CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Mass Music Jackson Heights, N.Y. To the Editors: A long Gregorian Amen to Thomas Day's article "A Syllabus of Musical Errors." [Aug. 27]. I recently returned from a Choral...
...DORIS R. ASMUNDSSON Nyack, N.Y...
...in one breath, and fought for the Latin Mass, high/ low, with/ without Gregorian for those who want and need it...
...There was such a lot of singing in the villages then, and this was my pleasure too...
...Of some forty people, I was perhaps the only Catholic, and while I was pleased to see how much people of other faiths appreciated our music, it saddened me to think how carelessly we have discarded our heritage...
...I am one of those who slowly has been driven from mass by a painful inability, despite every wish and argument I mount against myself, to cope with the drivel...
...Indeed, as early as December 31, 1964 our Movement's "Catholic Traditionalist Manifesto"-which, incidentally, cost me my position as professor and dean at a major seminary in the "liberal" archdiocese of Baltimore-"respectfully submitted" to Pope Paul VI and to our bishops several "suggestions," among which were the following: #3...
...But this calls for examining a few questions like "What's the Church for...
...Polyphonic music, interspersed with 11th Century plain chant) it was indescribably beautiful...
...American youth unwittingly aped "gustibus non disputandis" and 18th C. classic liberalism with "do your own thing," in time to honor our bicentennial and to help depose a tyrant...
...gommar a. de pauw Bloomsburg, Pa...
...Day and Commonweal, to the daily growing ranks of true "liberals" who are at last admitting that those early traditionlists of the 1960s were not so "reactionary" after all, and that, if Pope and bishops had listened in due time to the moderate voice of the C.T.M., all Catholics, of whatever persuasion, would still feel at home in their churches today, and the picture of today's Church would not be one of a badly divided and disillusioned flock on both sides of the Establishment line...
...In other words, let those who claim to serve begin to serve the needs of the people of God and leave off multiplying petty rules, designed for dominion...
...and that old-fashioned novenas, the Requiem Mass, Vespers in Latin, and . . . Victorian hymns . . . should be kept for those who find them personally comforting...
...Day does not seem fully acquainted with our Catholic Traditionlist Movement which he casually dismisses on page 557 as "reactionary...
...But that is not our experience...
...Is it more Roman or more catholic (or even true) to set "once radical liturgists . . . singing Kumbaya" against those for "Solemn High Mass...
...The only place I know of in my parish in which Gregorian chant is regularly sung is the shower stall of my house...
...be threatened . . ." because singing a Gregorian defies its ukase, undermines its tyranny (even if its arrogant, puerile agents are cultural pygmies and/or mesmerized by Gregorian...
...So I lie...
...james forest New York, N.Y...
...Now I find myself part of a small group that gathers for a weekly euchar-ist...
...27) accurately headlined some of the traps that reformers of liturgical music have fallen into, it failed to recognize the underlying problem that is the source of all the errors outlined by Mr...
...I recently returned from a Choral Institute in Vermont where for a week we rehearsed for performance a mass by Josquin des Pres (15th Century...
...The National Association of Laity for a decade has fostered optional clerical celibacy, women priests, election of bishops, their financial accountability and fixed terms of office, sex and contraceptive education, communal liturgical groups et al...
...That in the new methods of community participation, and especially in the field of sacred music and of architecture, our Catholic heritage be preserved...
...Ann Choir Stanford Newman Center 1247 Cowper Street Palo Alto, Ca...
...Then despite many hints he fails to define and expose the evil that alienates...
...I have had pleasure...
...That antidote will break would-be Tigellinuses, the dragon's teeth Rome has evoked ever more often since 1517, 1688, 1776, 1789, and 1864 (Errors...
...complete with Latin, incense and angelic music...
...Please let us sing our song and complain less...
...that a Sunday Mass celebrated without music was a legitimate custom with a cultural basis and should be preserved if a congregation so wishes...
...Day truly feels that "things like a Solemn High Mass-complete with Latin, incense, and angelic music -must be allowed to survive...
...But I have become unable to harness my dismay at the general mediocrity of music that for me, at least, is only an obstacle to worship...
...It is a problem that all attempts to make changes in the liturgy have struggled with...
...Organ preludes and post-ludes are standard...
...excommunication will...
...A whole generation of young Catholics has grown up on third-rate rock guitar trash and has learned to parrot such grammatical monstrosities as "Lamb of God, you take away...
...MARY REED NEWLAND Chairman, Comm...
...which is probably good because one ought to be able to have an answer that goes beyond Auld Lang Syne (good if you have other reasons, of course...
...Ann's, the Newman Chapel for Stanford University...
...We could learn a bit from monks and Quakers and various others whose worship is built on waiting and listening for God rather than stuffing the ears with more of the din that increasingly scars our lives...
...SHARON A. FISCHER Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago Mountain View, Calif...
...At the moment they are in a state of real confusion about "Why be a Catholic...
...I am a closet chanter...
...and "Why am I here...
...JOSEPH T. SKEHAN President, National Association of Laity (NAL) Albany, N.Y...
...Right now Catholics are reworking the reason...
...Can the Catholic Church not attempt some musical re-education when the music now in use is so obviously unsatisfactory to everyone...
...The black liturgy at Queen of Angels, Newark, the Russian liturgy and choir in Salzburg, or the full orchestra at the cathedral there, or a thunderous Kumbaya on a college campus move me, but not Indian, Chinese, Arabic or rock or most organ music...
...Day's article provided the foil for my own reflections...
...To be good singing, it must be pleasure, and to be pleasure, one must have a reason...
...4...
...rev...
...To the Editors: In response to Thomas Day's article (August 27), I would like to note that the tradition of singing Gregorian Chant is alive and well at St...
...That the PERMISSIVE nature of the Liturgy Constitution of Vatican II be safeguarded on local levels so as to eliminate any form of regimented compulsion . . ., and that, consequently, priests and people be allowed to pursue the defense and promotion of the use of the traditional liturgical language and customs with the same freedom given to the proponents of vernacularism...
...If Mr...
...I would also like to note that if there is anyone interested in helping to preserve this part of our tradition and insuring that the singing of chant in a liturgical setting will survive, that person might send a contribution to: The St...
...But I have forgotten one thing-the singing...
...There is another reason why Catholics don't sing and that is-the need isn't there...
...To the Editors: T. Day acutely avers "Alienated people do not sing" [Aug...
...That the centuries-sanctioned liturgical Latin of the Mass not be banned, but, if not given full priority, at least be allowed to co-exist with the new vernacular forms...
...Anyone who may be in the Bay Area is invited to come and join us at the 11:30 Mass...
...We have pleasures on every hand and celebrating liturgy is not high on the list...
...27], amen, amen, amen...
...Polyphonic masses and motets are also sung...
...Who writes "the lonely voice of the preservationists" hears but one tune...
...Such parishes were rare fifteen years ago, and apparently are now extinct...
...I never had pleasure...
...Is it too late to return to music whose beauty and value have lasted for more than six hundred years...
...Three years ago the choir led a congregation of about 700 persons (in the Stanford Memorial Church, our Chapel being too small) in the singing of the plainchant Mass of the Angels...
...Continued on page 669)CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 643) Of course such social machinery will label its erstwhile allies (Day's "preservationists") "the 'new non-conformists' and 'dangerous liberals...
...In short, most of the errors enumerated in the article (like most issues in Catholic theology) can be seen from two paradoxical perspectives, and Mr...
...One day a year I went to Felixstowe along with the chapel women and children, and that was my pleasure...
...While it is very true that the hymns of the '60s could on the whole be accurately described as musical junk food, the last six years have seen a gradual increase in songs that are scripturally based, singable hymns that have harmonies and utilize a variety of instruments, including the organ...
...if Mr...
...When the first war came, it was singing, singing all the time...
...All this in an effort to lure them to religion, an effort that has clearly failed...
...Un-alienated people sing...
...To lump these current compositions with those of the '60s is to do a great injustice to the efforts and talents of people like Bob Dufford, S.J., Dan Schutte, S.J., Michael Lynch, and Ron Ellis, to name only a few...
...As one who has worked in the area of liturgical music for the last six years, I feel secure in saying that congregational singing works in parishes where the people have come to see themselves as persons coming together to worship in the unity of Spirit and truth, and that it will continue to fail miserably in places where the congregation has little sense of itself as a community...
...94043 MARGUERITE MANOR...
...Thus, to respond to the first error on the syllabus, it is not simply more time that is needed but an increase in understanding that can only (but not necessarily) come in time...
...There was nothing in my childhood, only work...
...Instead the ear drums are bruised with an avalanche of syllables, electric pianos and guitars, and a general idolatry about noise that seems to have taken possession of both Church and state...
...I have had singing...
...An 85-year-old invalided horseman is speaking...
...6...
...I came across this interesting bit in Akenfield-a Portrait of an English Village...
...Then the liturgy was in Latin, which I cherished, but accepted the arguments for English...
...I cannot help but recall, both with gratitude and longing, those once-upon-a-time parishes where worship was marked, even in the spoken word, with a mood of quiet...
...Singing comes from the real inside which is obvious when one listens to the folk music from the hills or from other peoples around the earth...
...We then used music which affirmed that quiet: Gregorian chant...
...Quite a few students have come through the place and either discovered the joy of singing chant, or simply appreciated the music and accompanying liturgy...
...I rejoice that we can come together in quiet listening and prayer, but wish there were a public mass I could attend and leave without feeling an ulcer was taking root...
...27] most interesting, even though Mr...
...of Adult Education The Office of Religious Education Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany Chicago, 111...
...Welcome, Mr...
...Musically, I suspect my parish is one of the better ones...
...How few are the words, whether said or sung at mass, which seem to issue from that longed-for, healing, sacramental stillness...
...They sing...
...A word should also be said in the defense of the musical creativity of American Catholic composers of the last few years...
...Boys sang in the fields, and at night we all met at the Forge and sang...
...If such secularists with no claim to holiness can confess within a generation to having destroyed more than they created because with puerile arrogance they ramrodded undigested plans upon disorganized, weak and at first docile communities, then what of a self-perpetuating hierarchic hier-ophancy addicted to conformity, accountable to no one, in no way, that never admits error, no matter how transparent or gross, but exacts obedience to its caprice, ascesis unrelated to an aim, locksteps worthy of the Grand Inquisitor, and conjures political plans to rob us of our civil political heritage...
...To the Editors: Regarding Thomas Day's "Syllabus of Musical Errors" [Aug...
...Day reports "urban planners have belatedly discovered . . . humility...
...For people who grew up believing that somehow Catholics were better, know the right (only...
...That's my limit, a function of my humanity, not the occasion for a rule...
...The foe is anti-catholic, anti-pluralistic conformity and its servants who lack "humility...
...I would rather listen to a pop music station on the radio, where at least I have access to the volume control...
...or a service to their common foe...
...way to approach God, etc., etc., it is unsettling to have to rework one's reasons and one does not exactly feel like singing...
...But the English one hears at mass often seems translated rather woodenly, with little reverence for the mystery of word, without the care that helped to give the Latin mass its extraordinary texture, each word and phrase being like stones smoothly polished by the currents of water and time...
...Cheerfully they paid tyranny's price so that they might truly be, be truly human, be richly diverse, taking risks, making mistakes and growing...
...It arises because the congregation is told "Now we will have lay eucharis-tic ministers" or "Now we will have the Sacrament of Reconciliation" or "Now we will have congregational singing," without an adequate explanation of the new understandings which gave rise to the need for the changes...
...The antidote is that blend of tolerance, civility, criticism and pluralism, that historic response evolved by the divergent peoples, cultures, races, spiritualities (even musicologies) con-mingled in the West and idealized (if not always practiced) in America...
...As the author pointed out, it was entertainment/celebration when there was no other way to entertain/celebrate than do-it-yourself...
...I never did any playing in all my life...
...To the Editors: I enjoyed the August 27 issue, especially the piece on singing...
...One need not kick the old reasons, they were part of our experience, but for people who were safe in the Church knowing it was the only place where one could be safe, this is no longer a good reason...
...A Benedictine monk once remarked that words ought to be, but seldom are, "an incarnation of silence...
...Right now we are asking people to sing to celebrate when they aren't sure what they are celebrating...
...The chapels were full of singing...
...Day indeed agrees with those views which he calls "preservationist" rather than "traditionalist," then the day is obviously here when the "non-conformist liberal preservationists" of 1976 have finally caught up with the "non-conformist reactionary traditionalists" of 1964 who never wanted to force their own "reactionary" food down the throats of other Catholics who preferred an updated and vernacularized Vatican II liturgy as the answer to their spiritual needs...
...To the Editors: I found Thomas Day's "A Syllabus of Musical Errors" [Aug...
...To the Editors: While the article by Thomas Day entitled "A Syllabus of Musical Errors" (Aug...
Vol. 103 • October 1976 • No. 21
