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Views from the Choir Loft

“Contemporary” Catholic Music • Is it truly dead?

Jeff Ostrowski · April 12, 2017

HOSE ATTENDING this year’s Sacred Music Symposium will experience a marvelous surprise, which we today announce. All participants will be given an opportunity to meet composer Kevin Allen! Here’s a snippet from 2011 DVD which features Mr. Allen’s music and conducting:


Kevin Allen’s compositions are truly inspired, by which I mean they are hauntingly beautiful but utilize a contemporary harmonic language.

ERIOUS COMPOSERS like Kevin Allen—and many do still exist—remind us that authentic contemporary church music is not dead. The Symposium is proud to be promoting what is positive and wholesome and healthy and holy. For the record, that’s also why I’m thrilled to be part of the Brébeuf Hymnal project, which uses a ton of newly-composed texts and melodies. Mr. Allen will deliver a presentation about living composers who compose serious church music.

Examining what’s being published in too many of today’s Catholic hymnals can be quite discouraging. The following comes from a 2013 (!!!) GIA hymnal, and I find its syncopation and grammar inappropriate for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:

242 GIA Publications


Is this really sacred (“set apart”) music, building upon the vast treasury of traditional Roman Catholic music? Or is this a goofy attempt to insert 1 into the Catholic liturgy styles which don’t belong? And was the bizarre grammar (“angels sang when baby born”) maintained in the Spanish translation? I’m afraid I don’t know Spanish well enough to know.

By the way, GIA has been pushing similar stuff for decades. Consider the following piece from GIA’s WORSHIP II HYMNAL, with accompaniment by Robert J. Batastini:

241 GIA Publications


What was so unacceptable about the assigned texts, which come directly from sacred scripture? Why was it necessary to abandon them, in favor of stuff like this? And what’s going on here? Is this a story about the Nativity?

No, we haven’t got a manger.
No, we haven’t got a stable.
We are Christian men and women,
Always willing, never able.

But how can that be? How could people be “Christian” at the time of Christ’s birth? And what does this stanza mean?

Jesus Christ has gone to heaven;
One day he’ll be coming back, sir.
In this house he will be welcome,
But we hope he won’t be black, sir.

When I was growing up in the 1990s, we sang songs like this in our Catholic school. Only through secular pursuits—performing works by Chopin, Liszt, Medtner, Glazunov, Brahms, Debussy, Mozart, Bach, Rachmaninov, and others—did I eventually discover the glorious Roman Catholic heritage which had been so carefully hidden from me.

My wife and I have decided never to allow our children to be poisoned by music like what is contained in those “Catholic” GIA hymnals.



NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   The other day, we spoke of seminary professor who wants more secular styles at Mass, such as jazz and “commercial pop music.” He seems unaware that people have been struggling mightily to insert secular styles into the Holy Mass for many years.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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Jeff Ostrowski

About Jeff Ostrowski

Jeff Ostrowski holds his B.M. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas (2004). He resides with his wife and children in Los Angeles.—(Read full biography).

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Surprising Popularity!

One of our most popular downloads has proven to be the organ accompaniment to “The Monastery Hymnal” (131 pages). This book was compiled, arranged, and edited by Achille P. Bragers, who studied at the Lemmensinstituut (Belgium) about thirty years before that school produced the NOH. Bragers might be considered an example of Belgium “Stile Antico” whereas Flor Peeters and Jules Van Nuffel represented Belgium “Prima Pratica.” You can download the hymnal by Bragers at this link.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • To Capitalize…?

In the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, there is a question regarding whether to capitalize the word “christi.” The Vulgata does not, because Psalm 27 is not specifically referring to Our Lord, but rather to God’s “anointed one.” However, Missals tend to capitalize it, such as the official 1962 Missal and also a book from 1777 called Missel de Paris. Something tells me Monsignor Knox would not capitalize it.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • “Sung vs. Spoken”

We have spoken quite a bit about “sung vs. spoken” antiphons. We have also noted that the texts of the Graduale Romanum sometimes don’t match the Missal texts (in the Extraordinary Form) because the Mass Propers are older than Saint Jerome’s Vulgate, and sometimes came from the ITALA versions of Sacred Scripture. On occasion, the Missal itself doesn’t match the Vulgate—cf. the Introit “Esto Mihi.” The Vulgate has: “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in domum refúgii…” but the Missal and Graduale Romanum use “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in locum refúgii…” The 1970s “spoken propers” use the traditional version, as you can see.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“Whether celebrated with priest and people facing each other or with priest and people together facing the same direction, every Eucharist is Christ coming to meet us, gracing us with a share in his own divine life.”

— Most Rev’d Arthur J. Serratelli (1 December 2016)

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