Pope to purge the Vatican of modern music

[NetNuncio]

In some respects that may be true, and there is no argument that we had wonderful compositions prior to 1600. But let’s not forget choral motets (a capella or with organ), other sacred works and organ works composed by Bruckner (his sacred a capella motets), Mozart (many beautiful choral motets, Bach (yes he was a Lutheran, but he did compose appropriate motets and other sacred music for organ), William Byrd (although he composed within the cusp of the latter part of the 1500s and early part of the 1600s), Vivaldi, Caldara, Pergolesi, Ugolini, Allegri (His Miserere especially), Couperin, Charpentier, Frescobaldi, and as you mentioned, Monteverdi. These are just some I can name off the top of my head.

Then we can’t forget the golden age of French organ and sacred music in the mid to late 1800s - Cesar Franck (has some really beautiful sacred works and, no, I’m not talking about his overused, yet lovely, Panis Angelicus), Gabriel Faure (his Ave Maria, Salve Regina, Cantique de Jean Racine, and of course his Requiem. He also composed in the early 20th c) and Louis Vierne to name a few.

So, I wouldn’t necessarily call that time period a wasteland for sacred music.

You are quite correct…up to the mid-1600s and beginning again in the late 1800s, there were decent compositions. Faure has some lovely pieces (his Requiem was lacking, liturgically, in several respects, despite it’s beauty) as did Bruckner.

Vivaldi’s liturgical music, as is Pergolesi’s (he died too young) and Ugolini’s is hardly known. Couperin and Frescobaldi’s organ music is well known yes, but Allegri is survived by hardly anything other than Miserere Mei Deum. Perhaps wasteland is too harsh, but the best period of liturgical music it was not.

Adam

 

[Sarabande]

You are quite correct…up to the mid-1600s and beginning again in the late 1800s, there were decent compositions. Faure has some lovely pieces (his Requiem was lacking, liturgically, in several respects, despite it’s beauty) as did Bruckner.

Vivaldi’s liturgical music, as is Pergolesi’s (he died too young) and Ugolini’s is hardly known. Couperin and Frescobaldi’s organ music is well known yes, but Allegri is survived by hardly anything other than Miserere Mei Deum. Perhaps wasteland is too harsh, but the best period of liturgical music it was not.

I guess I see it a little differently. I see equal beauty and genius in the composition of these composers as in earlier composers. There are definitely differences in opinion regarding how perfect or imperfect they were liturgically, but compositionally-speaking, spiritually-speaking (if just looking at it as a religious/sacred piece of music rather than something for liturgy) and aesthetically-speaking, they were fairly equal - give or take individual composer’s strengths and what they had to work with at the time. ie. early music composers having to work everything so to avoid the “evil” tritone aka “diabolus in musica”, or the different understanding and usage of harmony, vertical chord structure, etc. So, I can see where you are coming from in that regard. It is quite different from later periods, but in a way I consider plainchant and polyphony and basically almost all early music different from classical western art music, even though the Western art structure is derived and born from the rules of early music. Sort of like how jazz was derived from classical western art and so on and so forth.

Also, as a classical musician and someone who owns between my husband and I over 600+cds - spanning from de Machaut and even earlier to modern day rock musical (hey - I’m a GenXer, although most of our collection is really classical western art and early music), we’re fairly familiar and intimate with many of the works that I guess many people are not. I’ve had to perform so much of it from my teenage years to now. And we have the game of guessing the composer some evenings so that we can hear all of our cds - not all in one night of course. And then many of our friends are musicians who are into the same things and same music. So, I sometimes forget that not everyone would be familiar with all of this music.

Very interesting discussion with you.