Vidimus Dominum

Here is a short clip of the recessional procession of the Tridentine Mass that was celebrated today by Revd. Fr. Duncan Wong, FSSP. In procession are members of St. Gregory's Schola and St. Francis Xavier's Youth Choir. Diocesan priest, Revd. Fr. Augustine Tay was also present and assisted in the distribution of the Holy Body of our Lord.

Enjoy!

Way to go Fr. Michael Teo!

Fr. Teo made a comment after a screeing of the video, 'Euchristic Miracles' in the rectory's meeting room this afternoon. "When I was training as a priest, we did everything in Latin. Now there's the vernacular; we cannot acheive the same with the vernacular. The latin (Eucharistic Hymns) can really make you cry!" said a the teary rector.

Spirituality appeals to the imagination that is why the modern rites are so lack the feeling that the latin hymns of old conjure up; giving one the concept of a timeless sacred space that connects one with other believers through the ages.

The following is an extract of a letter I sent recently to the Catholic News:

Paragraph 16 of Musicam Sacrum (Instruction on Music in the Liturgy) from the Second Vatican Council states:

Paragraph 16 appears to be rather definitive; a person is actually worshipping at his best when singing. Active participation is clearly shown by singing.

Sacred Music in the Liturgy deeply involves the congregation in worshipping God. It draws the congregation rather than excluding them. Singing is so wonderful that “to sing” says St. Augustine “is to have prayed twice”.

Paragraph 27 states,

Certainly, the older generation of Catholics can remember the High Sung Masses of old that would take place at least once every Sunday. As I am a young Catholic, I never had the opportunity to attend a High Sung Mass. However, there have been occasions where I’ve heard priests like Rev. Fr. Aloysius Ong, Rev. Fr. Michael Teo and Rev. Fr. John Joseph Fenelon sing the Mass. These were rare and random occassions.

In my opinion, sung Masses lift up the people to a greater level of worship of God and adds an extra and unique element to the Holy Sacrifice. Paragraph 28 shows the effort taken by the Council Fathers to make the “Mass more beautiful by singing”.

Since Sacred Music is for "the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful" (Paragraph 4, Musicam Sacrum), is it possible for parishes to include a sung Mass for Sundays and other Solemnities; listing down on the bulletin the time for such a Mass?

"Most worship songs fail the standard of doctrinal scrutiny"... "We humanized Jesus to a lover, however, it is God who loves us so much that He gave his Son to die for us. The focus of modern worship appeals to the emotions, and violated sound teachings of the Apostles and that alone, is a cause of concern for doctrinal heresy." Protestant, Daniel Ho.

If a Protestant could bring himself mto make such a comment, I wonder if the Charismatic Catholic Communities have thought this over before they commence their 'jumping-jack-sing-a-long' sessions each time in the presence of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar? Who checks to ensure that such music does not contradict Catholic doctrine?

I feel that the word 'Worship' should not even be in the title. The only songs of worship we have are in the responses of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass- the highest form of Worship. To say that Charismatic Singing is Worship deviates from 2000 years of Catholic tradition.

I am of the opinion that everything outside the Mass is devotional.

I've changed the background MIDI in view of the Holy Season of Lent. Enjoy!

(via Chiesa)

Valentino Miserachs Grau, the dean of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, blows a clarion call to the leadership of the Church. Will they listen to him?

by Sandro Magister

ROMA - Valentino Miserachs Grau, 60, from Cataluña, has been for eight years the dean of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, the liturgical-musical "conservatory" of the Holy See, the body charged with forming Church musicians from all over the world.

But - as he explains in the conference shown below - neither he nor PIMS has normative authority in regard to liturgical music. Neither has the Vatican any office so commissioned.

Do you want evidence of this absence of authority? While PIMS bases its formation on the three columns of Gregorian chant, polyphony, and organ music - in fidelity to the instructions of the Second Vatican Council - almost the entire Church, including its leadership, is going in a completely different direction.

Miserachs sees the effects of this as nothing short of disastrous, even to the point of musical and liturgical illiteracy. "Never," he says, "has there been a degeneration like the present one."

But the dean of PIMS does not despair. Just as on the other occasions in the past when the Church has responded to crisis situations in sacred music with energetic reforms, just so can it do today.

His proposal for a new reform is explained in the text that follows. It is a conference that Miserachs gave last October in Barcelona. Ample selections from the introduction and from the final chapter are presented here:


The Church and Sacred Music: Past, Present, and Future

by Valentino Miserachs Grau


Beginning in 1995, when I was named dean of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, PIMS, in Rome, little by little my life has gone down a different path. From the time of my priestly ordination in 1966, I have alternated my ministry with musical activities. [É] In 1973, I began working as the choir director at the Basilica of St. Mary Major, a post I still occupy. [É] So for thirty years of my life I have dedicated myself to composition, to the direction of the basilica choir and of other choral and orchestral groups, to teaching, and to performance.

From 1995 all of these activities have been curtailed, for better or for worse, due to my responsibilities and obligations for directing the institute. [É] A sort of moral responsibility relative to the general situation of sacred music in the Catholic Church has fallen upon my shoulders. Many approach the institute as if it were a normative body in regard to liturgical music. [É]

But when I considered the matter, it struck me that there is no specific pontifical body that oversees liturgical music. [É] This has led to a scarcity of Church documents on the question. Apart from the fourth chapter of the constitution ´Sacrosanctum Concilium´ (1963) of the Second Vatican Council, which is dedicated to sacred music, and the subsequent instruction ´Musicam Sacram´ (March 5, 1967) from the Congregation for Rites, very little else has been said on the subject. There have been noble efforts to follow the right path, but this silence has permitted an anarchical proliferation of the most disparate experiments - conducted, perhaps, in good faith. These experiments, in many cases, have introduced into liturgical music a bundle of banalities adapted from pop music or other extravagantly exotic sources, in disregard of what Paul VI himself said in 1968, speaking to the participants at a national congress of AISC, the Italian Association of St. Cecilia: "Not everything outside of the temple is worthy of crossing its threshold". [É]

On the occasion of the imminent centenary of St. Pius X´s motu proprio ´Inter Sollicitudines´ (November 22, 1903), which represented an historic turning point in the reform of a Church music contaminated by the excesses of the most decadent theatrical style, I believe that a new reform should be set in motion. This reform should better diffuse and coordinate the positive efforts, both past and present, of the local churches. While taking account of the different situations and possibilities, it should also aim to recover Gregorian chant, polyphony, and organ music, the triad extolled by the Second Vatican Council and recently re-proposed forcefully by John Paul II in a speech he gave during an audience granted to PIMS on January 19, 2001, the 90th anniversary of its foundation. In so doing the reform must watch carefully and resolutely for anything in the words or music that is unworthy of or inconvenient to worship, or that does not have the characteristics of true art.

In this regard I recently went to the highest representatives of the Catholic Church to ask them to consider the possibility of creating a pontifical body with the task of overseeing sacred music and, more specifically, liturgical music.

The thesis I would like to illustrate [É] is the following. It has become almost an historic constant that a good praxis will end in abuse, and that the way marked out as being good will not be followed as it should. This provokes, or should provoke, a corrective reaction - or, put in a simple and comprehensive way, a reform.

Has the time perhaps come to undertake a reform? What must be done? We will try to answer these questions in the fourth and final part of my address, after examining in the first three parts [1. The Middle Ages, 2. The Council of Trent, 3. St. Pius X] the lesson we may gather from what has come forth from some of the moments in the history of liturgical music. [...]

4. THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL AND ITS AFTERMATH

[É] On December 4, 1963, the Second Vatican Council unanimously approved the constitution ´Sacrosanctum Concilium´ on the sacred liturgy, whose splendid fourth chapter is dedicated to sacred music. It contains the following excellent working declarations:

1. The Church approves and admits to divine worship all forms of true art endowed with the proper qualities. The aim of sacred music is the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful.

2. The patrimony of sacred music must be preserved and augmented with the greatest care, and a commitment must be made to promote the ´scholae cantorum,´ without disregarding the active participation of the faithful.

3. Musical formation and practice must be cultivated carefully in the seminaries, in both men´s and women´s novitiates, and in other Catholic institutes and schools. We also recommend, if it be opportune, the erection of higher institutes of sacred music.

4. The Church recognizes Gregorian chant as proper to the Roman liturgy: thus, in liturgical celebrations, as conditions allow, it should be given pride of place.

5. Other forms of sacred music, and especially polyphony, should by no means be excluded from the divine offices.

6. The pipe organ is greatly honored as a traditional instrument in the Latin Church. Its sound is able to add marvelous splendor to the ceremonies of the Church, and to elevate souls powerfully to God and to the supreme realities. Other instruments may be admitted to divine worship, provided that they be adapted to sacred use or may be adapted to it, that they be fitting to the dignity of the temple and truly favor the edification of the faithful.

7. Musicians, animated by the Christian spirit, should feel themselves encouraged to cultivate sacred music and increase its patrimony. They should compose melodies that can be sung, not only by the greater scholae cantorum, but also by lesser ones, and that favor the active participation of the faithful.

The instruction ´De Musica in Sacra Liturgia,´ published by the Sacred Congregation for Rites on March 5, 1967, delves much more deeply into particulars, but without detaching itself in the least from what was deliberated by the Council.

What a marvelous panorama opens up before the eyes of one reading these texts! But what a desolate landscape have we instead been given to inhabit, after the Council´s prescriptions have been ignored, and a contrary course frequently followed, for forty years!

The Council has been betrayed by the reckless daring of some and by the cowardly passivity of others. Do you want a recent example? A person who occupies a place of high responsibility in the field of sacred music, in an interview given to an Italian daily, responded to the question of what should happen to the music of Bach, Mozart, and Palestrina with these enlightening words: "These remain pages from the past, to be studied attentively and performed in concert. But in many cases they are not at all suitable for the liturgy."

How does one reconcile such a judgment with the thoughts of Vatican II mentioned above? How does one reconcile it with what John Paul II, on February 2, 1994, wrote to Monsignor Domenico Bartolucci, the permanent director of the Pontifical Musical Chapel, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the death of Palestrina? The pope, after extolling Palestrina as a musician, as a Christian, and even as a "liturgist," continued by saying:

"He let himself be guided by the liturgical spirit in the search for a language which, without renouncing emotion and originality, would not fall into outworn and banal subjectivism. These qualities, always present in his vast musical opera, have contributed to the creation of a style that has become classic, universally recognized as an exemplar in the field of composition destined for the Church."

Continuing, the pope put his finger on what I believe is the real wound:

"Today, like before, musicians, composers, the cantors of liturgical groups, Church organists and instrumentalists must realize the necessity for a serious and rigorous professional formation. Above all, they must be attentive not to exempt any of their compositions or interpretations from the obligation of being inspired, correct, and attentive to esthetic dignity so as to become effective prayer." [É]

During the 1970´s in Rome, we witnessed the phenomenon of the so-called "beat mass" . [É] It had the effect of a nuclear meltdown, with the fatal consequence of recognizing the "right to liturgical citizenship" of a practice as dangerous as it was reckless. That is to say, liturgical music now could be - or even must be? - a simple transposition of the profane music then in style. Mass-market music - inconsistent, insipid, and ephemeral - was then erroneously and unjustly dubbed "popular," just as its disconcerting, clamorous, noisy, twisted manifestations that so delighted huge, undiscerning crowds were erroneously called "concerts." It is precisely this false "popular" genre, imposed by the overwhelming force of the means of communication at the service of unscrupulous vendors, that has dried up the pure springs of Gregorian chant and of cultured popular music that constitute the most beautiful decoration of our churches and celebrations. [É]

We were greatly comforted by what the Holy Father said during the audience granted to PIMS on January 19, 2001, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the institute´s foundation:

" [É] The study and practice of music using the forms and instruments that the Second Vatican Council designated as privileged - Gregorian chant, sacred polyphony, and the organ - should be preserved and promoted. Only thus can liturgical music fulfill its duty worthily in the context of the of the celebration of the sacraments, and in a special way, of the Holy Mass."

That "only thus" is as good as gold, but who will listen to the voice of the pope? Now that adherence to those principles, consolidated by a centuries-old tradition, has been diminished, we have fallen so far as to see the liturgy (even in the more or less prestigious cathedrals) turned into so many festivals of pop music. [É] The teachings of the Church have been distorted with the pretext of a necessary modernization, of a rightful updating, of an inculturation that will render the Christian message and the celebration of its mysteries more comprehensible to the people. [É]

I don´t know whether the competent authorities truly appreciate the scope of the malignant musical praxis that has in some measure spread everywhere, and its negative repercussions on the ´lex orandi,´ and thus also on the ´lex credendi´. [É] An unequivocal sign of the current abasement of the incorrect understanding of the function of singing within the liturgy are the expressions unfortunately now in use, such as "the liturgical celebration was performed, accompanied, gladdened by the such-and-such choir of so-and-so." It is in fact evident that those who express themselves in this way consider liturgical singing nothing other than a more or less pleasing pastime.

Doesn´t it seem to you that the current situation, at least in its most strident forms, [É] presents many analogies with the three historical moments previously outlined, and in particular with the situation that brought about the reform of St. Pius X?

But we must note an important difference: the reforms of the past had to deal with forms of music that were, perhaps, "excessive," but formally correct. But much of the "music" that is written today ignores, I will not say the grammar, but even the ABC´s of musical art. In the more or less critical situations that we have considered, there was never a degeneration like the present one. [É]

It seems evident to me that a reform is necessary that will inspire a commitment of faithfulness to the council. This question must be taken seriously, beginning with formation. Priests of a certain age will recall how much importance was accorded to musical formation in the seminaries. In the current ´Ratio Studiorum´ music is not even mentioned; this is certainly not what the council desired. What is needed, therefore, is a change in mentality, to consider liturgical celebrations - including music - as requiring our foremost attention.

What is the use of having beautiful churches, precious vestments, excellent translations of the liturgical texts, if the music is frightful? We must take into account the good proposals made by the diocesan or inter-diocesan musical commissions, and find a way to provide the churches with organs (we have lost so many), primarily with pipe organs. If many are not installed, it is also because the electronic ones have been greatly perfected. We must get used to the idea that it is necessary to set aside funds for musical expenses; volunteerism is very praiseworthy, but we must ensure that those who work in this field be well-prepared, musically and liturgically. If this is hard to accomplish, we must turn to expert professionals, guaranteeing them at least a decent remuneration. We must accelerate the creation of ´scholae cantorum,´ large or small as conditions permit. [É]

We must insist in every way possible that schools of sacred music be created. [É] Or, at the very least, we must create courses in sacred music at the music schools and conservatories that already exist, as is already beginning in Italy. There are many organists who know how to play concert pieces, but don´t ask them to accompany the choir, to improvise, to invent an accompaniment, to make musical selections for a well-structured celebration - all things a Church organist should know how to do - because no one has ever taught them this.

Let´s put aside all of the objections against Gregorian chant and Latin: let´s take our example from the Nordic countries and even from the mission territories. Should we be the most recalcitrant ones - we, who are Latins by language, culture, and music?

We are awaiting assistance from Rome that will aim to coordinate these things in a manner worthy of the Catholic Church.

In essence, I believe the time is right to initiate a reform in the sense I have tried to illustrate, a reform adapted to the historical moment in which we are living, a reform that will aim not to conquer, but to convince.

Let us make all possible efforts to restore or establish good music in our churches, taking our inspiration from the motto that illuminated the pontificate of St. Pius X, and which constitutes the program that should stimulate us to an untiring renewal: "Instaurare omnia in Christo," to renew all things in Christ.

Valentino Miserachs Grau, president of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, is calling for its revival. Pope Joseph Ratzinger wants it, too. But the path is full of obstacles

by Sandro Magister

ROMA, December 7, 2005 – As on other occasions in the past, this year on December 5 the Vatican Congregation for Worship dedicated one day to the study of sacred music, on the anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the liturgy, “Sacrosanctum Concilium.” The previous days have never produced any significant results.

But now there is a pope, Benedict XVI, who is highly competent in the area of sacred music, is severely critical of the degradation of music following the council, and has written on a number of occasions what he thinks and what he wants: to restore to the Catholic liturgy the great music that “from Gregorian chant passes through the music of the cathedrals and polyphony, the music of the Renaissance and the Baroque, to Bruckner and beyond.”

Benedict XVI sent a message to the participants at the congress, gathered in the New Synod Hall, encouraging them “to reflect upon and evaluate the relationship between music and the liturgy, always keeping close watch over practice and experimentation.”

The pope’s encouragement was addressed to an assembly composed of musicians and liturgists from many nations, some of whom were in disagreement with him over the matters at hand.

At the end of the work, cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for Worship, and the former secretary of that same congregation, Domenico Sorrentino, recently promoted as bishop of Assisi, avoided drawing any conclusions. Arinze criticized the musical fashions found in many churches, which he characterized as “chaotic, excessively simplistic, and unsuitable for the liturgy.” But the musical opening to the day of study was entrusted to a proponent of one of the styles most susceptible to criticism, a supporter of the very sentimental, vaguely “new age” style: Maestro Marco Frisina, choir director of the cathedral of Rome.

But the day of study did demonstrate a reversal in the trend, back in the direction preferred by pope Joseph Ratzinger.

Musicians and liturgists of the postconciliar “new direction” found themselves constrained to justify themselves before an audience mostly oriented toward reviving traditional liturgical music, and Gregorian chant in the first place.

One could gather this from the strong and confident applause that greeted the addresses delivered by Dom Philippe Dupont, abbot of Solesmes and a great cultivator of Gregorian chant, by Martin Baker, choirmaster of the cathedral of Westminster, and by Jean-Marie Bodo, from Cameroon, “where we sing Gregorian chant every Sunday at Mass, because it is the song of the Church.”

But one could gather this above all from the applause that punctuated and concluded the address by monsignor Valentino Miserachs Grau, president of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, the liturgical-musical “conservatory” of the Holy See, which has the task of training Church musicians from all over the world.

With concise and concentrated arguments, Miserachs argued forcefully on behalf of the revival of Gregorian chant, beginning with the cathedrals and monasteries, which ought to take the lead in this rebirth.

And he called upon the Church of Rome finally to act “with authority” in the area of liturgical music, not simply with documents and exhortations, but by establishing an office with competency in this regard, as it did for example with the pontifical commission dedicated to the Church’s cultural heritage.

“This is the opportune moment, and there is no time to waste,” Miserachs concluded, clearly referring to the reigning pope.

Here follows the address by the president of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music:


Gregorian Chant: The Possibilities and Conditions for a Revival

by Valentino Miserachs Grau


That the assembly of the faithful, during the celebration of the sacred rites and especially during the Holy Mass, should participate by singing the parts of the Gregorian chant that belong to them, is not only possible – it is ideal.

This is not my opinion, but the thought of the Church. See, in this regard, the documentation from the motu proprio “Inter Sollicitudines” of Saint Pius X until our own time, passing through Pius XII (“Musicae Sacrae Disciplina”), chapter VI of the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the liturgy, the subsequent instruction issued by the Congregation for Rites in 1967, and the recent chirograph of John Paul II in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of “Inter Sollicitudines,” which was released in 1903. Another example is the statement from the conclusion of the synod of bishops that met last October: “Beginning with their seminary training, priests should be prepared to understand and celebrate the Mass in Latin. They should also […] appreciate the value of Gregorian chant. […] The faithful themselves should be educated in this regard.”

The motivation for this desire is widely demonstrable, if not self-evident. In fact, the almost outright ban on Latin and Gregorian chant seen over the past forty years is incomprehensible, especially in the Latin countries. It is incomprehensible, and deplorable.

Latin and Gregorian chant, which are deeply linked to the biblical, patristic, and liturgical sources, are part of that “lex orandi” which has been forged over a span of almost twenty centuries. Why should such an amputation take place, and so lightheartedly? It is like cutting off roots – now that there is so much talk of roots.

The obscuring of an entire tradition of prayer formed over two millennia has led to conditions favorable to a heterogeneous and anarchic proliferation of new musical products which, in the majority of cases, have not been able to root themselves in the essential tradition of the Church, bringing about not only a general impoverishment, but also damage that would be difficult to repair, assuming the desire to remedy it were present.

Gregorian chant sung by the assembly not only can be restored – it must be restored, together with the chanting of the “schola” and the celebrants, if a return is desired to the liturgical seriousness, sound form, and universality that should characterize any sort of liturgical music worthy of the name, as Saint Pius X taught and John Paul II repeated, without altering so much as a comma. How could a bunch of insipid tunes stamped out according to the models of the most trivial popular music ever replace the nobility and robustness of the Gregorian melodies, even the most simple ones, which are capable of lifting the hearts of the people up to heaven?

We have undervalued the Christian people’s ability to learn; we have almost forced them to forget the Gregorian melodies that they knew, instead of expanding and deepening their knowledge, including through proper instruction on the meaning of the texts. And instead, we have stuffed them full of banalities.

By cutting the umbilical cord of tradition in this manner, we have deprived the new composers of liturgical music in the living languages – assuming, without conceding, that they have sufficient technical preparation – of the indispensable “humus” for composing in harmony with the spirit of the Church.

We have undervalued – I insist – the people’s ability to learn. It is obvious that not all of the repertoire is suitable for the people: this is a distortion of the rightful participation that is asked of the assembly, as if, in the matter of liturgical chant, the people should be the only protagonist on the stage. We must respect the proper order of things: the people should chant their part, but equal respect should be shown for the role of the “schola,” the cantor, the psalmist, and, naturally, the celebrant and the various ministers, who often prefer not to sing. As John Paul II emphasized in his recent chirograph: “From the good coordination of all – the celebrating priest and the deacon, the acolytes, ministers, lectors, psalmist, ‘schola cantorum’, musicians, cantor, and assembly – emerges the right spiritual atmosphere that makes the moment of the liturgy intense, participatory, and fruitful.”

Do we want a revival of Gregorian chant for the assembly? It should begin with the acclamations, the Pater Noster, the ordinary chants of the Mass, especially the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. In many countries, the people were very familiar with the Credo III, and the entire ordinary of the Mass VIII “de Angelis,” and not only that! They knew the Pange Lingua, the Salve Regina, and other antiphons. Experience teaches that the people, following a simple invitation, will also sing the Missa Brevis and other easy Gregorian melodies that they know by ear, even if it’s the first time they have sung them. There is a minimal repertoire that must be learned, contained within the “Jubilate Deo” of Paul VI, or in the “Liber Cantualis.” If the people grow accustomed to singing the Gregorian repertoire suitable for them, they will be in good shape to learn new songs in the living languages – those songs, one understands, worthy of standing beside the Gregorian repertoire, which should always retain its primacy.

A persevering educational effort is called for. This is the first condition for an appropriate and necessary recovery: something we priests often forget, since we are quick to choose the solutions that involve the least effort. Or do we prefer, in the place of substantial spiritual nourishment, to pepper the ear with “pleasant” melodies or the jarring jangling of guitars, forgetting that, as the future pope Pius X incisively pointed out to the clergy of Venice, pleasure has never been the correct criterion for judging in holy things?

A work of formation is necessary. And how can we form the people, if we are not first formed ourselves? The general congress of the “Consociatio Internationalis Musicae Sacrae” was recently held at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, addressing this very topic, the formation of the clergy in sacred music. For years now, seminarians and men and women religious have lacked a real formation in the musical tradition of the Church, or even the most elementary musical formation. Saint Pius X, and the entire magisterium of the Church after him, understood very well that no work of reform or recovery is possible without an adequate formation.

One of the most substantial fruits of the “motu proprio” of 1903, which has continued through time and is being renewed in our day, is the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, which has celebrated the hundredth anniversary of its foundation. How many masters of Gregorian chant, of polyphony, of the organ; how many practitioners of sacred music, scattered to every corner of the Catholic world, have been formed in its halls! Without mentioning the other higher schools of sacred music, and even the diocesan schools, and the various courses and seminars of liturgical-musical formation. But is Gregorian chant really taught there? And how is it taught? Has not the prejudice crept in that Gregorian chant is outdated, to be set aside definitively?

What a serious mistake! I would go so far as to say that without Gregorian chant, the Church is mutilated, and that there cannot be Church music without Gregorian chant.

The great masters of polyphony are even greater when they base themselves upon Gregorian chant, mining it for themes, modes, and rhythmic variations. This spirit imbuing their refined technique and this faithful adherence to the sacred text and the liturgical moment made Palestrina, Lasso, Victoria, Guerrero, Morales, and others great.

The renewal unleashed by “Inter Sollicitudines” will be all the more valid as it takes its inspiration from Gregorian chant. At their best, Perosi, Refice, and Bartolucci in our own day made Gregorian chant the essence of their music. And this is not only true in terms of their complex or choral compositions, but also in terms of creating new melodies, in Latin or the vernacular, both for the liturgy and for devotional acts.

True sacred popular singing will be more valid and substantial as it takes its inspiration from Gregorian chant. John Paul II took as his own the principle asserted by Saint Pius X: “A composition for the Church is all the more sacred and liturgical the more its development, inspiration, and flavor approaches the Gregorian melody, and the less worthy it is the more it distinguishes itself from that supreme model.”

But how can one address the creation of a high-quality repertoire for the liturgy, including in the living languages, if the composers refuse to acknowledge Gregorian chant?

Of course, the best school for mastering a repertoire, for penetrating its secrets, is the real-life practice of that repertoire: something that we, the bridge generation between the old and the new, had the fortune to experience.

But unfortunately, after us the curtain fell. Why this resistance to restoring, either completely or partially depending on circumstances, the Mass in Gregorian chant and Latin? Are the generations of today, perhaps, more ignorant than those of the past?

The new missal proposes the Latin texts of the ordinary in addition to the modern language version. The Church wants this. Why should we lack the courage of conversion?

Gregorian chant must not remain in the preserve of academia, or the concert hall, or recordings; it must not be mummified like a museum exhibit, but must return as living song, sung also by the assembly, which will find that it satisfies their most profound spiritual tensions, and will feel itself to be truly the people of God.

It’s time to break through the inertia, and the shining example must come from the cathedral churches, the major churches, the monasteries, the convents, the seminaries, and the houses of religious formation. And so the humble parishes, too, will end up being “contaminated” by the supreme beauty of the chant of the Church.

And the persuasive power of Gregorian chant will reverberate, and will consolidate the people in the true sense of Catholicism.

And the spirit of Gregorian chant will inform a new breed of compositions, and will guide with the true “sensus Ecclesiae” the efforts for a proper enculturation.

I would even say that the melodies of the various local traditions, including those of faraway countries with cultures much different from that of Europe, are near relatives of Gregorian chant, and in this sense, too, Gregorian chant is truly universal, capable of being proposed to all and of acting as an amalgam in regard to unity and plurality.

Besides, it is precisely these faraway countries, these cultures which have recently appeared on the horizon of the Catholic Church, that are teaching us to love the traditional chant of the Church. These young Churches of Africa and Asia, together with the ministerial help they are already giving to our tired European Churches, will give us the pride of recognizing, even within chant, the stone that we were carved from. And not a moment too soon!

Two other factors that I maintain are indispensable for the renewal of Gregorian chant and good sacred music are the following:

1. – Above all, the musical formation of priests, religious, and the faithful requires seriousness, and the avoidance of the halfhearted amateurishness seen in some volunteers. Those who have gone through great pains to prepare themselves for this service must be hired, and proper remuneration for them secured. In a word, we must know how to spend money on music. It is unthinkable that we should spend money on everything from flowers to banners, but not on music. What sense would it make to encourage young people to study, and then keep them unemployed, if not indeed humiliated or tormented by our whims and our lack of seriousness?

2. – The second necessary factor is harmony in action. John Paul II recalled: “The musical aspect of liturgical celebrations cannot be left to improvisation or the decision of individuals, but must be entrusted to well-coordinated leadership, in respect for the norms and competent authorities, as the substantial outcome of an adequate liturgical formation.” So, then, respect for the norms – which is already a widespread desire. We are waiting for authoritative directives, imparted with authority. And the coordination of all the local initiatives and practices is a service that rightfully belongs to the Church of Rome, to the Holy See. This is the opportune moment, and there is no time to waste.