Video: Balloon Concert in St. John Lateran

[pnewton]

Horses on the altar
Playing Texas hold 'em during Mass or after Mass in the pews
A Rolling Stones Concert on the High Altar of St. Peter’s

Honestly, there should be some things that you would not need specific rules to avoid. Charismatic looniness has been practiced by protestants for more than a century and condemned as false spirituality…

I vaguely recognized one of the Spanish songs as a Christian song. These things you mentioned are not Christian, except the horse maybe. (I will sing unto the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and rider are thrown into the sea - kerplop).

I guess I just don’t get it, and I find Charismatic stuff about as distasteful as anyone who has ever not rolled down an aisle. (yes, this is a joke and my attempt to lighten up) This does not make me modernist, heretical or under their influence. It makes me a literalist. Maybe too much of that can be a fault.

 

[JMJ_coder]

I have never heard of it but am always ready to be educated. Can you give some references?

Just a handful of examples. In the book “Music in the Western World”, a document by Andre Maugars writing on Music in the Churches of Rome, 1639 notes:

…I will give you a description of the very excellent concert I heard in Rome on the eve and feast of St. Dominick [sic], in the church of Santa Maria on the ruins of the Minerva [Rome’s only Gothic Church]. This church is rather long and capacious, and in it there are two great organs built on either side of the main altar, where two choirs had been placed. Along the nave there were eight more choirs, four on each side, placed on scaffolding eight or nine feet high, equidistant from each other and all in view of each other…

and a little later in the document

…These very words having been said to me in the French Church on the eve of Saint Louis when I was attending an excellent concert given there, I resolved the next morning, inspired by the holy name of Louis, by the honor of our nation, and by the presence of the twenty-three cardinals who attended the Mass, to go up into a gallery, where having been received with applause, I was given fifteen or twenty notes on a little organ, after the third Kyrie Eleison, and I improvised on them with so much variety that they were quite happy, and had the cardinals ask me to play again after the Agnus Dei…This deed won me the highest honor I could have received; for the report of it, having spread throughout Rome, came as far as the ears of His Holiness, who did me the special favor a few days later of sending for me, and said to me, among other things, “We have heard that you have a special talent and we would like to hear you.” I will not tell you how happy His Holiness showed himself to be after having done me the honor of listening to me for more than two hours…

Several things we can glean from this document. First, non-liturgical musical concerts were being readily given in the churches of Rome and France. Second, they must have poured enormous sums of money into these concerts to have 6 choirs each with an organ on scaffolding (wow! can you imagine that!). Third, things such as applause during Mass and extemporaneous and contemporary musical performance during Mass even in the presence of Cardinals are not a brand new never before seen occurrence in the last 40-50 years. Fourth, even the Pope seems to have been on board with all of this. And lastly, all of this was documented in the relatively immediate wake of the Council of Trent.

Another work, the “History of Western Music” (aka Norton Anthology of Music) notes:

Italy had a long tradition of religious music outside church services, such as the lauda. In seventeenth-century Rome, a new genre of religious dramatic music emerged, combining narrative, dialogue, and commentary. Toward midcentury, such works became known as oratorios, after the Italian word oratorio, or prayer hall, where lay societies met to contemplate, hear sermons, and sing laudas and other devotional songs.

Oratorios were that culture’s and time’s form of a “praise and worship” service.

In more recent time, for just one last and modern example, on October 22, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI attended a concert given in the Sistine Chapel.

 

[giuseppeTO]

This does not make me modernist,

Well, not so fast, Newt. You better let me be the judge of that. Only schismatics have the power to recognize modernism. I’ll take it up in committee and let you know the outcome.

 

[giuseppeTO]

Just a handful of examples. In the book “Music in the Western World”, a document by Andre Maugars writing on Music in the Churches of Rome, 1639 notes:

…I will give you a description of the very excellent concert I heard in Rome on the eve and feast of St. Dominick [sic], in the church of Santa Maria on the ruins of the Minerva [Rome’s only Gothic Church]. This church is rather long and capacious, and in it there are two great organs built on either side of the main altar, where two choirs had been placed. Along the nave there were eight more choirs, four on each side, placed on scaffolding eight or nine feet high, equidistant from each other and all in view of each other…

and a little later in the document

…These very words having been said to me in the French Church on the eve of Saint Louis when I was attending an excellent concert given there, I resolved the next morning, inspired by the holy name of Louis, by the honor of our nation, and by the presence of the twenty-three cardinals who attended the Mass, to go up into a gallery, where having been received with applause, I was given fifteen or twenty notes on a little organ, after the third Kyrie Eleison, and I improvised on them with so much variety that they were quite happy, and had the cardinals ask me to play again after the Agnus Dei…This deed won me the highest honor I could have received; for the report of it, having spread throughout Rome, came as far as the ears of His Holiness, who did me the special favor a few days later of sending for me, and said to me, among other things, “We have heard that you have a special talent and we would like to hear you.” I will not tell you how happy His Holiness showed himself to be after having done me the honor of listening to me for more than two hours…

Several things we can glean from this document. First, non-liturgical musical concerts were being readily given in the churches of Rome and France. Second, they must have poured enormous sums of money into these concerts to have 6 choirs each with an organ on scaffolding (wow! can you imagine that!). Third, things such as applause during Mass and extemporaneous and contemporary musical performance during Mass even in the presence of Cardinals are not a brand new never before seen occurrence in the last 40-50 years. Fourth, even the Pope seems to have been on board with all of this. And lastly, all of this was documented in the relatively immediate wake of the Council of Trent.

Another work, the “History of Western Music” (aka Norton Anthology of Music) notes:

Italy had a long tradition of religious music outside church services, such as the lauda. In seventeenth-century Rome, a new genre of religious dramatic music emerged, combining narrative, dialogue, and commentary. Toward midcentury, such works became known as oratorios, after the Italian word oratorio, or prayer hall, where lay societies met to contemplate, hear sermons, and sing laudas and other devotional songs.

Oratorios were that culture’s and time’s form of a “praise and worship” service.

In more recent time, for just one last and modern example, on October 22, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI attended a concert given in the Sistine Chapel.

Excellent JMJ. Thank you for taking the time to research and post the references, my dear friend! Consider me educated. Now I just have to work on my charity.

 

[stevusmagnus]

Catholic Encyclopedia

…The first and most urgent condition which the Church imposes in regard to her music is that it be in conformity with the place, time, and purpose of Divine worship; that it be sacred and not profane, in other words that it be church, and not theatrical, music. Theatrical music is just as much out of place in church, as the performance of a secular drama, the exposition of a battle scene, or even a statue representing a pagan deity. The performance of such music directs the attention not to the altar but to the organ loft. Musicians themselves have frequently failed to recognize clearly the difference between concert and church music. Mozart used parts of his religious compositions in secular cantatas and extracts from his operas for church purposes. A mass has also been compiled from some of Haydn’s profane compositions. The “wassail of notes”, the complete absorption of our consciousness by artistic melodic or harmonic combinations and sensuous melodies, the display of instrumental virtuosity, the joyous rush of tonal masses put to flight all devout recollection of the sacrificial act and all heartfelt prayer. March, dance, and other jerky rhythms, bravura arias, and the crash of instruments affect the senses and nerves, but do not touch the heart. Even a reminiscence of the concert hall is a distraction to those who wish to pray.

…After the sixteenth century, orchestral instruments found admittance into some churches and court chapels, but restrictive regulations soon followed. While Lasso in Munich, Monteverde in Venice, and Scarlatti in Naples had at their disposal large orchestras smaller churches with more modest resources satisfied themselves with the use of the trumpet or trombone in addition to the organ. The cultivation of both sacred and profane music by the same musicians proved detrimental to church music, and finally the Church had to wage open war on modern theatrical music in church services. Mozart’s insinuating sweetness, Haydn’s pious hilarity, Beethoven’s violent passionateness, and Cherubini’s dramatic intensity stand in too strong contrast to the lofty religious dignity and gravity of Palestrina. Maurice Brosig, although rather unrestrained and subjective in his own compositions, always excluded their works from church. Concert instruments may, under certain circumstances, produce in church a very brilliant effect and an exalted mood. In general, however, they are rather obtrusive than devotional. Their tendency is to predominate, and they are apt to obscure the declamation of the text.

…The self-restraint so delicately conveyed in the church modes completely disappears in the apparently boundless freedom and stormy movement of concert music. The latter makes use of the chromatic element, modulation from one key into another, tone colour, the various forms of, composition (sonata, etc.), and every other artistic means to carry the hearer from one mood to another and finally to heighten the impression to the degree of passion. As such purposes are foreign to church music, it makes of these means, whenever it employs them, a different use. It will be remembered that the contrapuntal vocal school, at one period in its history, also degenerated into artificiality and the cultivation of form for its own sake, but this abuse was not only reproved by the Church, but also remedied by repeated reforms since the Council of Trent.

…It is as important today as ever that we carefully distinguish between simply religious music — be it never so beautiful, artistic, and conducive to private devotion — and that kind of music which the Church requires for her services. Outside of the Church each one may sing such melodies to religious texts as best satisfy his own pious mood; he may even indulge his æsthetic predilections in choosing his hymns. The house of God, however, demands an entirely different attitude; we must realize that we are there to pray, that we may not force our personal mood on our fellow Christians, but that, on the contrary, we must follow with devout attention and pious song, according to the will and in the spirit of the Church, the liturgical action at the altar. And, in according to the Church our filial obedience, we need entertain no fear that she, the venerable mother and protector of the arts, will assign to music a function unworthy of its powers.

 

[paramedicgirl]

we gotta give to the protestants who found a way to illude Catholics to worship like them.

they did not succeed by taking all Catholics out of the Church. they came up with a better plan. they brought their worship into the Church. very clever.

since they dont like the Mass, they sure found a way to destroy it within the Church itself. way to go Catholics.

That is very disturbing.