SACRED MUSIC
Volume 117, Number 1, Spring 1990
From The Editors
ORDINARY OF THE MASS
Monsignor Richard J. Schuler
That term, "ordinary of the Mass," is rarely seen today in liturgical
writing, and yet it remains in musicological parlance as the classical
description of a musical form which for a thousand years produced
masterpieces of music in every period of western music history. For the
music student, the term "Mass" -indicated a composition of five or six
movements based on the unchanging texts of "Kyrie," "Gloria," "Credo,"
"Sanctus-Benedictus" and "Agnus Dei." The immutability of the texts was
contrasted to the variety of musical settings accompanying them. Every age
left its treasury of compositions written by a multitude of composers who
undertook to use the form of the "ordinary of the Mass" for the glory of
God and the edification of the faithful. It is, for the most part, this
emense library of polyphony which is meant by the "treasury of sacred
music" that the Vatican Council refers to and orders to be fostered, used
and further enriched by new compositions, both in Latin and in the
vernacular languages.
And yet, the past twenty-five years have seen fewer attempts at
composition in this form than any previous ages since the fourteenth
century. Both in the vernacular and in Latin the setting of the ordinary
texts of the Mass has almost completely fallen off. The liturgists have
discouraged the singing of those texts and have even eliminated them from
the Mass. Composers have not chosen to write when their work would not be
performed; publishers have not printed works for which there is no market
for sales.
Why has this happened? Basically, it is because there is and continues to
be an attack on the ancient "Missa Romana cantata." The Mass as a musical
form is a very Catholic and very Roman thing. There is no doubt that a
false ecumenism, filled with an anti-Roman spirit, has been at the basis of
much of the attack on the Roman liturgy, even if ostensibly its ultimate
intentions were to extend the faith. In destroying the "Missa cantata"
Christians in the west, both Catholic and non-Catholic, were deprived of a
cultural form that for centuries was its heritage. Innumerable people have
been attracted into the Church through that musical heritage; to push it
aside is a mistake as one can clearly see in the reaction (not only among
the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre but more widely even within the
Church) that the present interpretations of the conciliar reforms have
produced.
On a personal note, I have experienced how the Latin Mass, celebrated with
Gregorian chant and the masterpieces of polyphonic settings, has attracted
great numbers to attend and many to become Catholics and some even to
become priests. The presence at the solemn Mass on Sundays at my parish of
university students and many young people demonstrates the attraction of
music, ceremony and dignity in worship.
Involved also in the disappearance of the ordinary of the Mass is the
false attack leveled against choirs and artistic choral music. If choirs
are not to be allowed, then by whom will settings of the ordinary be sung?
If they are not sung, then why publish them? This ridiculous notion that
choirs interferred with active participation wrought incalcuable harm to
liturgical music, and particularly to the singing of the ordinary parts of
the Mass, the very core of most choirs' repertory.
There can be no denial of the unhappy state of the liturgical reform in
the United States today. While few will admit it, the tremendous drop in
Mass attendance must be laid in great part at the feet of the misguided
liturgists; the Tridentine movement finds its cause in the abuses of
liturgy foisted upon our Catholic people; parishes where a sound
implementation of the reforms of the council has been accomplished are
flourishing. The vocational crisis, the disintegration of orthodox
catechesis, lack of preaching about the essentials of the faith, indeed a
loss of reverence for the holy and a denial of sin can all be attributed to
some degree to the failure to implement the liturgical decrees of the
Second Vatican Council in this country.
It is naive to think that a restoration of the Tridentine Mass will bring
about a thorough renewal of the Church. It is equally naive to think that a
revival of choirs and the composition of more settings of the ordinary
parts of the Mass will cause such a renewal either. But all these things
together can start a new beginning. Only when the decrees of the Second
Vatican Council are seriously and conscientiously implemented "in toto"
will we see the flowering the Church so earnestly seeks.
The history of the Church records a gradual development with each
generation building on the work of the previous ones. The great challenges
of the reforms of Vatican II were intended to rest on the past. The Mass is
indeed "for all times" and our Mass today is the same as that of the
Council of Trent and the early middles ages, indeed of all the centuries of
the Church's life. We need not throw out the past to achieve our goals. In
fact, it is only upon the tradition of the past that the present and the
future can be created. Let without tradition, new efforts can only fail, as
we have so painfully learned.
