What’s With All the Chant?

Daniel Tucker · December 20, 2020

HE FOLLOWING PRESENATION is entitled “What’s With All the Chant? A Crash Course on the Church’s Teaching on Sacred Music.” I had the honor of presenting this material to my parishioners at St. Thérèse Little Flower Catholic Church (South Bend, IN) this past week.

Topics covered include: an introduction to liturgical theology and the Mass; anthropocentric vs. theocentric worship; the Ordinary and Proper texts of the Mass; why the texts of the Propers are superior to hymnody for use at the Introit, Offertory, and Communion; a survey of Church documents from the past c. 120 years on the primacy of Gregorian chant; and answers to questions about new music and music of other styles.

A special thanks is due to Fr. Brad Elliott, OP of the Western Dominican Province, whose video “What’s Wrong With Church Music?” served as the introduction to my lecture.

Enjoy!

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

About Daniel Tucker

Daniel Tucker is the Director of Sacred Music & Liturgy at St. Thérèse Little Flower Catholic Church in South Bend, IN. He holds degrees in music and religion from Western Michigan University and Yale University.—(Read full biography).

20 January 2021 • REMINDER

We have no savings, no endowment, and no major donors. You can help us (please) by subscribing to our mailing list. It’s incredibly easy; just scroll to the bottom of any blog article and enter your email address. Thank you!

—Jeff Ostrowski

19 January 2021 • Confusion over feasts

For several months, we have discussed the complicated history of the various Christmas feasts: the Baptism of the Lord, the feast of the Holy Family, the Epiphany, and so forth. During a discussion, someone questioned my assertion that in some places Christmas had been part of the Epiphany. As time went on, of course, the Epiphany came to represent only three “manifestations” (Magi, Cana, Baptism), but this is not something rigid. For example, if you look at this “Capital E” from the feast of the Epiphany circa 1350AD, you can see it portrays not three mysteries but four—including PHAGIPHANIA when Our Lord fed the 5,000. In any event, anyone who wants proof the Epiphany used to include Christmas can read this passage from Dom Prosper Guéranger.

—Jeff Ostrowski

6 January 2021 • Anglicans on Plainsong

A book published by Anglicans in 1965 has this to say about Abbat Pothier’s Editio Vaticana, the musical edition reproduced by books such as the LIBER USUALIS (Solesmes Abbey): “No performing edition of the music of the Eucharistic Psalmody can afford to ignore the evidence of the current official edition of the Latin Graduale, which is no mere reproduction of a local or partial tradition, but a CENTO resulting from an extended study and comparison of a host of manuscripts gathered from many places. Thus the musical text of the Graduale possesses a measure of authority which cannot lightly be disregarded.” They are absolutely correct.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Subscribe to the CCW Mailing List

About Daniel Tucker