ARTICLES

Afraid People Won't Like It?

LITURGY MUST BE BEAUTIFUL TO BE PERSUASIVE

William Mahrt, a historian of music at Stanford University, is the director of the St. Ann Chapel Choir, which performs Gregorian chant every Sunday at St. Ann's Chapel in Palo Alto. He was interviewed on April 11.

"I was raised Catholic in a small country parish where we had practically no music. We had the Latin Mass. I then went to a Catholic college [Gonzaga], where what we learned in the catechism was given some depth by the study of philosophy and theology, but where there was no real liturgical music. And then I went to a secular university [University of Washington] where the Dominicans at the Newman Center were trying to get some chant for the services. And that was the point at which I realized that this was the missing link in my own experience of the Catholic tradition...and as soon as I discovered that, I joined the cathedral choir in Seattle where I was going to school, sang with them for a couple of years and when I came to Stanford there was somebody here just beginning a chant choir.

"I was on board from the very beginning. That was 1963. The [leader] was a professor in the Mathematics department but had a long background of being involved with liturgical and musical things and he had a plan of really doing all of the chants for the Sunday high mass with the addition of some motets and occasionally a polyphonic mass. And he then was hired away by another school in a year, and he said, 'You are the one to take it over.' And so I did. That was 1964, and then 1964 came, the change of language and the pressure to put the Gregorian music on the shelf essentially. And I spent a fair amount of my time as a graduate student fighting for keeping what we had there, and then I went away to teach myself and then I was hired back to the university again.

"You look in a missalette and you see Introit or entrance song and you don't realize that the text that's there or the traditional text for that in any case was the text of a song. It was not a text that was prescribed and then someone was called in to set it to music. Rather it was from its very beginning a psalm, which is a text of a song, and so all of those parts of the propers of the mass -- the Introit, the Gradual or the Responsorial psalm, the Alleluia, the Sequence, the Offertory, the Communion -- their purpose is to cultivate a sense of meditation and attentiveness that then makes the congregation hear more intensely the lessons which they complement. So all of those parts of the mass that are in fact traditionally sung in Gregorian chant have their genesis in their liturgical function. And they differ one from the other according to their purpose in the liturgy. Then you have the parts that I would contend are best suited for the people to sing: the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus, the Agnus Dei....

"It is unison melody, unaccompanied essentially. That means it is not tied down to a regular beat, and it does not hold the requirements of having to cultivate separate parts. So there is a certain simplicity that makes it more accessible for singing and listening; there is a directness that means it symbolizes a unity of voices, and there is this independence from a strong sort of earth-bound beat that makes it more suited to sacred subjects and to meditation.

"So you can see that one of my criteria, in fact, for the liturgy is that there should be a contemplative aspect to the liturgy. That's something we have almost entirely lost. The whole notion of active participation is one that has really been misread. The words in the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, which are borrowed from Pius XII, are actuosa participatio not activa participatio. So it means actual, fundamental participation, not active participation. There is a fine distinction, because a fundamental participation is probably not forthcoming if there is no activity whatever, but the notion that the congregation, on the other hand, should sing all the parts of the mass, and should be active in all the parts of the mass is a very serious misreading of the intentions of the [Vatican II] Council.

"[That misreading] means that the people are constantly involved in the practical activity of having to sing something. They have to look in the book and they have to follow the words and they have to read the notation. And so the element of reflection and contemplation is really suppressed.... Whenever you have the contention that the choir's function is merely to support the congregation, you are going to have the suppression of this contemplative aspect. Because the choir music, if it is well done, particularly aids the contemplative element. And it is the chant that gives the paradigm for that.

"Newly composed liturgical songs by well-meaning people accompanied by bad instruments can be really awful.... The use of the kind of improvised piano tinkling away and all of this improvisation tends to fall back into something whose recall is really of either the cocktail bar or daytime television...What happens is that the liturgy is drawn to the secular. There is the objection that, 'Well, in the Renaissance you had secular tunes being used in masses for instance.' And that's true. But it is an entirely different process. The process there was drawing the secular into the sacred and subsuming it in an unmistakably sacred style.

"Priest after priest in the 60s and in the early 70s whom I would talk to would admit that they really loved the chant when they were in the seminary, and it was a fundamental part of their formation. But they were afraid that it was not accessible to the people. My contention is that very little is accessible to the people unless you introduce them to it and unless you persuade them of its worth. I think those two things are the nub of the cause of the present situation: one, that the tradition was not well established, and therefore it was not clear why you should do it, and then, in the face of that, the clergy had a kind of failure of nerve. They were afraid the people wouldn't buy it. And then there was the temptation that, for many people at least, the incorporation of the popular music would be attractive to people and would get them to mass, and then they would be there, and we could at least give them a good sermon. There is a kind of clericalization of the thing which is very odd for post-conciliar development.

"The curious thing is, the more conservative the pastor the more difficulty you have, because very often the more ecclesiastically conservative priests are concerned with mainstreaming everything, and they look upon this as out in left field in some ways.... It has been embraced on the principle of diversity, though I have never contended that it should be. I have contended it should be embraced on the principle of doing what the Church asks us to do....

"I know at Gonzaga, my alma mater, they are talking about trying to start some chant there. So there is a sense of building it again within the Catholic schools, at least of few of them. But in my time I think it is clear these are things that actually did thrive on the more secular campuses.... Students always want to explore the tradition [as do] people who are studying history where there is a substantial music department. There haven't been many Catholic universities with substantial music departments. Catholic University and Notre Dame I think of immediately, but you get beyond that, and it is pretty sparse. I am sure there are some more....

"In general, the Jesuit tradition was not one that was conducive to the cultivation of liturgical music. Their whole spirituality, based upon the spiritual exercises, was private and their notion of the liturgy was the fulfillment of function in the most efficient manner possible and the use of it as a forum for preaching, so that liturgical music really didn't thrive in the Jesuit colleges. And they were really the center of higher education in this country.

"In schools like Stanford and Harvard and Yale you had fairly substantial musicology programs where the chant and the polyphonic music are studied as a matter of normal course of events.... So you have that phenomenon that the stuff is being studied at these major graduate institutions. And whenever somebody with a Catholic background comes along like I did, all of a sudden you say, 'Hey that belongs to us.'

"I have to say that most churchmen, most clergy haven't drawn the implications they might have from the secular interest in Gregorian chant. It has been interesting that it has scarcely touched them. But, you see, the basic problem is, I think it is the same problem as before the Council: They would freely acknowledge that they think it is beautiful and that they are attracted to it, and they think it makes the liturgy more beautiful. But they are afraid the people don't. It is like the sacrament of confession. Unless you preach it, unless you convince people of its worth, it is not going to fly.

"If you talk to a liturgist, you can catch them completely off guard by saying, 'Surely you would acknowledge that the liturgy must be beautiful?' And they haven't an answer, because they have never thought of it. So that it seems to me one of the first things that has got to be done is to recognize that the liturgy must be beautiful for the liturgy to be persuasive. For it to move people to worship and to meditation it has to have a fundamental element of beauty. And by beauty I don't mean suitability; I mean beauty. The form of the thing must have a kind of perfection, and the form must express the nature of the thing itself....

"Chant has brought people to the Church, people have been converts to the church through this music and it has brought people back. It has drawn people who are still going to Church but who are dissatisfied with what they hear.

"There have been a few converts within the choir itself. One was a girl who was brought up with no religion at all. And she felt a need for it and she didn't know what to look for. So she tried worshipping pagan gods. One day she sat there and said, 'I am going to try worshipping Venus.' Her grandfather happened to have given her a Gregorian chant manuscript, a whole book from the fourteenth century of Gregorian chant. So she said, 'Well, maybe this is something to look into.' And she came to our choir and said, 'I want to learn how to sing Gregorian chant.' And we said, 'Fine, here is Liber Usualis.' And she said, 'No, I have my own book.' She brought out this fourteenth century manuscript, a whole book, and caused a sensation among the choir. But she was searching and she is still a member of our congregation."

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