Hey Carlos . . . I got to thinking about this comment when we were at Vespers this afternoon. I realized something. As you may already know, most Franciscans do not chant the Divine Office and we rarely chant the mass. St. Francis was very opposed to chant. However, he was a big promoter of beauty in the mass and the Divine Office. He often wrote his own hymns. In those days they called them Laudas, which meant “songs of praise”. He wrote them in Italian and they were played on a mandolin, not on an organ. Obviously, they were used at mass and during the Divine Office, while the other parts were recited.
My point is that beauty has always been part of liturgy, not only among Christians. Muslims, Jews, Hindus and even Buddhists all incorporate the arts into worship. The arts are a form of lifting up the spirit and transcending one’s current state.
There is validity in wanting to make hymns sound better. It’s really an attempt to make them sound more beautiful. That takes us to another level. What may be beautiful in one culture is not beautiful in another or what may be beautiful for one person may not be beautiful for another.
I dislike percussion instruments, especially at mass. I finally realized why I dislike them. There are two very good reasons . . . I think so.
Most people who play them at mass are amateurs. Therefore, their playing lacks the skill of a more seasoned percussionist, which usually makes it very loud. If you listen to an orchestra, you don’t really hear the percussion instruments over the other instruments. It all blends well together, unless it’s a moment when an instrument does a solo. That takes me to my second reason for not liking percussion instruments at mass.
I have yet to see a church that was constructed with good acoustics for percussion. In other words, the architect did not have it in mind or it was not in the budget. It reverberates all over the place. From my point of view, this is not beautiful music. It’s very loud and very discombobulated.
Having said that, you, my friends, would be surprised that even Gregorian Chant loses its flavor when the church is not properly constructed for that purpose. I’ll offer a perfect example. When I was sent to Rome to study theology I thought that I would be blown away by the music at a papal mass at St. Peter’s. The truth is that I WAS blown away. I was blown away by how badly it sounded. They had a wonderful schola. But the acoustics in St. Peter’s are horrible. The schola is barely audible. Those beautiful hymns in Gregorian Chant don’t make it to the ears of the people at mass. All you hear are voices in the distance. Those who watch on TV get a much better audio, because they’re getting a feed, which those present are not getting.
Part of the beauty is not only the instruments and voices; the other part is how it’s played and the acoustics themselves. I found that Gothic churches have the best acoustics in the world. I love them. You don’t need microphones to hear the choir and you hear every note played on the organ or the guitar. It’s something about the way that they are built. I can’t explain it, because I’m not an architect.
Anyway . . . those were my thoughts after Vespers. I was listening to us and realized that we sounded pretty good, but our chapel is slightly larger than a walk-in closet and the acoustics are very good in this house.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
