Bishop Sample and the Future of Catholic Music

Chant Cafe ^ | February 1, 2013 | Jeffrey Tucker

[NYer]

There are two errors to correct in the news that Bishop Alexander K. Sample is headed to Portland, Oregon. The first is that it means nothing. The second is that it means everything. As is often the case, the reality will be something in between.

At one level, it is a momentous choice because the Bishop is one of the great voices and minds in our time in favor of the “reform the reform” plus the push for sacred music, about which he is a genuine expert. Portland is the home of the Oregon Catholic Press, which provides music for a plurality of American parishes, and what OCP provides (for the most part) represents an older paradigm (roughty 1968-2010) of musical expression, the reform without the reform. Insofar as OCP’s publication program depends heavily on the approval of the local ordinary, the appointment could be very significant.

But let’s be clear about the Bishop’s temperament and approach. He is an extremely kind and thoughtful person. He is extremely accessible and not puffed up in any way. He is not a “hard liner” by any stretch. He loves beauty and tradition and would like to see this spread through inspiration and example. But he is not the skull-cracking type at all. He is a broad-minded man of genuine conviction but also possesses great pastoral sensitivity. He has a warm heart, a delightful personality, and loves people. If you see someone describe him as Torquemada, know this: that person is utterly clueless about the reality of this shepherd of the faith.

It was my great pleasure to be invited as part of a Church Music Association of America team to Marquette, Michigan, to put on a music seminar for the diocese. The purpose of the meeting was to introduce sacred music and sugn propers and chant to the musicians of the diocese. I gave several lectures and got people singing the ordinary of the Mass in English chant. Arlene Oost-Zinner taught the details of music reading, tonality, rhythm, and singing properly. Attending were most musicians from the area. We used resources such as the Simple English Propers and the Parish Book of Psalms.

Bishop Sample attended the entire event from start to finish. He gave some talks too, and in each, he struck precisely the right chord. His talks were about the rationale and need for gradual change. He explained that what the musicians are doing at liturgy is generally underappreciated. Their job is not just to sing anything but rather to aspire to sing the actual liturgy. This task raises the important of the musical arts to a much higher level.

Now, if you know anything about Catholic musicians, they tend to resist any change. They get invested in what they have done in the past and are happy to do that in the future. They tend to think that any push for change is an insult to their past contribution, even when no insult is intended at all. Even when they feel a sense of internal frustration and confusion about their task, they fear new missions because they worry that they don’t have the skill, that they will alienate people by failing to sing people’s favorite songs, and that they won’t be able to perform the new music in a degree of competence that makes them come across well.

It was absolutely dazzling how Bishop Sample dealt so beautifully with all these fears. He was light and conversational with everyone -- plus he is genuinely funny! He assured them all repeatedly how much he values what they have done. He also gave them the confidence that they needed to undertake a new challenge. We could easily see the effects of his presence there.

Everyone was delighted and inspired. He made our job much easier. In the end, the seminar was a rousing success in every way. I would suggest that not even one attendee left those days with a sense of fear. They were all excited about the future. This is the way he works: like Benedict XVI himself, Sample leads not through coercion but through example, inspiration, and frank telling of what is true.

There are many problems besides music in Portland, Oregon, among which bankruptcy and shortages of priests and many other issues. At the same time, it is obviously true that the issues with the Oregon Catholic Press will be on the table.

You might be surprised to learn that the OCP has already undergone many changes in the last five years. It has spent a lot of money and taken a huge financial risk in producing top-of-the-line recordings of the entire sung Mass in authentic Gregorian chant. It has pushed these and distributed them widely. Their advertising for these recordings has pointed out that this music is the music of the Roman Rite. In addition, OCP distributes many books of chant, along with tutorials and otherwise. The “reform the reform” is not utterly foreign to OCP.

In addition, the staff of OCP has some outstanding musicians there, people who sing high-quality music around town. They know their stuff. There are scholars and sacred music enthusiasts all throughout the building. It is by no means barren of high artistic sensibility and expertise in this area. Some employees of OCP listen to chant and polyphony in their cars and homes and even perform this music as part of their musical avocation. They attend concerts in the lively artistic scene in Portland. In their private lives, they revel in their vast knowledge of the repertoire.

If you are shocked to hear these things, it is understandable. This is not part of OCP’s reputation. This is because its bread and butter is the distribution of pop music to parish in fly-away resources. They have many resources they distribute, from resources for the pews, organ accompaniments, many different types and styles of hymnals, choral resources, and more. When a parish signs up for their subscription services, the materials arrive like a tsunami. People in the music world speak of this or that parish as an “OCP parish,” and everyone knows what that means. It’s not good.

I would rank the quality of their main product to be inferior to anything you will see or hear in the Protestant world. My own parish is an “OCP parish,” and the frustrations that musicians feel with their product is unrelenting. The choral books don’t match the hymn books. The hymns are in different keys, sometimes different rhythms, and sometimes even different words. There will be verses in the hymnbooks that are not replicated in the choir books -- and attempting to use both without a thorough pre-Mass check can be enormously frustrating.

The sheer volume of week and predictable pop music in these resources, even those claiming to represent the Catholic heritage, is overwhelming. And the absence of core traditional repertoire is just as notable. One might expect that “Sleepers Awake” would be there for advent. Nope. One might think that the the Marian antiphons would be there. Nope. One might expect more than one Latin setting of the ordinary chants. Nope. Sung propers of the Mass for entrance, offertory, or communion? Nothing. For a musician who sets out to use music that is part of the long tradition of the Catholic world, and attempts to use OCPs main publications to do, he or she will find a desert.

This is a problem. But it is not a problem without easy and fairly painless solutions. If those solutions exist, I have every confidence that Bishop Sample will find them. And he will manage to do this in a way that does not create enemies but rather makes new friends. This is his way.

In addition, I know for a fact that there are many within OCP who are ready for a change. They have grumbled quietly for years but deferred to the marketing managers at OCP who are convinced that they have to keep doing what they doing or else they lose money. Sometimes it takes a real pastor to show up and say: there is another way and I believe you can thrive by pursuing it. And no matter what you hear to the contrary, many people within OCP will be celebrating this change.

And here’s the thing: everyone knows that things must change. The problem with Catholic music is famous. I’ve never spoken to a group of Catholics where the problems are not well known and understood widely. You only need to raise a slight eyebrow on the subject to garner laughter. Everyone knows. More importantly, everyone at OCP knows too.

The change won’t happen immediately. It might not even be detectable by anyone but the closest observers. It might takes several years. But it will come. And the Church and her liturgy will be much better off as a result. Making this change in Portland will spread change to the whole of the American Church and then to the whole of the English speaking world and then to the whole rest of the world. This is the center, the core, the spot from which a major problem that exists in the Catholic world can be rectified.

[dfwgator]

Yep, tired of all of the “Jesus is My Boyfriend”-type songs.

[AnAmericanMother]

I don't know if I agree that things went downhill after Palestrina. Victoria (his pupil), Byrd, Sweelinck, Purcell, Monteverdi, Schutz, Bach - the whole Baroque period has some great stuff. And even the Classical period, despite its refocus on secular music, has some great church music and much of it is appropriate for Mass (how can we leave out Mozart?).

My personal opinion is that things started going downhill after 1805 - generally the big guns of the Romantic era do not produce appropriate music for Mass (there's still some good stuff - e.g. St-Saens' and Bruckner's choral work. But you have to pick and choose).

[Biggirl]

Well it should ONLY be sung by those who are Quaker anyways, in their places of worship since that is its origins.

[paterfamilias]

We have done some Palestrina, Dufay, and da Vittoria, others that I have never heard of but which our director comes up with.

Many of the hymns are right out of the Liber Usualis, but then we will add parallel organum parts in fifths and thirds.

I have come to learn how really beautiful and spiritually transporting this music is, especially when sung in the intended context (Holy Mass).

[Biggirl]

You got it.

[AnAmericanMother]

He really didn't intend for it to be sung even in a Quaker meeting house (he was startled though pleased when a lady stood up in meeting and sang one of his songs).

Sydney Carter's work is for secular performance - kind of like "Christian Rock" which doesn't belong in church either in my opinion (my husband the old rock guitarist says "It ain't Christian, and it sure as heck ain't Rock.") In the parish hall or at a youth meeting - go for it! (although 9 times out of 10 it's not music the actual youth like, it's music that makes the 60-somethings feel nostalgic for their youth.)

I'm always telling the story of the Worst Church Music Ever - in a Jesuit parish run by Franciscans (go figure) where the priest thought he could play guitar (he couldn't, couldn't even tune it - thought my husband was going to go over the pew and take it away and tune it). The rest of the "band" was a screechy lady of a certain age and an old gray-haired dude with a beard, ponytail and tambourine. And the priest's cellphone went off in his pocket . . . )

[Sirius Lee]

Still, the Romantic, Schubert, while a bad Catholic, penned what is possibly the greatest sacred aria of them all in his Ave Maria. His Masses however are merely serviceable, but not on the level of Verdi or even Dvorak.

Strange that one of the greatest composers of Lieder would have such a hard time with Masses and opera.

[Sirius Lee]

Still, the Romantic, Schubert, while a bad Catholic, penned what is possibly the greatest sacred aria of them all in his Ave Maria. His Masses however are merely serviceable, but not on the level of Verdi or even Dvorak.

Strange that one of the greatest composers of Lieder would have such a hard time with Masses and opera.

[AnAmericanMother]

The chant with parallel organum is indeed characteristically medieval - our choir does that a lot too, especially with very lengthy antiphons. And by the time you get to Dufay, music is starting to settle down into something that sounds relatively familiar.

It's the stuff in the middle, when Leonin and Perotin started experimenting with "florid organum" and clausulae, up until about the time Ockeghem was playing around with multiple simultaneous canons, that makes modern singers go, "Wait . . . what?"

I would say that Palestrina and Victoria* are the backbone of good appropriate music for the Holy Mass. You could sing nothing but Palestrina from now til the trump of doom, and never run out of good material.

*The English renamed Tomas Luis de Victoria to "da Vittoria" because they were annoyed that his name was the same as that of the Queen. Hey, guys, it's not his fault!

[Biggirl]

Good comment. That made my day, as I get ready to go to the store to stock up for my cats and I ahead of a winter storm which could become a blizzard.

Goes to show that if cannot carry a note for a non church crowd, why try to make worship really very, very bad with a bad voice in church?

[AnAmericanMother]

But he wrote it as part of the "Lady of the Lake" song cycle. The fact that it fits the "Ave Maria" is sort of coincidental (even though it's a prayer to the Virgin in the original).

Schubert died so young, it's hard to say how his art might have developed given more time and experience. But his Lieder are just simply spectacular - Mahler is the only composer that I think even comes close, at least in that Germanic vein.

[AnAmericanMother]

Hope you weather the storm all right! We were looking at it on the Weather Channel and saying that it looked pretty bad . . . .

I think that even if somebody has a good voice, the style and delivery of that sort of music is inappropriate for church.

A church singer is supposed to be transparent and let the music just pass through. Pop and art song singers add all sorts of "personal touches" (the way so many of them murder the National Anthem instead of just singing it).

[Heart-Rest]

Can any of you provide this convert with any "youtube" or other links with examples of this earlier, more beautiful liturgical music?

And, NYer, do you know any links where I could hear some of your Maronite liturgical music examples? (On my path to the Catholic faith, I attended some American "Orthodox Church" services, and found their "Divine Liturgy" music/chanting to be very beautiful.)

If anyone can provide those kinds of links, thanks in advance.

[ArrogantBustard]

Canto Gregoriano

Benedictine Nuns

For starters ....

[AnAmericanMother]

Hoo-boy, do I have some stuff for you! (I write the music column for our church bulletin).

Chant and early medieval developments. This music is going to sound strange when the variations begin. It really is another world from ours. In a minute, I'll post you what is usually considered the "standard music of the Church" - from a much later time (the 16th century, mostly):

chant Ut queant laxis Source of syllables that became ut-re-mi-fa-so-la - i.e. do-re-mi. Invented by Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo.

Organum - the first development of polyphony out of chant

chant Justus ut palma (free organum)

Here's some of the medieval polyphony that grew directly out of chant:

Guillaume de Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame (ca. 1360):

Kyrie

This is the first “through-composed” Mass, predating others by a generation.

A very well-staged dramatic performance of the entire Mass, with contemporary Introit and prayers added from other sources, sung with great style by l’Ensemble Gilles Binchois:

Messe de Notre Dame

Another interpretation by Ensemble Organum. Some people theorize this may be closer to the way choirs actually sounded 700 years ago: a rather raucous, nasal voice quality, with Eastern-style ornaments and slides between the notes, and lots of throat articulation. Definitely not to everyone’s taste, but it may remind you of Southern mountain folk singing or Sacred Harp, or perhaps Slavic folk music.

Messe de Notre Dame: Gloria

[AnAmericanMother]

Now, bouncing forward into the 16th century and beyond, here is some "classic" Renaissance polyphony with the chant on which it is based. If you listen to the plainchant and then to the polyphonic motet, you can hear the chant melody go by:

Chant “Sicut Cervus”: Chant "Sicut Cervus" "Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks, so longeth my soul after thee, O Lord."

The motet by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Sicut Cervus

Chant “Ave Maria” and Thomas Luis de Victoria, “Ave Maria”: Ave Maria

Here's an interesting one: Mr. Thomas Tallis, an exemplary English 16th c. composer, combines Sarum chant and polyphony in this lovely motet. Sarum (Salisbury) chant is different from Gregorian chant -- you'll notice the use of triple meter and also the very formal structure and limited range. Audivi vocem de caelo (I heard a voice from Heaven).

And from the 20th century: Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986: Ubi caritas

[Heart-Rest]

Thanks! (I hope the return to this kind of liturgical music spreads quickly to the whole country through Bishop Sample’s influence.)

[Heart-Rest]

Thanks so much, AnAmericanMother!

You've given me a lot to listen to, and I'll have to try to carefully step through the links you've provided and your accompanying notations, to follow your points about them. (From all you've said here, I believe you could probably teach a whole course in these kinds of historical music forms, and it would be great to know all those things. Maybe you should set up an online school about them, for newer Catholics.)

  :-)

[VermiciousKnid]

Here is our girls’ schola singing St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Ecce Panis Angelorum”.

This was recorded in June 2008, about 10 minutes before many of the girls (ages 12-14) were Confirmed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9DDi64ah9E

[AnAmericanMother]

You're very welcome!

I'm on a mission to convert the folks in our parish to what I keep calling "the magnificent treasury of Catholic music".

And I'm going to keep talking about it every week until somebody appreciates it! :-)

This week, the column features Jacob Obrecht, one of the Netherlands composers from the second half of the 15th century. He stands in the shadow of the great Josquin, but his music is lovely and is getting something of a revival right now.

Obrecht, "Salve Regina"

This is the prayer from the end of the Rosary - "Hail, holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, O most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us, and after this our exile, show us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary."