The Duty to Understand Proper Liturgical Music

[44] But I hear some one say, "Modern Church music (Gounod's, for instance) stirs me, while Plain Chant and Palestrina do not. I understand and like the one, but [45] cannot make head or tail of the other." Surely this is a strange attitude for a Catholic to adopt. We are, forsooth, to import only such forms of art as we personally fancy, rather than make use of those which the Church has provided. If we do not "understand" Church art, so much the worse for us. The duty of endeavouring [sic] to do so is none the less ours. When the works of a Tchaikovsky or a Strauss come to Queen's Hall, we may not "understand" them at first, but we very quickly make the attempt to do so, if for no other reason than to bring ourselves into line with our musical friends. We do not like to admit ignorance, or lack of comprehension, concerning new or unfamiliar secular music, but we are not ashamed to admit both when the music of the Church is in question. It is true, certainly, that the Church's music sounds both new and unfamiliar to ears accustomed only to the music of the world. But is it not this very aloofness, resulting from the use of conventional forms, that gives to ecclesiastical music the atmosphere of the Church rather than that of the world? Even operatic composers recognise [sic] this. Everyone is familiar with Gounod's Faust. How does the composer get the proper atmosphere in the Church scene? By imitating, say, the lilting Kyrie of "Haydn No. II"? Is it not by music almost modal in its severity? (This remark must not be taken to mean that the severity is the result of the modality. In the same opera, the "King of Thule" song, although "modal," is anything but severe.)

But, again, some "conscientious objector" may say: "May not the conventions of to-day have been the novelties of yesterday? Was not Palestrina in his day as 'advanced' as Wagner in this?" Quite true, but with this important qualification: Wagner was a frankly secular composer, free to follow his art where he listed, and to present it in whatever form he chose. Palestrina was a church musician, trained in the bosom [46] of the Church, filled with the spirit of the Church, and devoted to the expression of the mind of the Church, in the Church's own forms. The basis on which the old composers built their music was the Church's own Plain Chant. With that as a groundwork they could bring to their art all the resources with which the musical science of their day could provide them, without danger of straying into individualistic or secular modes of expression. And in support of this statement let me quote from a most remarkable article—coming as it does from a non-Catholic source—which appeared in the Morning Post some months ago:

"One fact only has saved the musical part of the Roman service from becoming a mere affair of the circus. In most of the churches and in all the monasteries, abbeys, and convents, the old Plain Chant has survived. It links the present to the past as with bonds of steel; it is the full and perfect expression of the words to which it is set, and with which indeed it grew up; it prepares us for the change which is now coming over the services with the re-introduction of truly devotional music. Its melodies are lovely beyond description in words, often they are sublime, and in them the sincere spirit of an earlier day is incarnate. We are aware that many of us Anglicans, especially if we have been accustomed to what are called 'bright and cheerful' services, find these tunes dull and meaningless; and so much the worse for us. 'Brightness and cheerfulness' have their place in religion, but there are solemn moments when they are not wanted, and suggest only buffoonery. Much of the Plain Song is cheerful enough, but its cheerfulness is that of a stained-glass window, not of a cut in a comic paper; its subject is religious. It is the music on which Catholicism must depend more and more as it brings back its services into some sort of relation with its innermost spirit."

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Source: Richard R. Terry, Catholic Church Music (London: Greening & Co., 1907), 44–46.