I’m late at this party but here’s my take as someone who has been singing in a Gregorian schola for the last 8 years, and attends Mass at an abbey where Gregorian Chant is used for every Mass every day, and also for Lauds and Vespers daily.
First, the use of hymns instead of the Gregorian propers seems like a major departure from tradition. In Gregorian chant, the music for the proper of the Mass is antiphons, typically made up of psalm and scripture verses; the Gradual and Offertory take on a much more ornate style but also are drawn from sacred scripture including the psalms. The chant is made to sustain the Word of God, to draw one into the Word of God. One cannot emphasize enough that in Gregorian chant, the word, and not the music, is intended to be the focal point. The Ordinary chants are of course, the words of the Liturgy itself: the penitential rite, the Gloria, the Sanctus and Agnus Dei, and of course the priest also chants what is proper to his part of the liturgy.
Hymns do have their place in Gregorian chant, but not at the Mass. Instead, they are proper to the Divine Office (Liturgy of the Hours). The composition of hymns for the Divine Office is however quite ancient, going back to the time of Saint Ambrose. Their original intent was to combat heresy. They are thus compact little theological summaries. They were readily accepted by Saint Benedict in the Monastic Office in the 6th century (he called them the “Ambrosian”), but the Roman Church didn’t really begin to accept them until about the 13th century; the reason for the reluctance was precisely because they weren’t scriptural.
The use of hymns as non-scriptural entrance music, communion songs, etc., is very recent from what I can gather. I think that, more than the OF itself, marks a distinct break from tradition. I still feel they are out of place in the liturgy. I know that they are valid if they are from approved sources, but to me they seem incongruent with the liturgy.
I have heard, in a Cistercian abbey, vernacular (in this case French) plainchant entrance antiphons that were translations from the proper Latin antiphon, and were well done. This to me would be a lot more appropriate than hymns in the Roman rite. In the Roman rite, hymns to me are for the Liturgy of the Hours, not the Mass.
I don’t know much about sacred polyphony; perhaps someone else could confirm if the great Masses composed by the great composers used the same scriptural sources as the Gregorian antiphons. I suspect they probably did.
So I guess my point is that even if we continue to allow non-Gregorian music to be used at Mass, and in the vernacular, and I believe we should, a renewal of that music is in order and it should return to its source, the Word of God as contained in scripture. Surely we can draw on modern composers to compose new musical settings for the approved translations of the Gregorian propers, that draw on Gregorian inspiration for the melodies, or in polyphony. There are approved antiphon texts for the Mass already, in both Latin and the vernacular and these should be the source for a musical renewal of the Proper of the Mass.
That would be a genuine musical revival. And I bet they would sing better than some of the syncopated nonsense I’ve heard at least in French. So let’s put the talents of modern composers to work!
To me, if we did this, the OF would finally become what it was meant to be.
