can’t see the similarity between caravan and “let all mortal…” then I don’t know what to say. it is extremely similar employing the same scale like melodic lines and similar chord progressions. Again, my point was missed.

My point was also proven. You have an automatic personal lense that you see instruments in. You’ve created if for yourself and held onto it, instead of seeing things for how they are trully functioning. (I know there are many church bands that perform and put on a concert and that is unfortunate…however they are not all like that, and those instruments can function in the liturgical setting as well without being a “concert”.

what you saw “kettle drums” is not a drum set. That is timpani in the family of percussion. Drum set is the common term for the trap set.

 

[japhy]

It is difficult to try to hold deeper conversations without music with folks that merely just evaluate by listening to it and then make an opinion.

If you can make this conversation more productive somehow, by all means, please do.

If you can’t see the similarity between caravan and “let all mortal…” then I don’t know what to say. it is extremely similar employing the same scale like melodic lines and similar chord progressions.

Could you explain it, though? Throwing hands up in defeat isn’t going to teach me anything. I listened to “Caravan” and “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent” and my (untrained) ear cannot pick out the similarities that yours can. Perhaps if I saw the sheet music for each I’d get it? Could you help me understand your point?

 

[PoliSciProf]

I take the position that jazz can certainly be adopted to liturgical music. To offer an analogy: consider how the Modern Jazz Quartet (piano, bass, drums, vibes) applied jazz technique to classical music in Blues for Bach. Try this link to sample this album.

amazon.com/Blues-Bach-Modern-Jazz-Quartet/dp/B000002I6B

Many jazz musicians are classicly trained. Jazz has many roots, including the Southern field hollers, the blues, classical music, and most interestingly for this thread the Spiritual also known as Gospel. If any music can be called sacred, it is most certainly the traditional spiritual. And it can be adapted to liturgical use without much effort at all. I find it interesting that of the many threads about liturgical music and music in general, that I don’t believe any posters have discussed this. To help remedy this, sample some great spirtuals from the great Mahalia Jackson at this Amazon link.

amazon.com/Best-Mahalia-Jackson/dp/B000002AZG

If I am not mistaken, Mahalia Jackson turned down big bucks if she would make pop and secular albums because she didn’t want to prostitute her vocal gifts given to her by God.

[An aside to the poster who couldn’t find Paul Horn’s Jazz Suite on the Mass, I don’t think it is on CD. There are lot of good vinyl disks that haven’t made the transition, including Brubeck’s **Time In Outer Space which I could only find at a Russian site for an outragous price for a poor quality obviously pirated CD.]

 

[agapewolf]

If you can make this conversation more productive somehow, by all means, please do.

Could you explain it, though? Throwing hands up in defeat isn’t going to teach me anything. I listened to “Caravan” and “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent” and my (untrained) ear cannot pick out the similarities that yours can. Perhaps if I saw the sheet music for each I’d get it? Could you help me understand your point?

I DID explain it. Scale like melodic lines and similar chord progression. that’s just the beginning.

 

[Sarabande]

Sorry that I’m coming back into the conversation late. I was in a recital last night and didn’t have time or the mental room to be thinking about this. Haha! Anyway, now that I’ve been able to veg out a bit and not have to think about my recital repertoire, I’ve been thinking about this topic a little more.

I think that there are certain undefinable characteristics of Jazz too that make it inappropriate for mass. But I also believe that there is no simple definite answer. Music by its very nature is not definite. There are many shades of gray where the lines get smeared. Even though I may not understand what exactly goes into the composition of a Jazz piece, I also know that jazz musical theory is pretty much the same as Bach’s (ie the classical – lower case “c” - form). It is a valid and very respected art form. Some may say that since the theory is the same, then why separate it into categories? The fact of the matter is the mood that jazz creates and was meant to creat by its very nature is not supposed to inspire religious transcendentalism – perhaps transcendentalism of another kind, as I’ve known a couple jazz majors who liked to indulge in certain enhancers to help them “transcend” while performing, if you know what I mean.

To me, if the jazz composer sets a piece that evokes the same mysterium as Palestrina, then it pretty much gets defined as classical/religious and it loses what jazz was all about in the first place. Its very nature evokes more of the feelings (good and bad) of secular life, not the mysterium of God’s love. Of course, it’s easy to say to let go of feelings and accept everything as equal, but it is a definite human aspect which can’t be turned off unless a person blocks their feelings and only work in their heads. At the same time, even the Church says that not music is equal to one another. A perfect example is that of many modern classical works. A lot of it is very heady and more about the compositional aspects rather than evoking certain emotions, helping people transcend into the spiritual or simply making people feel good. I agree with the Church when it says that certain modern classical music compositions are also not appropriate for mass. It is too “heady” and evokes no feelings of the spiritual or even the secular. It’s just all technical.

It is like having the belief that “Chicken Little” or better yet, a lesser known play called “Turandot” (not the Opera – this play was an off-Broadway show I saw a few years back) is equal to that of certain dramas written by some of the best playwrites. Sure, “Chicken Little” and “Turandot” has all of the shaping of plot, theme, characters, setting, & ca that the plays of Ibsen, Shaw or Shakespeare. “Chicken Little” is a wonderful play for kids and “Turandot” a nice play, but they both are not considered to be in the same category as high drama on the great stages or worth airing on Masterpiece Theater. They don’t contain that intangible quality which proclaim to the person viewing it that it is considered high art. People know that by the very nature of those plays, they are meant to be either for children or a comedy.(Please note I’m NOT saying that Jazz is not high art. I actually think it is pretty much equal basically because its composition is just as complicated as classical composition.)

So it is with music in my eye and understanding of musical theory. For the comparison regarding “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” and “Caravan”: Any music written or composed using the western music scale, will have the same basics to create a piece of music in whatever form, but there are differences, whether or not a person likes it. For instance, one of the oldest musical themes or chord progressions, Follia, can be found in various forms of composition throughout the centuries. You can hear it in high art music and you can also amazingly hear it in Britney Spears’ song, “Oops, I Did it Again”. I’m sure that if you listen to certain jazz compositions, you can hear it in their chord progressions. But just because that same chord progression is used in various forms of music, doesn’t make all of it equal and fitting for liturgy. It also doesn’t make every piece of music equally as well-composed as the other – not that we’re talking about that because I believe a lot of jazz music is composed with just as much complexity as a classical piece. The music needs to be refined and close to the “spirit” of what the Church has set as a standard. It needs that intangible quality, which was basically set by the Church early on. Yes, it goes back to the shades of grey and smearing of the lines, but people do know sacred music when they hear it whether or not they had much experience with it or training.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, and now I’m spent. Hahaha!