Reflection from Br. Andrew on the role of sacred music in Holy Mass.
Transcription:
it’s great to be back with you guys again just sorry that brother Kevin can’t be here again he’s out yet again and so I’m just filling in again for Brother Kevin he asked me about, well it was a little earlier this time he asked me about three days ago if I can fill in for him and give a presentation. I am going to give another talk on sacred music tomorrow night for “Volo” so I figured today was my prep day so you guys are getting like the full-on like stream-of-consciousness version of this talk but anyway so I figured I’d just give you guys a little presentation and Sacred Music tonight yeah we’ll see where it goes from there so let’s begin.
In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit amen. Thank you for the opportunity to gather together we thank you for letting us form this community amongst ourselves where we can come to learn more about you or you can come to have camaraderie and friendship we ask that you bless us and always lead us back to you and whatever we do to our conversation through our presents to one another and we ask this through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with Thee Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen. In name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen.
So sacred music what is sacred music anybody has any suggestions or ideas no okay figured hands might go up for that one but it’s all right now no guesses? All right cool so I think we would be this way we distinguish a good and is by its component to be secular so when we look at just use our own times and is as an example so we look at modern secular music 4 on the floor party all night boom boom boom sort of the staff what is that gearing us towards maybe just think this is just like a question what is it what is that what is that set us up for what is that you know what are the emotions that that evokes from us now contrast that with when we are at the church I’m assuming that most people have been to liturgy here at St John’s maybe not I don’t know but we can transfer that with the kind of music that we here at church I’m just thinking that some people’s experience might be the 4 in the floor like boom boom boom start of stuff but that’s whole another topic but anyway at least a here we hear Gregorian chant we hear Sacred Music, polyphony, orchestral music it’s a very different dynamic between the two so I think there’s one way to separate out sacred and profane I think probably the best way to do that the best way to look at it is starting from the beginning so where does where does this idea of music come from if you think about if you look if you listen to ethnographers people or people doing study indigenous cultures they would say that music Wells up in the human soul and expresses itself through song indigenous music is heartily religious symbolic and I found this quote in in the Oxford book on music I forget the exact title, Oxford history music. Primitive man sings only when you have something definite to express since his singing is the spontaneous expression of his thought song and speech are often mingled in the course of his performance if one tries to introduce a primitive man to a new tune he will never stop asking what the song is about for him the thoughts expressed in the song are at least as important as the melody itself so I think that kind of speaks to the general phenomenon that we see is that human humans they have this natural desire for music. St. Augustine says that the lover is the one who sings there is something that wells up inside the soul and causes like this outpouring and singing is almost like the effusion of that love that sense that in turn from that internal locus there. The roots of a “metan” music that we have in our Western culture mostly I’m thinking of the classical tradition but it also kind of applies to like the blues and rock and in a very obscure strange way that is getting less and less applicable even to the music that we here in like the dance floor and things like that but music has its roots in Greek culture the western western music and it was inherently a philosophical it had philosophical ties so we hear people like Plato and Aristotle mentioning that music has a moral character to it so even like from like ancient times there’s been this idea that music is more than just an arrangement of pretty notes there’s something that’s deeper there’s some sort of interior court that can even affect ethical like the ethical portion of man so Play-Doh friends considered that certain modes we have like major and minor modes like you here like a sad song or Happy song or something like that we have the major and minor modes that we work with willing Greek Harmony there are many more of those there many more variances in nuances to the way that Harmony that Harmony related to each other not in so much Harmony but that music musical notes related to each other so he even said that there are certain modes there are certain harmonies that Foster Temperance and courage and that these would be the ones that should be instilled in people rather than other ones that might actually bring out and lost or like licentiousness or something like that it’s come to this idea of Harmonia which didn’t just apply to music it applied it apply to many things for instance the movement of the planetary movements there was a natural Harmony a unification of parts to an ordered hole the Greeks perceive that musical order was a reflection of the order of the universe so it’s pretty heavy stuff when we think about just music in general like this idea that there’s like an inherent morality even in the music itself regardless of the words you’re singing. so Western thought has really taken especially at the when we come into the Christian era really takes hold of that idea that music has the ability to almost affect morale character in a certain in a certain sense so from indigenous music from the Greek musical tradition we come to sort of a through many permutations when we get to the Christian era will we start to see is monophony which is essentially monophony is a series of notes combined there’s no Harmony to it there’s no cords there’s no like multiple notes at once it’s a single line of Music being sung and so Gregorian chant is like the Paradigm of this type of music we’ve got I mean there’s precedent to it of course in older cultures but when we get to the Christian era we start thinking about Gregorian chant this is what’s been preserved and handed down to us so Gregorian chant itself has some roots in Jewish music from the temple from the synagogue and so they have, end they still do in the synagogue they have what’s called cancellation where they sing sacred text of the Hebrew Bible and they have a Cantor that sings these texts out loud for the congregation so I just pulled a couple of examples and this is still in force today so I just wanted to play a couple of examples of what cantillation sounds like even like what it may have sounded like back then and what it sounds like currently. so I’m just going to pull that up and hopefully, this will work so this is an example of somebody singing one of the songs excuse me it’s from I think it’s from Daniel.
Music
Just from listening to that I mean I think we can kind of agree that there’s like a certain sound about it it’s not exciting like like a wanting to go like it up and go and fill you with energy sort of thing it’s kind of a very sort of a passive thing that watches over you very measured very ordered so and when we say we see that’s this in even in you know this the sacred text of the Hebrews we kind of get this “etos” of when were worshipping we want this order and so I think it was only natural for the Christian church to adopt this kind of style of singing in its own liturgy it’s the worship of God now in the New Covenant should still have that continuity with the old Covenant. It’s an idea of order and of course building upon some of the Greek philosophy and all the other stuff so I want to read you about saint “… the great” when he saw, how was so beautiful about music he wrote this in the fourth Century he says when the Holy Spirit saw that mankind was inclined toward virtue and that we were heedless of the religious life because of our inclination to pleasure what did he do he Blended the Delight of Melody with a Doctrine with Doctrine in order that through the pleasantness and softness of the south of the of the sound we might unawares receive what was useful in the words according to the practice of Lies Physicians who when they give the more bitter drafts to the sick often smear the rim of the cup with honey for this purpose these harmonious Melodies of the songs have been designed designated for us that those who are boyiesh age or holy youthful in there character while in appearance they sing may in reality be educating their souls “asalm” is the Tranquility of souls the Arbiter of Peace restraining the disorder in turbulence of thoughts for it softens The Passion of the soul in moderate its unruliness a song for friendships unites the divided mediates between enemies for who can still consider him an enemy with whom he has set for one voice to God so that the singing of songs brings love the greatest of good things contriving Harmony like some Bond of Union and uniting the people in Symphony of a single choir so I think that’s kind of from the church fathers we see this idea of Music being opportune for us because it’s something that speaks to us so deeply it touches the very being of her soul and a certain in a certain way and as you saw its usefulness and utility and promoting that order in that piece that should come as followers of Christ in through meditation and whatnot so anyway from there cuz we didn’t stick with Gregorian chant we eventually developed and we had with the development of Music came the development of Harmony so Gregorian chant was practice for a long period of time and then in the twelfth centuries and twelfth Century we started to hear Harmony creeping into the Gregorian chanting this is called organum so I’m just going to play an example of early organum kind of sounded like you’ll notice a difference instead of just the single notes there’s like a Confluence of harmonic notes that come with it but it still sounds very kind of earthy very primitive in a certain way
Music
So that is kind of example that it’s called parallel or when they’re singing In Parallel like that But then it got more and more advance so towards the end of 13th century the monks that were chanting this started to kind of improvise a little bit kind of experiment with the different harmonies that they can make from the monophonic music and so we get the thing we get what came to be called the Notre Dame school of of “Oregonum” which that we still have some of the copies of those pieces that they eventually composed and written codified and wrote down so these are I just want to give 3 examples of what they were doing we have the first example of duplum organum which you can hear here kind of the difference from just plain organum
Music
So what is going on here, they’re taking this chant that would normally be:
Singing
which is melody and they take that, using that melody as the base note of that chant and they’re going:
Singing
and over top of it there’s a person who’s improvising a Melody eventually those are written down like since and we have this today but there’s somebody coming over the top of that note and singing Melody:
Singing
and then he heard a little chime so they’re singing:
Singing
and of course, this is all going over on top of it if which is kind of interesting think about just the development and so it got to the point like well you’ll hear it is just it just kept on growing and developing from there so this is an example of tripling which means three voices instead of just two voices:
Music
So that’s kind of an example of that so that’s actually hallelujah yet and so they’re going:
Singing
Etc. it was kind of interesting that almost always there was probably the more musically talented who are doing the top voices where the other people would just be like holding the Drone like down to the bottom the tenor line they would call it because tenor in latin means to hold (lat: tenere) today so they’re holding on to the melody so then eventually got quite advanced in a very short period of time it came to be what we called “quadruplum” which is four voices in this is kind of where we start to see more of the modern like would like some of the music we are more familiar with more like choral music and things like that is the kind of the Genesis of it all:
Music
This particular piece is “Vida…” I believe it is an intro to it so this is what you would sing at the right of the beginning of the mass I think it goes on for like 10 minutes it just like you these solos and they get to a certain point and see if I can find anything
Q: It sounds like a progressive Capella
yeah because it’s all considered as Capella music because it’s acapella like in the chapel so it’s music unaccompanied by any instrument
Q: they sing that same like the same part over and over
There are like variations I’m so they use like certain rhythmic stats to keep it going but in a sense, you know you kind of like what you heard was kind of the Paradigm for the whole thing just kind of variations on a theme but this is all like going somewhere so like this was like what it was like in the 13th century and what not but as we continue forward into like the Baroque Era the 15th, 16th, 14th, 15th, 16th centuries we can see that, oh I lost everything okay wonderful so they kept on developing it’s the point, I am not going to bore I’ve already bored you enough with early music history and going to medieval history but the rest of history is basically outgrowth of what started, was happening in the church in those medieval ages and just keep getting on more labarot eventually probably to sort of Paradigm would be palestrina’s music wish he was a composer in the Renaissance who composed we call polyphony so maybe some of you have heard one of these pieces but this is the this is probably wanted is one of his most famous pieces I think is by Palestrina – Sicut Cervus I don’t know if everybody’s heard of this one or not but:
Music
That’s where that was all started to progress to and there’s sort of reason why I want to stop at that point for the just the music development portion of this cuz I wanted to get in to what some of the what the Pope Pius the tenth was talking about so so do we hear this music today you hear them in places like this we we do a lot of this kind of music here we do Gregorian chant we do polyphony we also do some of the more modern pieces like I’m thinking when I say modern thinking like Mozart and things like that but you don’t really hear that anymore and this was once a staple of churches and Catholic the Catholic church in general all over the place you could you could go I mean maybe not country parishes where they didn’t have any a full choir but any any City virtually all parishes had a youth choir they had a volunteer choir they would be seeing these great pieces of music and drawing you know using that to adorn the liturgy so what happened the easy answer to that is that it can to happen but I bet it’s more complicated than that because even in the Vatican two documents it says that sacred chant is issued to be retained and Latin is to be retained in the Liturgy and so where do we go where did like so there’s something it wasn’t so much the council is it was the implementation of some of these things people having their own ideas about what they wanted to church and worship to look like and so we come out with you know what we like to affectionately call the for him sandwich you have a opening hymn you have a offertory hymn you have a communion hymn and you have a closing hymn and there is your musical Buffet so to speak and we’re using by the way we are mainly using protestant hymns because the hymns that we know and love today mainly originated from Martin Luther and other people like that so we just said oh yeah we’ll use those instead Masimo our music director gets all up in arms about like having to do the hymns at the end of Mass is like why were you playing these like stupid Protestant marches and I’m so it’s like it’s it’s kind of interesting how things have come but why do I say this because I think we need to get back to the sense of the Sacred at least we were and worship I think there are a lot of developments I’m sure some of you have all been at least probably heard like a been to a holy hour where somebody’s playing a guitar singing praise and worship music or or maybe not I don’t know but so the music that were exposed to today in the church is in my my opinion pretty impoverished how do we get back to some of this well we have to go back I think to document called “…” and I lost everything so I got to pull it up on here so this is document put out by Pope Pius the 10th in 1903 and in it he talks about what is true Sacred Music. How can it define how can we when were making new music how does it how do we ensure that it stays sacred so I just want to read a few excerpts from his document here says:
Sacred Music being a complementary part of the sound liturgy participate in the general scope of the Liturgy which is the glory of God in the sanctification and edification of the faithful it contributes to the decorum and Splendor of the ecclesiastical ceremonies since its principal office is to cloth with suitable Melody the liturgical text proposed for the understanding of the faithful its proper name is to add greater efficacy to the text in order that through it the faithful may be more easily moved to devotion and better disposed for the reception of the fruits of Grace belonging to the celebration of the most holy Mysteries.
So he gives three qualities here he says Sacred Music should consequently possess in the highest degree the qualities proper to the Liturgy and in particular sanctity and goodness of form which will spontaneously produce the final quality of universality so he got sanctity goodness of form and universality he goes on to say these qualities are to be found in the highest degree in Gregorian chant which is consequently the chant proper to the Roman Church the only chance she has inherited from the ancient fathers which he has jealously guarded for centuries in her liturgical codices which she directly compose to the faithful as her own which she prescribes exclusively for some parts of a liturgy and which the most recent Studies have also so happily and restored to their integrity and purity so Gregorian chant is always the supermodel for Sacred Music that’s his words the supermodel for Sacred Music it’s the Exemplar for all Sacred Music I’m so consequently anything that we compose the more connection it has to Gregorian chantt the more appropriate it is for the Liturgy the more inherently sacred it is we see that in Spades in the Palestrina The Melodies are all independent of each other but they’re almost like chant Melodies like like for lines of chant going on at the same time and almost as if by accident creating the harmony between them so and even mention that she says the above-mentioned qualities are also possess in an excellent degree by classic polyphony especially of the Roman school which reached its greatest perfection in the 16th century owing to the works of Palestrina and consequent and subsequently to produce yeah so continued subsequently to produce compositions of excellent quality from liturgical and musical standpoint so he’s saying that polyphony next to Gregorian chant listening is one of the highest expressions of Sacred Music but he didn’t he didn’t leave it there he said we still have to be open to newer forms modern modern forms of music but it definitely when he says that of course he wasn’t thinking of like Blues Jazz rock rap all this other stuff because I don’t even exist yet but but he was thinking of like more along the lines of like the Opera the operatic music which he said has no place in the Liturgy opera music because of its and why I think went to find out why why not like classical forms like opera or like even like romantic music from the romantic romantic era why not that kind of stuff I mean today we will look on that and would say oh that’s classical music that’s like you know culture music and other stuff indeed it might have been cultured but what is it do it breaks away from this idea of Harmonia I think we have to go back to the Greeks and breaks away from that idea of order in the in the Romantic Era we see a catering to the passions it’s very expressive music I think of probably the the most, the best example I can give that is a genre in Germany called “Sprekstema” which is a musical form that for all intents and purposes sounds like screaming but it’s it’s so I’ll give you an example of a very bad example but it’s following it’s literally notated music so your singing a Melody but you’re doing it in such a frenzy way that it almost sounds like you’re talking instead of singing and back let me just pull up a example of “Sprekstema” here if I can even spell it right yeah just give me a sec. I give you a demonstration Let’s make a melody somebody give me a random pitch somebody give me another random pitch. Anybody just something say something somebody else I’m something else that’s great that’s a 5-1 that’s 1/4 so we’ve got:
Singing
Did anybody ever seen Star Trek Voyager no okay there the end the intro to that show is:
Singing
I think I think you’re literally I think those were literally the pitches today is like the literally exact notes they used.
Let’s make a melody based on that:
Singing
okay so if I were to express myself first I would need to be a woman because it was always women singing this stuff and they would sing it really high:
Singing
It was very frenzy:
Singing
It was literally how it was. It was so ridiculous and I can’t even believe it was like something I can’t believe it was a thing so anyway that’s romantic era stuff is that the kind of stuff you want to be listening to in church? Same with the operatic stuff it’s like vibrato you a good example of this is who is that guy everybody knows him Pavarotti yes singing the Ave Maria:
Singing
It is just like dude chill but so this is this was what Pius was dealing with these people who would perform Opera with the same people who are singing in the churches and they were doing these like this like vibrato in like this like over emotional like music musical stuff and so he’s like no no no this is not what we are about in worship, worship means to have this order. Harmony again there’s order here going back to our spiritual lives we cannot be authentically growing in our spiritual life if our emotions are all over the place that’s part of what medication helps us to do it helps us trained in our emotions and to fill our minds with holy thoughts so that we are not we’re not distract we’re not getting distracted at every women fancy that we that we encounter so characteristically of the spiritual life we want something call order I found it fascinating when I heard this for the first time but Jesus and Mary according to theologically they never because they were created without original sin they participated in the preternatural gifts and so this is all theological language so in the garden Adam and Eve before the fall before the sin the great sin of Adam and Eve they never had an emotion that went against their reason so is the same way because they were preserved from her because I really was preserved from results and so is Christ by the fact that he’s God they never had any emotion that went against the reason they weren’t tempted by straight passions so in order for us to come to that we have to pray we have to meditate we have to do all these different things and we also have to preserve ourselves in a certain manner so and this is why sacred music is so important especially in the context of worship we’re getting music that tantalize us distracts us brings us away from what’s going on it’s it’s disordering us it’s making its disunifying us rather than harmonizing us harmonia this idea that so I think that Greek were on something when they said music has an ethical character to it I’m not saying that you listen to a rock piece of rock music and you’re like sinning by doing that but there is a certain sense we’re like if you keep on if you keep if you if that’s all you listen to you’re not you’re not helping yourself because you’re you’re kind of disintegrating your emotions in there because it’s meant to stir passion it’s not meant to order passion and that is why Gregorian chant with its Melody it’s very ordered way of doing things naturally just kind of brings us back to insert an order which is why it’s so appropriate for the Liturgy so that’s kind of a musical Theory the development of musical portion of it now I just kind of want to give you a couple tips on how I would participate in the Liturgy just based on my own experience of a Gregorian chant and being a part of this community now for 10 years so being thoroughly imbued with your Gregorian chant kind of I can’t claim like to be a master of it but I got a lot of experience with it coming from from my own background so a little background about me I was a jazz musician I was studying to DePaul and I study there for 2 years in the music program there and then came to Cantius here after two years cuz I figured I should be doing something different with my life and a lot of details you guys don’t even know about but anyway so just come in here and then initially when I encountered the chant I was a little put off by it I was so used to Harmony I was so used to like intrmusic rather than this is boring drawing chant and so it took me a little while to kind of get into this idea of how to cooperate with the chant I think that’s the best way I can describe it is cooperating with a chant and I’ll tell you really hit me one time when I was serving a so I wasn’t singing the chant I was serving in the sanctuary and we were sitting down because it was the chant that sang between the first reading in the Gospel reading on a on a weekday and I was sitting there and I was just listening to the chant and I heard the the text was “…” and I heard Qui is a:
Singing
And I am sitting there and thinking Qui that means who:
Singing
And I’m like that there’s the route there’s something coming with their:
Singing
“then” need okay so he so is words who “then” means comes okay who is this guy who’s like who’s coming and he’s coming in somewhere he’s coming “nomine” that name the name okay just coming into something whose name anything coming in so we got don’t mean I the Lord I’m like oh my gosh and then it hit me this entire time was meditation I was meditating on these sacred words and it was coming it was there is being presented to me through the medium of this music and and when I got there I was like wow that’s really cool you know I I don’t know how I would live without this you know in a certain sense it’s just such a such a powerful experience and so that’s that was my experience and so what would I recommend to you guys if you guys are participating in liturgy here on like a Sunday we’re doing Gregorian chant like Pius the tenth said it’s about if the music is about creating an appropriate space for the text the sacred texts so since that’s like the basis of it we need to be familiar with the text that’s being sung so instead of coming to mass without any idea I’m not saying that you guys do but I know I would have if I if I wasn’t where I was we got to come to mass with an idea of what’s going on in the text in in what’s being song so I’d encourage you to you know using a missile or going online finding out the text for the day coming and prepare what is the in trade saying what is the the you know all these parts of the mass and by the way if you don’t know the parts of the mass you really should yeah I didn’t until I until I was forced to memorize the parts of the mass here I had I realized I didn’t realize that I really didn’t know the mass I had no idea like what was coming next it was kind of like just oh yeah I know we do this oh yeah this is kind of all this is familiar but like in until I had to let you know memorize it I remember I said such a greater grasp of it so I guess that step one know the mess take a look at it look at the structure of the mass before you come to mass look at the text of the mess and then when you are confronted with the Gregorian Melodies on being chanted let those wash over you maybe review the text as your listening to it but then at a certain point but the text down and try and think of what that text is can vein and how does the melody just bring that out one of the other beautiful things about the chant is that it goes on and on and on and on on something seems like a long time it’s but it gives you space it gives you space to meditate on the text of of what being sang it’s not a like like the offertory chant there’s like literally nothing going on except the ceremony in the in the at the altar so that’s like the priest is just preparing everything but the operation it gives you the perfect space to meditate on what’s going on in that text and what’s what how does that relate to the other text of a liturgy so in that way when you when you look at the text and you and your give yourself the space and you let the music like wash over you and you know be able to know trying to figure out what is the music kind of convey about this text was it sound like where is in a bonus points if your in Latin nerd and want to be with Latin nerd and look up some of the some of the like what some of the words mean like look at the translation but like actually look at some of the individual words and then try and find those in the chant see where it was see what it’s doing what is what is the music doing when he gets to the word Domine is it is it trying to like say that like God is so high above us like that is above us like the his Majesty’s in that case the music is probably going to it’s like going up the scale creating like mountainous effect or is it or is it trying to emphasize the word Domine in the sense that even though God Is His Majesty so great it’s all so he’s so close to us and that he is in the Incarnation coming down to us and that case where is the melody going through that what is it with the melody can tell you what it’s with me and emphasized in the text it’s really something beautiful once you kind of get into it but yeah that’s the thing the more we come prepared to the mass like that the more we are prepared the more we’re allowing more space we have for meditation within the mass that intern you know helps to sanctify us that brings our passions into right order it brings us closer to God’s word because all the texts in the mass that are sang the chant and the chanted are in some way come from come from the Bible come from the sacred text of God’s word so God’s word is literally being sang to us it’s almost as if because we believe that the Bible is the word of God it’s almost as if Jesus Christ is singing to us those are his words that are being sang to us so that’s like it’s an opportunity for this very close connection with with Christ with the sacred the word with the word the same word that you’re going to receive later in the mass except under the form under under the sacramental form of the Eucharist so this all it’s theirs it’s all so interconnected and there’s so much to be gained by it so yeah sorry for my rambling a little bit but this that’s kind of where I was you know thinking about this meditating on today and they’re just like this is you know this is so important for us to know you know how it is important for us to have that grasp of the of the of the of the of the great wealth we’ve been given with Sacred Music in the church so I’ll leave you with that and I’m also at this point happy to take any questions.
