Yes, I admit it.\u00a0I have gone to the \u201cother\u201d side.\u00a0I travel 100 miles each week to attend a Tridentine Mass, and it has rejuvenated my spiritual life and my hope for the future.<\/p>\n
So how do I explain this rebellious and irrational behavior?\u00a0I am not sure that I can, fully.\u00a0 I don\u2019t completely understand it myself, but maybe a little background might be a good starting place from which all of us can figure out what has gone wrong with me.<\/p>\n
My first professional position was as a church musician.\u00a0I had studied organ and sacred music as an undergraduate and graduate student, and after graduation I landed a full-time position in a fast growing Catholic parish, a parish that was destined to be the largest in Dallas.<\/p>\n
It was the mid-1970s, and things were changing faster than change itself. I was determined to maintain some level of \u201cquality\u201d in a Church that was embracing the popular culture with amazing rapidity.\u00a0What did \u201cquality\u201d mean?\u00a0 For the most part, it did not mean chant.\u00a0That wasn\u2019t even on the radar screen, except perhaps for a few days in Lent when we were supposed to feel guilty, somber and morbid, at which time chant was deemed as the most appropriate music to elicit those emotions.<\/p>\n
No, in general it meant hymns from the repertoire of various Protestant denominations rather than \u201cguitar music\u201d built on three chords.\u00a0It also meant what I have come to call \u201cutilitarian music\u201d for most of the responses of the Mass.\u00a0This was music that imitated hymnody, that could be played on the organ, and that didn\u2019t have lots of arpeggiated chords in the accompaniments.\u00a0It also meant the Gelineau Psalms, the modality and speech-based rhythms of which gave it something of an affinity to chant while its accompaniments, filled with seventh-chords, gave it a kind of freshness that everyone craved.<\/p>\n
My work also centered on creating a large choral program modeled largely on the programs of our neighboring Protestant churches.\u00a0There was a choir for every age group in what we musicians dubbed as our \u201cwomb-to-tomb\u201d choir programs.\u00a0Of course, there were the brass ensembles for special feasts, occasional concerts, and lots of promotional materials designed to encourage everyone to participate \u2013 to \u201csing for joy\u201d as the bumper stickers all over my VW bug proclaimed.<\/p>\n
All in all, however, it was a losing battle.\u00a0The pressures to \u201cconsumerize\u201d the music were relentless.\u00a0Ultimately, I took refuge in academia.\u00a0After earning a doctorate, I eventually gained employment in a Jesuit institution whose choral program was in a serious state of decline.\u00a0(I had never imagined myself making music in a Jesuit school \u2013 the concept itself seemed a bit oxymoronic.\u00a0 However, since my confirmation name was Ignatius Loyola, I assumed it was providential, and it was.)\u00a0There I was given complete latitude to shape the program according to my strengths and interests.\u00a0Over time, I developed a program that was completely devoted to the musical patrimony of the Church: a schola that sang chant and Medieval\/Renaissance polyphony, a choir devoted to the a cappella <\/em>repertoire of the Church, and a third choral ensemble that sang the Church\u2019s choral-orchestral music.\u00a0The schola sang for a chanted Mass every Sunday: English adaptations of Gregorian formulas for the priest\u2019s parts and the readings, Gregorian Proper, and either Gregorian or polyphonic Ordinary.\u00a0The Mass gave a certain amount of decorum and solemnity to the novus ordo<\/em> Mass that was largely absent elsewhere.\u00a0It was quite gratifying, even if only for a small group of us.\u00a0The other choirs sang beautiful concerts and also achieved a high level of notoriety, regionally and even nationally, both for their beautiful singing and for the focus of their repertoire.<\/p>\n For reasons that are too numerous to list here and somewhat irrelevant anyway, that chapter of my life ended in 2007.\u00a0However, what is worth sharing is that one of the reasons for my departure was the same as the one that led me to leave full-time church work \u2013 a relentless pressure for a program that was more consumer oriented.\u00a0I left that university and took an administrative post in a public university, where curiously enough it is far easier to be a devot\u00e9 of the traditional music of the Church than it ever was in a Catholic institution.<\/p>\n Early in my tenure here, a small group of students came to see me.\u00a0Somehow they had discovered that I was a chant \u201cscholar,\u201d and they asked if I would form a group for them to sing chant.\u00a0We started a small schola.\u00a0 The local parishes were (and still are) largely dedicated to various types of popular music, so our music did not fit well into the local scene.\u00a0However, about 50 miles south a Tridentine Mass was starting.\u00a0 We offered our services and were warmly welcomed.<\/p>\n This was my first experience with the Tridentine Mass since my altar boy days in the early 1960s.\u00a0My initial reaction was more personal than that of the younger members of the schola, but essentially the same: \u201cThis is so beautiful!\u00a0Whose idea was it to stop doing this?\u201d<\/p>\n However, as the last couple of years have unfolded, my appreciation for the traditional Mass has grown far deeper than reveling in its surface beauty.\u00a0Yes, there are some amusing matters.\u00a0For example, when Father asks for a high Mass we don\u2019t have to call a dozen committee meetings to decide what to do.\u00a0\u00a0Having a high Mass can mean only one thing: the Gregorian Proper, a Gregorian or polyphonic Ordinary, and sung responses.\u00a0I look back on the days of planning Masses, such as the diocesan Millennium Mass, in which every ethnic, cultural and political group waged its own battle for musical and linguistic turf in the Mass, and say a quiet prayer of gratitude that I don\u2019t have to battle for my music or anyone else\u2019s.\u00a0I can simply and joyfully focus on praying at Mass because I have given myself over to the Church\u2019s music.<\/p>\n This giving of myself to something larger than I is probably the gift of the traditional Mass for which I am most profoundly grateful.\u00a0To experience the traditional Mass is to be put face to face with the reality that the Mass is not something that I will ever fully understand.\u00a0Its distant language is but a mere symbol of the mystery that reaches far beyond my meager abilities of comprehension.\u00a0The traditional Mass does make clear to me that the Mass is not something I do; it is clearly what Christ does for me.\u00a0This is evident from the moment we pause at the foot of the altar and beg for ourselves and for the priest that, even though he be unworthy, God will deign to work through him and renew the sacrifice of Calvary, and it is evident through every part of the Mass.\u00a0The Mass is God\u2019s great gift to us, and we are most blessed to receive it.<\/p>\n As the priest offers the Mass in persona Christi<\/em> there is never any doubt of the hierarchical relationship between humanity and God.\u00a0We are His creatures, \u201cthe sheep of his pasture,\u201d and all that we are and all that we have are gifts.\u00a0The traditional Mass is never a stage for displaying rights and equality in the Church.\u00a0To kneel at this Mass, whether it be for the Canon or to receive the sacred Host in Communion \u2013 or any other part of the Mass \u2013 is a freeing act of humility, submission and adoration.\u00a0In surrendering my sense of self to Christ, I free myself to receive all the grace He has earned for me.\u00a0I am spiritually far stronger submitting myself to Him than I ever was thinking that I had some kind of rights in His presence.<\/p>\n Too, participation at the traditional Mass seems to operate on a far deeper level than it did in the days when I was sticking those \u201cSing for Joy\u201d bumper stickers all over my car.\u00a0The congregation is not as noisy as it was in those days, but its participation is quite palpable.\u00a0Its heart is deeply and gratefully given.<\/p>\n As I intimate above, from a musical perspective this Mass is also quite freeing.\u00a0It is no longer my responsibility to choose music that somehow will offer the appropriate spiritual guidance for the congregation \u2013 or choose music that feeds a particular taste or choose music that satisfies any particular political interest group.\u00a0I am simply a guardian of the Church\u2019s music \u2013 of our<\/em> music \u2013 music that the Church in her divinely guided wisdom has given to us for our spiritual benefit.<\/p>\n Even more, however, the music of the traditional Mass helps us to engage some of the deeper issues that I have briefly referenced above.\u00a0The musical battles in the Church today are only superficially about whether I like Eagles Wings<\/em> or Angelis suis. <\/em>For nearly four decades now, in every instance where I have been engaged in a process of \u201cslowly introducing chant and more traditional music\u201d into the novus ordo <\/em>Mass, there comes a point when everyone realizes that the process is not really about musical taste.\u00a0It\u2019s more about living life through a somewhat contemplative frame of reference, about living in the world but not succumbing to the world, about living a life that is less concerned with rights and \u201cself actualization\u201d and more concerned with repentance and submission of self to a higher authority.\u00a0The chant is not just beautiful music, it is the handmaid of the Liturgy, the Liturgy that should<\/em> also bring us to these realizations.\u00a0In the traditional Mass this intimate partnership between the Liturgy and the chant is quite clear.\u00a0However, in the novus ordo <\/em>Mass, chant seems too often not to \u201cfit.\u201d\u00a0I often find myself wondering, \u201cJust what has happened to our Liturgy that this music, which for centuries was its handmaid, is no longer fit for service.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t imagine that the traditional Mass, even though it is enjoying something of a resurgence of popularity, will ever replace the novus ordo. <\/em>(However, it does seem to me that the traditional Catholics are the only ones having babies.\u00a0 That\u2019s another, but not altogether unrelated, post.) I\u2019m also not completely sure that that would be a good thing. At the same time, I have come to conclude that for the continuing efforts of reform in the Church to have any lasting beneficial effect, the presence of the traditional Mass is absolutely critical.\u00a0The traditional Mass is unequivocally connected to the Church\u2019s Tradition, which must remain unbroken.\u00a0Too, the traditional Mass, with the chant as an integral component, keeps certain values, such as those referenced above, in front of us that we must face openly and honestly if our renewal efforts are to bear good fruit.<\/p>\n Perhaps this may seem like a post that is not adequately focused on chant as music, but the chant isn\u2019t just music.\u00a0It is truly the handmaid of the Liturgy.\u00a0 It is ostensibly an intimate part of the traditional Mass.\u00a0On the other hand, it is too often something of an imposition on the novus ordo<\/em>.\u00a0The continued presence of the traditional Mass, and its integral chants, will help us to answer more honestly whether this sense of the chant being out of place in the novus ordo<\/em> is simply a question of changing tastes or it is a question of things much more profound.\u00a0As we face that question, I, for one, will continue to give thanks that God has blessed me with the opportunity to help keep the traditional Mass \u2013 and the chant as its welcomed handmaid \u2013 vibrantly present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yes, I admit it. I have gone to the \u201cother\u201d side. I travel 100 miles each week to attend a Tridentine Mass, and it has rejuvenated my spiritual life and my hope for the future. So how do I explain this rebellious and irrational behavior? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,30],"tags":[669,377],"class_list":["post-857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-chant","category-reform-of-the-reform","tag-edward-schaefer","tag-tridentine-mass"],"yoast_head":"\n