Choirs for a New Age

...and as each school will be likewise the training ground for teachers, the opening of further schools with the continued extension of this splendid feature will be inevitable...

...Though founded only eight years ago, the Pius X School has already sent dozens of former pupils and members of its summer classes into other schools in New York and various cities...

...Ward, as well as her mastery of method needed to train children so that they may be able to sing properly liturgical music of the Gregorian style...

...And yet that but a single one of these critics, and he an assistant, should have found the inspiration to forego his usual matutinal release and to attend the demonstration of the Justine Ward method of music teaching at the Lawrence-Smith School on Saturday morning, February 27, is a commentary on our journalistic system not altogether pleasing...

...For the furtherance of this, Mrs...

...The Rotary Clubs of Kansas City, with their special trains, a special telegraph wire with a ticking instrument in the wings to spread the glad tidings of an immature soprano's ascent to press-agented stardom, and hysterical women out in Broadway fighting the police for entrance—this, of course, is news...

...Ward's method and should have employed teachers trained at the Pius X School is a splendid tribute...

...The Latin language has, of course, remained untouched...

...To him, as to most journalists, the hours between two in the morning and noon are dedicated to sleep, breakfast, and the perusal of the newspapers...

...We know the difficulties—we must have the courage...

...If the reform in church music is to become widespread, schools must be established in every diocese, and ought to be established in every parish...

...How many of our successful opera singers, for instance, possess it...

...That such a condition should have obtained has been little short of a tragedy—a tragedy peculiarly apparent in the churches of a nation as undeveloped musically as the United States...

...While the Pius X School has done splendid work in training a girl choir, it is boys' choirs which are, of course, essential...

...That non-Catholic schools and organizations should have adopted Mrs...

...It requires something more than a voice and a reasonable amount of application under a singing-master, for it requires a fundamental understanding of musical values...

...When sufficient training schools have been established in the different cities, this participation of the congregation in the service will become an established thing in at least one church in each city...

...Of course the battle has only just begun, but it is being waged with faith and with the enthusiasm which is the child of faith...

...But to extend the work, money is needed and needed badly...

...The time has come when it is no longer possible for American Catholics who understand the necessity for purity in liturgical song to mince words for fear of offending organists, or even parish priests whose upbringing has unfortunately rendered them impervious to the beauties of the Gregorian style...

...If it had not been that we realized that it was the result of ignorance combined with unfortunate physical conditions, we might well have believed that the world, if not the flesh and the devil, had attacked both devotion and purity of spirit...

...We have listened, shocked and ashamed...

...and so it was that only one assistant critic found himself present that morning in the hall of the school in East Seventieth Street...

...It cannot be too often repeated that the Gregorian music and the Latin language constitute the official public prayer of the Church—a universal music and a universal language...

...The Motu Proprio issued by Pope Pius X set forth in perfectly definite terms what liturgical music should be, and what it should not be...

...We at least know now what the problem is, and what we must accomplish...

...This establishment of congregational singing is something hitherto practically unknown to the churches of the United States, and is, of course, only possible when a considerable portion of the worshippers have been trained in the music...

...yet if it is not presented properly the result is lamentable...

...Only last week, no less a figure than Cardinal O'Connell invited the girls' choir of the Pius X School to sing at High Mass in the Cathedral in Boston...

...but alas, the Gregorian music, largely owing to the vogue of polyphony, has through recent years become more and more debased and mutilated, until at the time Pope Pius X issued his Motu Proprio it had all but disappeared...

...But it is apparent that the demonstration of a great new artistic movement is not news...

...It is enough to say that it was extraordinary...

...The very fact that of these five organizations, only the Pius X School was distinctly Catholic, made the demonstration only the more pregnant of meaning to the Catholic mind— for the movement it expressed is Catholic in birth and March 24, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 547 spirit...

...The Justine Ward method was perfected by Mrs...

...Yet it is an understanding which, if properly imparted, the average child can absorb as he absorbs his letters...

...The demonstration was participated in by groups of children from the Pius X School of Liturgical Music, Miss Hewitt's School, the Kips Bay Boys' Club, and by a private class of beginners...

...The proper execution of Gregorian Chant and music written in the Gregorian spirit is extraordinarily difficult...

...There is no use blinking the difficulties...

...We have gone to Mass Sunday after Sunday, and have listened to excerpts from opera, operetta, and musical comedy given forth by the organ and the choir as integral portions of the service...

...Already Mother Stevens has a boys' class under her direction, and when it is fully matured it will undoubtedly give as admirable an account of itself as her girls' class has already done...

...The successful presentation of that music is based on the ability of children to sing it—children who, when they grow up, will be equally able to take the parts then suited to their voices...

...Such a demand seems at first thought a tall order for a church choir...

...Ward, with the cooperation of Mother Stevens of the Manhattanville Convent of the Sacred Heart, established the Pius X School of Liturgical Music...

...But the question remains—how is that end to be arrived at...

...It was but fitting that the choir of the Pius X School should have had the inestimable boon of instruction from perhaps the foremost authority on Gregorian Chant in the world—Dom Andre Mocquereau of the abbey of Solesmes...

...This act of the Cardinal ought to affect the future of music...

...We have the authority of the Holy Father himself to speak, and we ought to demand a careful hearing...

...There is no necessity of going into detail as to what the children in their demonstration accomplished...

...Our people today hear opera, operetta, and even popular songs, and go away thinking that of such is composed the kingdom of Catholic music...

...It is, then, to the child we must turn, and it is to the training of the child that Mrs...

...Ward and Mother Stevens...

...How is operatic and other strictly secular music to be banished from the Mass and relegated to its proper sphere ? How is that other music, that written ostensibly for church purposes, but which shows its essentially worldly character only too plainly, to be understood for what it really is...

...Their mastery of pitch and rhythm, their ability to compose original melodies and compositions (one of these being in three parts on a theme played on the piano by a member of the audience) and the skill of the older children in the singing of Gregorian, quite took the breath away...

...It was upon the researches carried out by the Benedictine monks of Solesmes under Dom Mocquereau that the official edition of the liturgical chant of the Church is based...

...Those who were present at the recent demonstration at the Lawrence-Smith School, as well as those who have attended Mass at the Church of the Annunciation, have realized that the flame thus lighted in the new world is today a veritable beacon of hope and enlightenment...

...This is the problem which Catholics of all countries must solve for themselves—a problem difficult, but certainly not impossible of solution—a problem to which such demonstrations as that at the Lawrence-Smith School offer the one and only key...

...All who were present recognized the extraordinary insight shown by Mrs...

...Moreover, so many of the younger members of the congregation have been or are pupils of the Pius X School, that the congregation itself now joins in the singing...

...It may thus be turly said that Dom Moquereau brought across the ocean the torch of Gregorian scholarship, and with his own hands gave it into the keeping of Mrs...

...Cardinal O'Connell, himself a musician of no ordinary attainment, is naturally a zealous believer in the restoration of Gregorian, and on hearing the choir sing in the Sacred Heart Convent in Boston, he at once sent his invitation for it to show the Cathedral congregation the sort of music demanded by the Motu Proprio...

...The choir of the Pius X School is composed of girls belonging to the Church of the Annunciation who are taught by the religious of the Sacred Heart, and at present it sings the Mass each Sunday at that church...

...Ward working in collaboration with the Reverend J. B. Young, S.J., for the primary purpose of introducing the Gregorian Chant into the churches of the United States...

...It gave the end to be worked for and stated the issue clearly and without possibility of denial...

...Ward and Mother Stevens have turned in the foundation of the Pius X School—a school which is to be hoped will be only the first of hundreds of others to be established throughout the land...

...We must force our way through active opposition which is the result of sheer ignorance fostered by centuries of false musical ideals, and through what is even more difficult, a public inertia which may appear at first approach unsurmountable...

...Judged by any artistic standard, the occasion was of more importance than the debuts of a dozen Marion Talleys...

...For it is through the child and the child alone that there can come a return to the original purity of liturgical song...

...Yet these very people, once given the opportunity of hearing the true liturgical music sung as it must be sung, will welcome it in no uncertain manner...

...In all music, the same rule holds true— it is only by the hearing of good music that good music can be loved...

...Indeed, it is not too much to say that the power they displayed would have been quite impossible of attainment by any group of children trained in the methods usually employed, either in lay or church schools...