{"id":586,"date":"2010-01-25T19:54:01","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T00:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=586"},"modified":"2010-01-25T21:10:02","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T02:10:02","slug":"the-reform-of-the-reform-set-to-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/01\/25\/the-reform-of-the-reform-set-to-music\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Reform of the Reform” Set to Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow! This is really, really beautiful.
\nAnd occasion for some questions.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/object>
\n.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s from a\u00a0documentary, not at all made on the cheap, about the summer colloquium of the Church Music Association of America<\/a>. CMAA is more or less the US successor, through many hills and dales, to the 19th century German Cecilian reform movement. They promote traditional music, much of it in Latin. I\u2019m sure many of them are in the \u201creform of the reform\u201d camp. Wanna see what it looks like? Here\u2019s the real thing \u2013 birettas and chapel veils and black vestments\u2026and lots of young faces.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure you have your own questions about all this. Here are a few of mine.<\/p>\n

Q. <\/strong>Why is this movement growing? Why has the CMAA colloquium expanded by leaps and bounds in the last five years? What draws young people to this?<\/p>\n

Q. <\/strong>What about inculturation? What should sacred music for the liturgy look like in the U.S.? Can we let obedience to (one interpretation of) the Roman documents mean simply preserving European treasures?<\/p>\n

Q. <\/strong>Is the ethos of this movement (culturally on the high side, a bit exotic) a good leaven to improve the (not so hot) state of music in the rest of the church? Or is it more of an escape from all that for a few like-minded souls?<\/p>\n

Q. <\/strong>How much of this is a positive response to the vision of the Second Vatican Council? How much of it is a negative reaction to bad experiences of the reformed liturgy? Or to the bad experiences of the complexities and ambiguities of life in today\u2019s world?<\/p>\n

Q. <\/strong>No one loves art music of this sort more than I. (I\u2019m tempted to quote Harold C. Schonberg, \u201cElitism, in the arts, is good,\u201d but I know better than to use the word \u201celitism\u201d positively and expect to be taken seriously.) When you have the forces, it\u2019s great to do all this. What do we do for the other about 90% of the communities who don\u2019t have the forces?<\/p>\n

Q. <\/strong>How can the rest of the church most benefit from the good zeal of the CMAA folks? How can we all best work together and avoid divisions and factions?<\/p>\n

These aren’t leading questions meant to imply a particular answer. They’re real questions of the sort I’ve asked myself more than once. It used to be quite clear to me that we should do great music in church. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that my kind of music was made possible by a very particular set of historical cultural conditions – e.g., one where only the tastes of the (aristocratic, ordained, literate, educated) upper crust\u00a0counted in a highly stratified, utterly non-democratic culture. Well, God put me in this <\/em>culture, and I didn’t get any\u00a0say in the matter. Now I wonder a lot about what God is calling me to do, here and now. How can I (we) make things a bit better, joyfully, hopefully, and charitably?\u00a0<\/p>\n

And what are your questions? Better yet, what are your answers?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heard at the CMAA church music colloqium: \u201cHow not to alienate Catholics in the pews, many of whom have never heard sacred music in church.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,20,30],"tags":[69],"class_list":["post-586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferences-workshops-meetings","category-music-general","category-reform-of-the-reform","tag-cmaa"],"yoast_head":"\nThe "Reform of the Reform" Set to Music - Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/01\/25\/the-reform-of-the-reform-set-to-music\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The "Reform of the Reform" Set to Music - 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