Musical Instruments in Mass

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HomeschoolDad said:
Traditionally, stringed instruments — of which the piano is one — were not used in Catholic churches. The idea was that the organ more closely resembled the human voice, which is the “instrument” par excellence, in that it used air being vibrated (“vox humana”).

Personally, I find pianos and guitars in church to be jarring, and much prefer the organ, but on the other hand, the Judica me from Traditional Latin Mass contains the verse from Psalm 42, “Confitebor tibi in cithara, Deus, Deus meus” — “I shall yet praise Thee upon the harp, O God, my God”.
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Aargh. The piano is a percussion instrument, not a stringed instrument. Besides, when were string instruments not allowed at Mass?
 
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I’m not entirely sure, as I’m not involved in the financial side or with organ tuning. But smaller parishes have smaller organs which are easier and cheaper to maintain. Obviously, buying an organ is usually quite expensive, but most of these parishes already have an old organ, so that’s usually not the problem.

Just like a piano, an organ needs occasional tuning and upkeep. I imagine that this isn’t too expensive, but is certainly more than tuning a piano, as it’s more involved and time-consuming. Every few decades, an organ will need major overhauls and rebuilding, which is a significant investment.

The parishes which would have the biggest problems would be urban parishes with massive churches and organs but a dwindling congregation. Maintaining everything, both the building and the organ, can become a substantial burden.

The cheaper solution for some parishes currently without an organ would be to buy an Allen or some other high quality electric organ. I’m not a huge fan, but they are certainly cheaper both to buy and to maintain. They can work for some more financially struggling parishes.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
Traditionally, stringed instruments — of which the piano is one — were not used in Catholic churches.
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Traditionally no instruments at all were used in the Catholic Church. A Capella chant was the expression of worship through music.

And if we want to insist on tradition, although it was the temple rather than the church, musical tradition in worship of God would have been the tambourine, lyre, and bells.

The organ is a relatively new fangled instrument with more of a traditional connection to High Church, post Reformation Protestant worship rather than Catholic…and shouldn’t they be pumped to feed bellows and not electric?

Things change.
 
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Loud-living-dogma said:
Aargh. The piano is a percussion instrument, not a stringed instrument. Besides, when were string instruments not allowed at Mass?
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The piano is both:

www.britannica.com

Is the Piano a Percussion or a Stringed Instrument?

Do you know which family of musical instruments the piano belongs to?
www.britannica.com www.britannica.com

Stringed instruments were not common before the liturgical changes of the Vatican II era. I cannot say if they were absolutely forbidden. My actual source is an “ecclesia-privationist” website (maintains that the visible institution of the Church has ceased to be the Catholic Church — “sedevacantist and then some”) that, nonetheless, has some excellent traditional resources.

I would welcome any accounts of there having been pianos in churches before Vatican II. And I mean that sincerely. I wasn’t around back then.
 
After many years of listening to pianos at Mass, I have come to despise them. Trying to discern why, I have concluded that it is their percussive nature and the way they are used to accompany. The percussive attack of every note & chord tends to obscure the syllables, making it very difficult to understand the words being sung. And most piano-playing I have heard at Masses is just too danged busy, swarming over the singing like gnats. I would not have said this years ago, but I would prefer guitar to piano now. Of course, organ is better than either.
 
I might would agree with you on the guitar, except for one problem. If a guitar is being used, the hymn is typically not good.

But what you say about pianos is spot on.
 
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tafan2 said:
I might would agree with you on the guitar, except for one problem. If a guitar is being used, the hymn is typically not good.
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Frankly, I vastly prefer singing the actual texts of the Mass (Ordinary, Proper and Responses) over any hymns, but yes, I think bad hymns and guitars do have a natural mutual attraction.
 
DIERM said:
The organ is a relatively new fangled instrument with more of a traditional connection to High Church, post Reformation Protestant worship rather than Catholic…and shouldn’t they be pumped to feed bellows and not electric?
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You need to do your homework. The pipe organ dates back to antiquity, albeit did not reach their modern form until the 16th/17th century. In the West, they were placed in chapels as early as the 10th century
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
Aargh. The piano is a percussion instrument, not a stringed instrument.
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Double aargh…it is considered a percussion instrument only because the strings are struck by a hammer and not plucked, but today it is correctly classified as a member of BOTH the percussion and the stringed instrument family.
 
Given the fact that organ music has become popular in vampire-themed music, I find the organ most fitting due to it setting the tone for the inevitable consumption of flesh and blood.

On a more serious note: Personally, I prefer piano + violin, but that may just be some bias towards my musical history. However, the first parish I attended put those instruments to excellent use, capturing the tone of whatever was being sung without turning it into a concert.
 
snarflemike said:
The percussive attack of every note & chord tends to obscure the syllables, making it very difficult to understand the words being sung.
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Whenever I go to my local parish with a piano, I am able to figure out the symbols pretty easily.
 
tafan2 said:
You need to do your homework. The pipe organ dates back to antiquity,
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Thanks for your kind correction that I need to do my homework…however, you may want to take your own advice…smugly claiming the Greek hydraulis (and even the closely related organ introduced in the Western Church centuries) is like making the claim that the Antikythera mechanism is proof that the Personal Computer actually was invented in 2 centuries before Christ.

Its kind of like saying that Homo Erectus was the being discussed in Genesis as that which was created in God’s image.
 
Time to stir the pot a bit… 🥄

How do you all feel about electronic tone generation? My parish recently decommissioned their air-blown organ and replaced it with one that makes the same sound using electronics and its own dedicated sound system up in the organ loft. To my ear, it sounds like the real thing.
 
I have no objection in principle to electronic tone generation. I’d rather hear a good sampled electronic organ at Mass than an actual saxophone. 🙂
 
I think the Latin Mass parish I attend uses the same system, and it sounds great. I think it’s something they had to do out of necessity, as the church building was formerly a Korean Protestant church before they bought it.
 
My experience is the opposite. I have never heard an organ where the volume did not obscure most of the singing.
 
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