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April 08, 2004
High Culture/Low Culture
RP Burke sends in this Anne Applebaum column
I'm not quite sure how it got to be this way -- writers of heavy books on one side, mass media on the other -- because it wasn't always so. The great American cultural blender once produced whole art forms, such as Broadway musicals and jazz, that might well be described as a blend of the two. But nowadays, that gap is so wide that I'm not even sure the old descriptions of the various forms of "culture" -- highbrow, middlebrow, popular -- even make sense any more. Does Edward P. Jones, the Washingtonian whose eloquent novel, "The Known World," won a Pulitzer Prize this week, even inhabit the same universe as MTV? Does anybody who reads one watch the other?
RP wonders if this is applicable to our current liturgical morass:
Popular culture has, once and for all, divorced itself from high culture. A couple of other examples:1. The NBC orchestra was, at one time, not a blaring backup band for Johnny Carson, but a highly regarded classical ensemble directed by the formidable Arturo Toscanini.
2. Do you remember Looney Tunes from the 40s and 50s? Many of the gags were based on opera, of all things — including famous and absurd parodies of The Barber of Seville and Wagner's Ring cycle.
3. Commercial broadcasting started with the likes of Omnibus (r.i.p., Alastair Cooke and Leonard Bernstein), Playhouse 90, and — for my first Christmas — Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors"
Imagine any of these things happening today?
Further, our public media markets are incredibly segmented. Our new pastor, a native of Uganda, brings a most welcome outsider's view to our culture. He pointed out to me once that he's encountered many Americans who will listen only to a single type of music — and run away from anything else. Easy listening ("soft rock", the musical heirs to the cynically engineered Musak) and country-and-western partisans demand to hear their favorites and only theirs. Someone like me, who's as likely to listen to the music he performs — organ and choral — as to oldies or Motown, is relatively unusual in his experience.
Much the same applies to books, as Ms. Applebaum writes. Only a few even touch the artistic, so that very few know how to discern good from bad — to use Duke Ellington's famous adage that there are only two types of music, good and bad, and you can tell which is which by listening.
This week's America gives some advice to parish liturgy committees, but it doesn't address the really serious problem: some members may have technical knowledge of liturgy — meaning they can spout quotes from someone's commentary about liturgy documents (the way priests in the old days never studied Aquinas, only someone's book about Aquinas) — but can't tell good texts and music from bad and dismiss any dissent as "personal taste." Many priests are no better.
How do we get across the idea that we need to do our BEST work in our worship?
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Comments
Because America is extremely segmented these days. Reflected in our mass media. Ratings for the Three Traditional Networks will rarely reach the levels they achieved before cable, and its specialty networks for specialty audiences (according to gender, age, race, hobbies and interests, religious beliefs.) One of the wonders of subscribing to satellite radio is that my passion for music can run wild. I can hop from Frank's Place- Sinatra, His Friends and Disciples- to the mainstream country channels to the superb Soul Street- R&B from 60s- to the sharp opinions of Fox Sports Radio. In many ways, the fragmentation started with radio formats becoming more clearly defined by the early 1960s. Ironic that the next generation of radio offers a wider potpourri of programs than its AM/FM counterparts. We segment in our spiritual lives. In its music. In its liturgy. That somehow it doesn't require our best efforts. Or that it should be left to Experts. Some of whom may be tone-deaf, like many of us.
Posted by: Gerard E. at Apr 8, 2004 8:38:38 AM
The Church isn't totally innocent in this matter. How much money do differnt levels of the Catholic church allocate to funding great works? Many of the master artists, sculptors, musicians, writers, etc. of the past, received funds from Popes and Bishops, from Kings and Queens.
Posted by: Eutychus Fell at Apr 8, 2004 8:52:48 AM
That's an interesting post. I think the phenomenon is more complex than RP Burke indicates. In some ways, the barriers have broken down between high culture and low culture. We are in a time of cultural fragmentation and chaos. I'm putting together now a new Sunday opinion and commentary section for the Dallas Morning News, and I'm the editor. This section will not recognize a bright demarcation between high and low culture, because most Americans do not observe one. Traditionally, it would have been unthinkable for a section like this to contain an analysis of what it means (for example) for a pop star to bare her breast on the Super Bowl. Well, we happen to live in a culture now in which that sort of thing is what people actually talk about, and it has real symbolic importance. So it deserves serious attention.
I think what RPB is worried about is the loss of a sense of cultural hierarchy. I do think that's somewhat worrisome, esp. when I hear people say that the marketplace is the sole determinant of the ultimate worth of a thing. That can't be true, else Britney Spears would be a more eternal cultural figure than Renee Fleming or Ella Fitzgerald. A hundred years from now, though, nobody will know who La Spears was, but people will still be listening to Fleming and Fitzgerald. Similarly, when the Our Lady of Pizza Hut suburban parishes have been abandoned and have fallen down, those medieval stone churches of Europe will still be standing, and revered as beautiful (whether they will have any people in them is another question).
I want to point out too that we live in a time of great democracy in terms of the availability of the artifacts of high culture to the masses. In the next 10 minutes, I can go to amazon.com, tap my keyboard a few times, and have sent to my house in a matter of days anything Shakespeare wrote, "Being and Nothingness" by Martin Heidegger, CDs of anything Arturo Toscanini recorded, and ... see? I'm a middle-class zhlub living in a small red-brick house on a nondescript street in a city on the prairie, and all this is available to me. And to you too. As Fr. Wilson has pointed out to me whenever I've gotten angry and depressed over parish life, we live in a time in which every single Catholic with a computer and a credit card can go to Amazon.com and order any number of catechetical, doctrinal or inspirational works from the entire history of the Church. I can have a complete set of the works of the early Church Fathers delivered to my doorstep by the middle of next week, if I want it. What Fr. Wilson says is that we have to recognize that we live in a time when our institutions are failing us, but rather than give in to despair, Catholics should take the initiative to educate themselves and their children. We are not cut off from the knowledge we need. And that is a benefit of our culture too.
Posted by: Rod Dreher at Apr 8, 2004 8:53:06 AM
"How do we get across the idea that we need to do our BEST work in our worship? "
Talk about hitting the nail on the head! This is exactly the problem. It's as though as society progresses in science, technology, and efficiency, there is an inversely proportional culutural regression. We seem to no longer think we are capable of our BEST work. We've replaced Mozart and Palestrina with Jim Cowan and the congo drum.
I have a theory that the problem with culture has everything to do with relativisim. Relativism denies or avoids objective Truth, favoring transient "truths" and subjective, emotional "realities".
Denying objective truth, however, means denying beauty. While subjective standards of beauty exist - I think my wife is beautiful while you may not (of course you would be wrong!) - beauty is a manifestation of truth. Whether in art or in music, things are only really beautiful insofar as they correspond to the ultimate beauty of God. This is why order, symmetry, balance and patterns are typically most prevalent amongst artistic masterworks. Harmony will always win out in appeal over dissonance. We have a paradigm in God, and in the created order, and when we create, we're at least partially programmed to choose things that imitate divine creation.
What we have now in liturgy - and in much new liturgical architecture itself - is the embodiment of relativism as artistic expression. Once, architecture, art and music in the religious sphere was created with the attempt to lift the heart and mind to God. Now, there is a perverse obsession with man, with horizontalism. We stop calling Jesus "King" or "Savior" or "God" and start calling him "Brother" and "Friend". While it's true that He is in a real way our brother and our friend - He is first and formost our King, Savior and God. And He deserves the respect due to Divine Majesty.
This means that his house should be inspiring, not distracting. I don't understand the "church-as-alien-spacecraft" motiff that characterizes modern Church architecture. I find myself at times longing to have Mass in local protestant churches, because at least they look like churches.
Classical architecture expressed this reverence that we now lack - which we needn't lack, because new, legitimate styles could develop. But at leat in the old styles, like them or not, you could see that a church was the house of God. For example, I never cared for Baroque architecture, I found it entirely too busy and gaudy. But I certainly felt the reverence of the architect's intent.
We also have music that is not simply banal, it is base. While the popular music of the day, or even folk music, may tug at a heart string now and then, it hardly elevates the mind to contemplate the divine mysteries in the way that say, Schubert's Mass in G does. One of the beautiful things about polyphony is that it effectively eradicates individualism from worship. You can't have a choir with one or two singers. You need many - as the Body of Christ needs many. And with many voices, a beautiful tapestry of prayer is woven to the almighty God.
Society as a whole has lost its sense of culture. We don't know how to create it anymore, because we aren't inspired to. Until we regain our sense of Truth, of goodness, of beauty, and that the heart and mind can look higher than the person within, we're not going to get it back, whether in the secular world or in liturgy.
Posted by: Steve Skojec at Apr 8, 2004 9:30:31 AM
Peace, Amy.
I also think this is more complex than RP lets on, but I think he's on the right track. The great divide started when "professional" musicians (under patrons, if you will) began distancing themselves from "folk" music during the Renaissance. Up to the point of Gutenberg, music was closer to the people and the people's needs, passed on by ear and oral tradition: plainsong, dance music, ballads, etc.. Western culture is unique in having a "written" musical tradition of the classics. Certainly great artists (composers and performers) put their stamp of creativity and originality on Western musical tradition, but by and large, Mozart and Bach and their kin were misunderstood and suspected by those who wanted the safe and sure path. Still, we gained from the Baroque, the Classical, the Romantics, the Impressionists, and maybe even the avant garde.
America is a special case in that our native music (white spirituals come to mind) was suppressed in favor of European forms that gave people a false sense of civilization. Catholic and Protestant hymnals today show a bounty of European tunes and texts, and a minority of spirituals. The case wouldn't be much different if Poland produced a hymnal of Hispanic or Gospel tunes. Factor in a strong bias against the emerging American music of the 1700's and 1800's. Jazz may have been the first American musical style to break out of that ghetto (mainly because of European acclaim for it) but it wasn't the first American music.
The question of the day: "How do we get across the idea that we need to do our BEST work in our worship?"
Focus on the people who make music and aim high; don't focus on rubrics for dummies and aim low. Hire a capable music director before hiring a school principal (or minimally before hiring the first coach). Encourage and train young people in music.
This is why I'm inclined to shake my head over people who parrot "Priest shortage! Priest shortage!" We need "golden" people as music directors and liturgists in parishes. That is a far more desperate need, at least while a hefty percentage of Catholics are still bothering to go to Mass.
Posted by: Todd at Apr 8, 2004 9:39:10 AM
The biggest problem is that since VII we have stopped looking to the monasteries for leadership in worship. Now we look to the liturgy committee or liturgists. The connection between the monasteries and the parish needs to be revisited and reestablished. These people are professional worshippers not mere liturgists.
Posted by: BA at Apr 8, 2004 10:03:53 AM
I like that phrase--"church as alien spacecraft."
There's a wacky church, built in Omaha in the 1960s, to resemble Noah's Ark. I guess that was the idea. The church is named, incongruously, after St. Thomas More.
When the church roof constantly leaked, a priest is said to have ruefully remarked, "Noah never would have made it with this place."
The inside looks something like a funeral parlor. When I was last there the choir was hidden behind the sanctuary, giving the liturgical music a strange disembodied quality.
The statue of St. Thomas More outside the church was vandalized recently. Thieves--perhaps with a sense of history?--removed only the head. The missing head, I am happy to report, has been recovered.
Now some cultural ignorance--who is this Jim Cowan, and does he bang a mean congo drum?
Posted by: Whitcomb at Apr 8, 2004 10:09:33 AM
Whitcomb -
Honestly, I don't know much about Jim Cowan the man, I just know that at Franciscan University's "songbook" (not hymnal, those weren't allowed) was riddled with his folksy drivel.
I bet if he can bang a congo drum, the bangin' would be mighty mean!
Posted by: Steve Skojec at Apr 8, 2004 10:31:03 AM
BA:
The only problem with your theory is that many of the popular liturgists today either were monastics or were deeply influenced by them--e.g., Benedictine Archabbot Rembert Weakland.
Much, if not most, of the impetus for 20th Century liturgical reform came from the monasteries, and you'd be hard-pressed to say that V2 cut it off. To the contrary, it institutionalized it (the worst of it, I'm afraid--much of it was good). A lot of the spartan atmosphere of modern Catholic churches derives from the simplicity of monastic settings (not entirely, of course--much of it took its cue from iconoclastic strains of Protestantism). Even the music is often composed by monastics--for example, Gregory Norbet ("Hosea"--uncontrolled shuddering).
If anything, I say it would be better to sever the monastic connection entirely--what works for a group of committed religious in a committed religious setting doesn't necessarily translate to a parish filled with lay Catholics. In fact, it's often a very bad template--architecturally, musically, and liturgically.
Posted by: Dale Price at Apr 8, 2004 10:37:31 AM
One of the most common laments I hear from fellow converts, the poor quality of current Catholic music. Course, that could be said of a lot of music in our culturally challenged society.
Interestingly, for all the criticism of the ICEL group, I noticed in this morning's Liturgy of the Hours texts that many of the beautiful and solemn classical hymns were retained in the hymns for evening, night and morning prayer for Holy Week. Deo gratia.
Posted by: Christine at Apr 8, 2004 10:54:40 AM
Augustine and Boethius both wrote on this matter, and both works are called, if I'm not mistaken, de musica. Augustine on rythmn and Boethius on the modes. If anyone knows of English translations, I'd like to read them.
I have an excellent LCMS study guide on the matter here, but of course that is for the Lutheran Common Service, not a liturgy approved by Rome.
But the principles, the importance of the texts being orthodox and content-ful, used at the appropriate places in the liturgy, the music conveying the same meaning as the text, instead of warring with the text, and the writing and performance being as best as can be managed, are surely transferrable.
Posted by: Puzzled at Apr 8, 2004 11:25:35 AM
Yes, I suppose you can call Jim Cowan's music "folksy" but I wouldn't call it "drivel," and I, being acquainted with the gentleman, though not well, personally resent that characterization. The same goes for Don Fishel (who's perfectly capable of writing a motet: I've heard it), or George Misulia, or a number of other Catholic composers of very scripturally sound music that can be sung by nonprofessional singers accompanied by the guitar, an instrument which is not an infallible sign of heresy. If they used its ancestor, the lute, would you consider it poor taste? Are they not both stringed instruments plucked by the fingers? [I believe that St. Philip Neri led singing with a guitar during his missions.] And is this prejudice against Conga drums some kind of racist reflection on the superiority of European instruments? I love classical music and listen to it frequently; but I recognize that while polyphony may be beautiful, it requires trained singers, and therefore, in my parish at least, it is reserved for special occasions, when it is sung by the choir. It is not suitable for congregational singing, even in Mr. Skojec's parish, where all the members no doubt have M.Mus. degrees. There is, of course, a great tradition of congregational hymn-singing among Protestants, and I would be happy if many of those hymns were sung by Catholics. But I fear that some of our traditionalist brethren might find that too ecumenical. Come to my parish. There you will hear Jim Cowan, and traditional hymns, and chant, and (if you come on a major feast) polyphony sung by a choir. Our music director is the holder of an advanced degree in music from the University of Michigan (I have heard him sing the tenor solo in Carmina Burana) and has composed many of the Mass and psalm settings himself. (But he does play the guitar, so maybe Mr. Skojec will not want to set foot in our church.) I'd like those who criticize the recent "folksy" hymns to try to write some themselves.
Posted by: Henry Dieterich at Apr 8, 2004 11:38:24 AM
Puzzled, don't even get me started. The beauty and reverence of the Missouri Synod Lutheran liturgy I grew up on could have me expounding for the next ten years.
I recognize that every age of the Church has to reflect its Christian culture in a way that makes sense to its contemporaries, but there have got to be limits. Although the Missouri Synod Lutherans appear in some places to be becoming influenced by a form of Evangelical Protestantism, they are still in better straits, liturgically speaking, than their confreres in the ELCA.
Posted by: Christine at Apr 8, 2004 11:40:51 AM
To me this one is a no-brainer.
People will learn the liturgical music the Church chooses to teach them. No matter how much a teenager's taste leaned towards Elvis Presley in 1958, he learned how to sing Gregorian Chant in church. The crisis in Church art and music was created by the Church when it lost faith in the artistic forms it created, and self-consciously turned to the contemporary world to fill the gap, with predictably disastrous consequences.
Now that the disciplinary structures that controlled liturgical tradition have completely collapsed (and it is nothing short of that; the Holy Father and Cardinal Arinze can talk until they are blue in the fact, but there is no will or way to keep the guitar and piano from being the normal liturgical instruments in American churches), I see no solution but fragmentation into an Anglican system of High, Middle, and Low Church liturgies.
Posted by: David Kubiak at Apr 8, 2004 12:48:18 PM
Can someone tell me the names of some of Jim Cowan's hymns/songs? I'm just wondering if I'm familiar with any of them.
Although I'm basically a high-church sort of guy, I came to prefer the Life Teen Mass at my parish, because the near-rock-and-roll music seemed somehow more genuine than the more typical suburban-parish "folk" hymns of which the Glory and Praise hymnal is full.
It seems to be fading now, but for many years the Glory and Praise people somehow managed to have an air of forcing something down one's throat, or of condescension. That bothered me as much as the music itself.
Posted by: Maclin Horton at Apr 8, 2004 12:59:51 PM
David,
I agree with you. A visit to several Catholic parishes on any one given Sunday will prove you correct. The sad thing is, one reason I loved the Missouri Synod so much was that because even as a Lutheran I always considered myself part of the evangelical catholic milieu in the Missouri Synod, which had retained the very best of the Catholic tradition from which it came.
Posted by: Christine at Apr 8, 2004 1:03:08 PM
Henry - your response characterizes what I typically hear from "folksy" Catholics in response to criticisms that their music isn't appropriate. You seem rather angrily defensive - so imagine how I feel when the music that I (and the Church) love is constantly treated as a rigid, superfluous artifact of a bygone era!
I love guitar music, but most certainly not in Church. It doesn't belong there. It isn't an appropriate instrument, and neither is the lute, regardless of what may have been done in antiquity. The Vatican evidently agrees. When my brother went there a couple years ago with Franciscan U, the guards stopped them at the door and told them that the guitars weren't allowed inside. Funny, I can't imagine why they would do that if Rome thought guitars were all that hot. Maybe they were trying to avoid the debacle I experienced when I visited St. Peter's with FUS:
Having been granted the privilege of having Mass in the Crypt of St. Peter, on the feast of that Crypt, surrounded by the mortal remains of popes and saints, the folkies busted out a guitar and started playing "Amazing Grace" - a song of simon-pure Lutheran theology, right there upon the rock of St. Peter. It was virtually blasphemous.
So despite the prediliciton of ancient musicians for the lute - Pius XII warned us about this arbitrary reversion to history in Mediator Dei - Things change for a reason. Even Sacrosanctum Concilium, which in my opinion is full of dangerous ambiguity, at least states that:
"The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.
But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, as laid down in Art. 30." (SC, 116)
Pride of place means the Church is saying, "we've got dibs on chant during Mass!" After that, they give the nod to polyphony. Funny, it appears that even the "spirit of Vatican II" (which sounds like some kind of haunting apparition) agrees with me. Or rather, I should say, I agree with the Church.
Ratzinger has made comments disparaging the use of rock and pop music at Mass. Folk music is a kind of pop music. It certainly isn't chant, and it hardly qualifies as the kind of music that was being referred to when the Church said it liked "polyphony".
It fascinates me that you find the idea of a "trained choir" to be so objectionable for sacred music. There's plenty of training to go around for the dozens of extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, music ministers, life teen musicians, liturgy committees, and on and on ad nauseum. But how about training a real Choir? No time, money or effort for that, eh? Must be because its the only one of those "ministries" that the Church seems to think should really be PART OF THE PARISH.
And that's what I mean when I say that we no longer think we are capable of our best work in the liturgy. We can decode the human genome, pinpoint enemy soldiers from space, clone animals, play with subatomic particles, send remote-control vehicles to MARS, but WE CAN'T TRAIN A BLOODY CHOIR! It's absolutely astounding.
Oddly enough, my parish DOES have an amazing choir. We have latin mass. We have chant. Incense. A priest who faces the altar. And it's all Novus Ordo! In fact, it's the Novus Ordo that Pope Paul VI promulgated, despite my misgivings about the mass itself. This is the Church. Like it or not, that's where we are now.
Your "racist" comment was really quite funny. Are you really that pretentious, that you would equate the dislike for an instrument with racism? I'll remind you what the Catechism says about the liturgy:
"The liturgical assembly derives its unity from the 'communion of the Holy Spirit' who gathers the children of God into the one Body of Christ.' This assembly transcends racial, cultural, social — indeed, all human affinities. The assembly should prepare itself to encounter its Lord and to become 'a people well-disposed'" (CCC 1097, 1098).
Notice the Catechism says "transcends" not "incorporates". There's a substantial difference there. We rise above all human affinities in the liturgy, and focus our Worship on God.
I'm sure that Jim Cowan is a swell guy, and I hope he's on his way to sanctity. But his music, in my opinion, is for the birds.
Posted by: Steve Skojec at Apr 8, 2004 1:06:09 PM
I do not find trained choirs objectionable. I think they are excellent. But (except maybe in Mr. Skojec's parish) the congregation rarely qualifies as one, and generally hasn't rehearsed a large repertoire of polyphonic hymnody. I don't think that Sacrosanctum Concilium meant to exclude congregational singing. After all, the Church has had hymns for a long time and even used them at Mass. Some traditional Catholic hymns are dreadful; many are excellent. Fr. Faber's are even used by Protestants sometimes. I would like to pose to the cultured despisers of contemporary Church music a question: How do you distinguish between, say "Silent Night," which was written by a priest for Christmas Mass and originally composed on the guitar, and the music of, say, Jim Cowan? Are there certain metres or modes that are holy and others that are unholy? Possibly you argue that Mediator Dei and Sacrosanctum Concilium meant to exclude "Silent Night"--if so, say it out loud. I disagree, but then I'm one of those 70s charismatic converts.
Posted by: Henry Dieterich at Apr 8, 2004 1:47:43 PM
I suggest we have hit bottom with non judgmentalism. Judging behavior as bad has carried over into judging production as bad; each have become a moralistic judgment on persons and we are told that our faith forbids judgment. The flip side is that we can no longer make judgments about what is good either in behavior or production. As we dare not call behavior or production bad, so we dare not call behavior or production good lest we make an invidious distinction. We dare no longer
identify "best."
Posted by: caroline at Apr 8, 2004 2:00:53 PM
Try suggesting that John Kerry's views are not consonant with Catholic teaching. They call you Torquemada for that.
Posted by: Rod Dreher at Apr 8, 2004 2:05:36 PM
Rod -
I think that was kind of a compliment, considering the fact that if you are Torquemada, they must be the heretics.
Posted by: Steve Skojec at Apr 8, 2004 2:28:42 PM
Henry, the choirs found in most Protestant congregations are generally taken FROM the congregation. Because Protestants have always believed that good hymns offered to God ARE a form of worship they've been trained since they were knee-hi to sing and sing boldly. That is the difference between the music I grew up on and the indifference found in most Catholic parishes today where you practically have to threaten the folks in the pews with the rack to get them to sing. It's the one thing I miss badly from my Lutheran days. Lutherans (and Anglicans) know how to sing. So do most Black churches because, again, it was part of the culture.
Of course, there's always that anomaly that when some of the old-time hymns such as Salve Regina or O Sacred Head Surrounded are sung the folks in the pew magically find their voices.
The 70's stuff sounds culturally-bound these days. We need to create something new from the old and incorporate the best of both worlds.
Posted by: Christine at Apr 8, 2004 2:30:18 PM
The commitment to a "preferential option for the poor" must extend across the board and can not stop with the economic needs of the poor. Any option short of embracing the entire lives of the poor, including their spiritual and cultural needs, their tastes in art, music, literature, is patronizing hypocrisy. If the whole preferential option means abandoning an aristocratic tradition of art, music, architecture, literature, education etc., then so be it. Those outside of the preferential option must totally embrace their role as the new marginalized.
Posted by: caroline at Apr 8, 2004 2:38:13 PM
Henry -
Again, I really don't see your point about choirs not being trained. For heaven's sake - train them.
I'm not totally agains the use of hyms - actual hymns, that is, not "Our God is an Awesome God" - though I find that congregational singing actually detracts from the "actuosa participatio" - the actual participation that everyone is so fond of speaking about. Actual participation takes place far more significantly on an interior level than an exterior one. The most significant exterior gestures of participation are standing, sitting, kneeling and listening. Thus chant and choral music would be, in the hierarchy of goods, at the top, where the Church rightly places them.
I honestly couldn't care less if "Silent Night" was composed by Zamfir on the pan flute. The song has it's merit, and it's fine at Christmas time, but it needn't be belted out like a torch song accompanied with guitar. The Pantheon in Rome used to be a temple to pagan Gods, but now it's a Catholic Church. I'm not saying the guitar and pagan worship are analagous (though it often feels that way at guitar masses) but you can't simply argue that since something that is widely accepted had a particular origin, that the origin should be accepted as well. We Catholics like to baptize things and bring them up a few levels, rather than leave them down where they came from.
I don't know if you can argue that some sort of music or other is more holy, but you can argue that certain music is more likely to draw people into contemplation of what is holiness. There is, contrary to popular belief, a hierarchy of goods. And as Caroline indicated, people are afraid of saying that something is good, better or best. We shouldn't be.
My wife and I are investigating starting a winery. In our business plan, we came across a remarkable fact - research indicates that uneducated wine drinkers like light, fruity, sweet wines. As they become more educated about wine, and drink it more regularly, their palate becomes more sophisticated. Before long, they not only desire drier, more complex wines - they are willing to pay more for them, even though at first they may have found them unpleasant to drink.
Music is the same way. Cowan's stuff, in my opinion, is the liturgical equivalent of "Barney" or "The Wiggles". It's saccharine, emotional, simplistic stuff that works especially well on kids. I grew up with folk mass music, and I used to like it. Then someone gave me a taste of Masses composed by the greats. It was like transitioning from a poor Rose' to a complicated Shiraz. I found myself being inexplicably moved into contemplation of the liturgy, all through the psychology of the music. I wept at the credo - in a language I didn't even understand - because it filled me with a sense of wonder at what God had done.
Music is a very psychological thing. It has it's purposes at the lowest-common level. From there, however, it's our job to move forward, and up. Real Music is hard to render, which makes it all that much more pleasing to God, and more uplifting for us.
Posted by: Steve Skojec at Apr 8, 2004 2:48:22 PM
There is an interesting article on "Music Ministry" in the Lent-Easter series on "Good Liturgy" in the current America by a certain J. Michael McMahon, president of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, that may help us think through this high culture - low culture distinction.
In a section on "Participation and Performance," McMahon notes, "Prior to the Second Vatican Council, most choirs and organists thought of their role as 'providing music' for the liturgy. Even though official church documents since the publication in 1903 of Inter Sollicitudines, issued by Pope St Pius X motu proprio had encouraged active singing of various Latin chants and responses of the liturgy by the whole congregation, before Vatican II most Catholics experienced a liturgy in which all the singing was performed by a choir or one singer (who was often also the organist)." McMahon then notes that Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy "charged those responsible for the revision of the liturgical books to consider (the active participation of the assembly) before any other element. The role of choirs and other musicians was reaffirmed, but they were now to carry out their ministry with due regard for the active role of the assembly." And, of course, the rest is history.
I suspect that we'll see this section as illustrating our dilemma. On one hand, we can have "high culture" at Mass at the cost of participation: beautiful and venerable music that can sometimes seem to be "provided" by a choir or single singer both culturally and physically external to the assembly. On the other hand, we can have "low culture" at Mass at the cost of perceived transcendence: music sung by the assembly that is open to the charge of being, well, excessively folksy. This dilemma can also be seen, I think, in the above comments.
But McMahon's closing paragraph in the "Participation and Performance" section might give us a way out of this (or so I'd like to think):
"A closer reading of church documents on music in the liturgy is gradually changing the way choirs and other music ministers interact with the larger assembly. Official church documents, including the recently revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal, envision liturgical celebrations in which the assembly engages in sung dialogue with the priest and in responsive singing with the choir and cantor. The presupposition of these documents is that the liturgy is fundamentally a sung celebration, in which the assembly of the faithful, the priest and the choir (or cantor) have active and distinct roles. Although the choir can - and should - sing alone at times, the singing of the choir should always be integral to the celebration and always planned in relation to the singing and prayer of the entire assembly. Whatever the style, choirs face the challenge of fostering active participation by the assembly while striving for the best musical quality possible."
If we recognize that the "assembly of the faithful, the priest and the choir (or cantor) have active and distinct roles," doesn't that open up the possibility of a coherent yet inclusive Mass in which the parts of the choir and priest can represent "high culture" and the assembly of the faithful represents "low culture"? Obviously these "distinct roles" are meant to be in relation to one another, but certainly that doesn't mean that they all have to share the same level of cultural sophistication or really even be in the same genre, right?
Neil
Posted by: Neil Dhingra at Apr 8, 2004 2:49:50 PM
