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The transcript of a Paper read at the 1995 Maynooth International Musical Conference, Ireland.

The Second Vatican Council has been viewed alternatively as the culmination or the demise of the modern liturgical movement championed by Pius X, Dom Gueranger and their successors. From either perspective, however, Vatican II is without a doubt the most significant watershed that liturgical music has experienced in this century. John XXIII stated the purpose of the Council to be a meeting of ‘the spiritual demands of the time, accurately and forcefully’. It was to be an aggiornamento: a new Pentecost. It opened the floodgates of music and in less than a decade the face of Catholic church music was transformed.

This paper proposes that an understanding of the nature and effects of the Council regarding liturgical music involves the necessity of two distinct but dependant approaches: firstly, a review of the Council according to the Council: that is, an extension of the conciliar and post-conciliar documents as they relate to liturgical music and its uses and secondly, an examination of the perception, interpretation and implementation of these directives in a given area and time, in this case, that being the Republic of Ireland. These two perspectives relate in many ways contradictory and controversial and a combination of both have provided the fuel to the many-sided church music debate.

The question this paper raises is whether a combination of Vatican directives and Irish perception, interpretation and implementation has resulted in a Post-Vatican II Irish Roman Catholic voice and, indeed, one that is more Irish than Roman. Rome has spoken but can the case be considered closed?

The primary document released by the Council relating to liturgy in general and to liturgical music in particular is Sacrosanctum Concilium, released on 4 December 1963. All subsequent documentation takes this as its staring point and justification. Directives concerning the full spectrum of musical possibilities in liturgy can be found n this seminal document.

Concerning chant, Article 116 states that ‘the Church recognises Gregorian chant as being specifically suitable to the Roman liturgy. Therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.’ As a musical tradition, it is a ‘treasure of inestimable value’ (Article 112). ‘The use of the Latin language, with due respect to particular law, is to be preserved in the Latin rite.’ (Article 36). ‘The typical editions <<sic>> of the book of Gregorian chant is to be completed. Also, a more critical edition is to be prepared of the books published since the restoration by Pius X..’ (Article 117).

The constitution also allows for and encourages the use of professional or Art Music. Choirs should be developed (Article 114) and great importance attached to the instruction of music in seminaries, noviciates and higher institutes. ‘Composers and musicians, especially boys, must also be given a genuine liturgical training. (Article 115). ‘Sacred music, especially polyphony is by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations.’ (Article 116).

Article 120 notes the position of the pipe organ as one of ‘high esteem’ in the choice of instruments suitable for liturgy but also mentions that ‘other instruments may me admitted for use in divine worship’.

The people’s song is recognised and encouraged: ‘liturgical worship is given a more noble form when… celebrated solemnly in song with… the active participation of the people’ (Article 113) and it is recognised that the ‘vernacular may frequently be of great advantage.’ (Article 36).

Ethnic music is validated in Article 119, which states that, ‘in certain countries, especially in mission lands, there are people who have their own musical tradition and this plays a great part in their religious and social life. For this reason, their music should be held in proper esteem.’

Finally the doors were opened to liturgical dance: ‘to promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalms, antiphons and hymns as well as by actions, gestures and bodily attitudes.’ (Article 30).

With Sacrosanctum Concilium Rome embarked upon a new theology of liturgy, expressed conceptually as pascha nostrum. In her doctoral study concerning Catholic Church Music in the United States after the second Vatican Council, Miriam Therese Winter suggests that Vatican II saw liturgy shift in perspective from something the Church does to an essential expression of what the Church is. It is an expression of eternal truths given contemporary and spatial articulation. Liturgy, she suggested, for the first time embraced a pastoral dimension in an effort to fulfil the Vatican’s directive towards a sensus communitatis with actuoso participatio. Liturgy was to embody the Church: to be the Body of Christ or in the words of St. Leo the Great, ‘What is visible in the light of Christ has passed over into the sacraments of the Church.’

This pastoral sacramental theology was supported by other conciliar documents. Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church defines the sacramental nature of the Church in Articles 2 and 3 as a ‘wondrous sacrament’ and a ‘manifestation of the outpouring of the Spirit’. Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Western World shows how the sacramental Church is necessarily a pastoral one: ‘It is man therefore who is the key to this discussion, man considered whole and entire, with body and soul, heart and conscience, mind and will. This is the reason why the sacred Synod proclaims the noble destiny of man and affirms an element of the divine in him.’ (Article 3)

The Vatican documents, I would therefore contend, put in place a theology of liturgy which is rooted in the belief that sacramental liturgy embodies and personifies the Church and is by its very nature, pastoral.

It can be argued that this is not a new theology but an important reaffirmation of liturgy as something more than mere ceremony and something deeper than social custom. It is a re-utterance of St. Ambrose’s declaration, ‘You have made yourself known to me, O Christ: I find you in your sacraments.’

The Council’s theological direction in liturgy may be seen then as predictable and consequential. The articulation of this theology, however, was astounding in its breadth and openness. In terms of liturgical music, as has been seen in Sacrosanctum Concilium, there is not a single genre of music which cannot be justified by the Council’s directives. I would contend that post-conciliar documentation has consistently reaffirmed Rome’s very specific theological directives as sacramental and pastoral, and very general in terms of articulation.

Musicam Sacram is perhaps the most significant post-conciliar document concerning liturgical music to date. Its breadth of definition includes ‘Gregorian chant, sacred polyphony in its various forms, both ancient and modern, sacred music for the organ and other approved instruments and sacred popular music, be it liturgical or merely religious.’ (Article 4) Chant consistently receives pride of place (Article 50) and this position is supported in subsequent conciliar documents, the most significant being Quum Constituo,Edita Instructione, Sacrosancti Oecumenic, Thesaurum Cantus Gregoriani and Cantus Faciliones. Other genre including art music (Article 8), the popular song (Article 52), organ and other instrumental music (Article 62) and ethnic music (Article 61) are also advocated and supported. In a letter to the Vatican Council of Bishops on Liturgical Music dated 2 February 1968, it states that, ‘It is the Pope’s intense hope that along with the beauty of singing, the altar will be surrounded by artistic beauty of gesture.’ In Paul VI’s address to the Institut Gregorien of Paris he states that chant and also polyphony possess ‘in an eminent degree… all the qualities called for by religious music’, a position reinforced by John Paul II in an address on the Sistine Choir, 18 April 1981. In his letter from the Secretariat of State, Cardinal J. Villot reminds us, also, however that ‘every contemporary art must remain always in search of new styles with which to offer God the homage of beauty.’

The consistency with which these post-conciliar documents recommend breadth of implementation is mirrored in their adherence to the Council’s view of the liturgy as sacramental and pastoral. Article 43 of Musicam Sacram states that ‘Certain celebrations of the sacraments and sacramentals are particularly significant in the life of a parish community… as far as possible therefore they should be carried out with singing, so that even the solemnity of the Rite may contribute to a greater pastoral effectiveness.’

In his address on the 10th Anniversary of the Consociato Internationalis Musicae Sacrae, he sated that great effort must be put into church music to ‘ensure its worthiness and beauty and to enable all people to take part effectively and beneficially in the Church’s prayer’.

Rome has spoken thus in her conciliar documents and continues to do so consistently in her post-concilar documents, letters and directives. Rome delivered a liturgical message of sacramental centrality with pastoral dimensions and breadth of articulation. Rome was also clear that implementation and interpretation would necessarily be more local than universal. ‘At the discretion of competent territorial authority,’ begins Article 32 of Musicam Sacram and later in Article 48 it states that ‘local ordinaries’ should determine ‘issues relating to Latin and the vernacular’.

Irish Perception, Interpretation and Implementation

Perception, Interpretation and Implementation in an Irish context was varied and gradual. If the proverbial devil can quote scripture for his own purposes, Irish Catholics showed the same ability to quote conciliar documents for whatever form of music they wished to support and promulgate. The first Irish periodical to document developments and attitudes in Ireland was Hosanna, a publication of the Irish Church Music Association. Its various articles, letters and opinions reflect a diverse and often self-righteous championing of various types of music, often at the expense of others. In Vol. No. 1 P.J. Brophy documents the emergence of pastoral liturgy and suggests that ireland has not adapted at all to this new aspect of liturgy and remains, in this sense, pre-Vatican II. Margaret Daly also strongly supports the new liturgy in these pages, aspiring towards the development of an Irish hymnody to express ‘the joys, hopes, griefs and anxieties of the age’. A strong support of ethnic music is seen in the articles of Maire Ni Dhuibhir and Kevin Donovan who suggests that the time for a universal Mass is now passed. The Association provided a launching pad for many composers who wrote in ethnic or vernacular idiom, publishing works by Irish composers, not least of whom was the editor of Hosanna, Fintan O’Carroll. The ICMA also published T.C. Kelly and Mary Cussen as well as being involved in the publication of the Veritas hymnal. Aided by the work of their annual summer school, the ICMA publishes and supports music by Tomas O’Cannain, Seoirse Bodley, Sean O’Riada, Eamonn O’Gallcobhair, John Murphy, Margaret Daly and Liam Lawton.

The Irish Church Music Association with their associated newsletter advocate music which is singable, accessible, and, I would contend, closely allied to a pastoral, congregational interpretation of liturgy. Jubilius, a Maynooth publication which was edited by Dr. Sean Lavery from the Spring of 1984 to the Winter of 1987 strove to promote ‘good church music and reject everything that is shoddy, cheap and profane’. It strongly supports chant, polyphonic music and sacred twentieth century music with a strong sacramental undertow.

These two publications represent a healthy diversity if a somewhat limited and trenchant advocacy of position ranging from congregational folk-style songs to sixteenth century polyphonic settings, reflecting also but sometimes separating the pastoral and sacramental elements of the liturgy. The Roman directives were not lost in Ireland but there would seem to be a tendency towards isolating a position and distancing it from the overall conciliar spirit of aggiornamento. In his book The Real Achievement, Edward Schillebeeckx suggests that there is a danger of aggiornamento, which the Council defined as the throwing open of the doors of discovery, becoming increasingly definite, political, positionist and channelled. If this is happening in certain political circles in Ireland, however, I would not necessarily suggest that it is for the worst. The merit of the Council’s openness contains the danger of including everything and getting nothing. A position is often a place of passion and while passion can be dangerous it also contains the seeds of greatness and blasts away mediocrity.

There are two other trends worth mentioning in this brief overview of Irish Catholic perceptions of Vatican II directives. One is the significant number of Irish composers involved in writing liturgical music. The Contemporary Music Centre of Ireland has manuscripts and recordings of Masses written by Elaine Agnew, Seoirse Bodley, Frank Corcoran, Philip Edmonson, Aloys Fleischmann, John Gibson, Donal Hurley, Colm Mawby, Mart McAullife, Michael McGlynn, Martin O’Leary, A.J. Potter, Sean O’Riada, Eric Sweeny, Gerard Victory and James Wilson. They have seventy-eight compositions under the category ‘sacred music’ written since the Second Vatican Council. Of interest is the fact that many of these works have never been used in a church, much less in a Mass but have been performed in a concert hall or for public broadcast. Much of what Irish contemporary Irish composers are writing would seem to be of ‘sacred’ and musical value but has not come to terms with the issues of pastoral congregationalism and sacramental centrality.

Finally, if issues of pastoral, genre, theology or sacramentality are being debated, albeit from a positionalist stance, the debate is largely academic and tremendously removed from parish or musical practice. Neither of the two periodicals mentioned above are still in circulation. Little of the music being written by contemporary composers is being utilised in active liturgy. In a short position paper on Music in the Liturgy twenty years after Vatican II, Dr. Sean Lavery wrote that ‘Singing in Mass, in this country, is deplorably bad - in many cases, it does not exist at all. Where congregational singing does exist, even feebly, the type of music which is sung is, likewise, deplorably bad.’ Aloys Fleischmann described church music since Vatican II in Jubilus Vol. 4 No. 4 as belonging to an age of ‘increasing vulgarisation and of deteriorating standards’. It would seem that whatever is happening in Catholic church music in Ireland, it is not happening in the churches.

I finish with the suggestion that this is not necessarily negative. The years since the Council have seen the larger Catholic Church rocked with moral scandal and liturgical despondency. There is a dominant and aggressive sense of outrage on one hand and apathy on the other. This is not then environment for creativity or excellence to flourish. If the Irish liturgical voice has moved into incubation, it is with good reason. Firstly, composers are still grappling with the ramifications of sacred music being used in a liturgy which itself is still developing. A very tentative ethnic voice is finding its way in a much broader changing traditional and linguistic environment and its forays into liturgy are still tentative. Institutional Catholicism is an edifice upheld largely by custom and custom has lost its soul. I would contend that the roots of an Irish liturgical voice exist. We have witnessed fine commentary, research, organisation and music in the thirty years since the Council. But we have experienced it sporadically, minoritively and in the context of a Church whose aggiornamento is still in its infancy. All the directives and possibilities exist for creativity in church music. But there is a certain energy lacking in the Church itself and one cannot proceed without the other.

In the American publication, Music in Catholic Worship (1972), it states: ‘People in love make signs of love, not only to express their love but to deepen it. Love never expressed dies. Christian love must be expressed in the signs and symbols of celebration or it will die… among the many signs and symbols used by the Church, music is of primary importance.’ It would seem to me that faith and expression are inseparably linked and that one nurtures the other. Any discussion of church music standards or finance for musicians is useless if it does not happen within the broader context of the institutional machinery that controls it and the faith or lack of same that sustains it. The elements, however, still exist for the emergence of an Irish Catholic voice. We have the musicians, the compositions, the scholarship, the diversity of opinion and the healthy debate and disagreement that must precede the development of a strong voice. The question is whether we have the faith. The music will not go away. It will just go elsewhere.

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