UBLISHED several months ago, Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence: Three Gifts of God for Liturgy and for Life is one of Peter Kwasniewski’s latest books. As one can surmise from the title, it is a book that would naturally be of interest to readers of our Views from the Choir Loft blog.
The book is commendable for its structure, which is tripartite:
Part I: Music Fit for Kings: The Role of Good Music in the Christian’s Life
Part II: Music Fit for the King of Kings: The Role of Sacred Music in the Church’s Life
Part III: Giving Way to Silence
This structure, more than simply being clever, enables the author to distinguish sacred music from secular music in a way that does justice to the importance of both, while also not neglecting the value of silence.
The first section follows a Platonic line of thought, arguing that all music has a moral impact on those who hear it, whether positive or negative. The section on sacred music clearly delineates the spiritual and theological reasons for the supremacy of chant and polyphony in Catholic worship. The final section, on silence, is brief, but it is a welcome corrective against the modern impulse to fill every moment with sound, whether within or without the liturgy.
Throughout the book, the author demonstrates a real familiarity with the interplay between rhythm, melody, harmony, and lyrics. His insights reveal that he has not only been a practitioner of music (as a composer and choir member/director), but also that he has thought deeply about music from a philosophic perspective. Many of the chapters demonstrate fluency with the thought of Aquinas and Ratzinger, Pärt and Pieper, Swain and Scruton.
Readers will be intrigued by a number of musico-liturgical analogies, including the comparison of traditional Catholic rites to Baroque music and the reformed rites of the Second Vatican Council with jazz (p. 33). Another parallel is drawn between those who know but reject the Church’s teaching on sacred music and those who know but reject the Church’s teaching on contraception (pp. 140-141).
The book’s chapters began as articles in various places, including this very blog. Other places where these chapters initially appeared include New Liturgical Movement, OnePeterFive, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, and Rorate Caeli. Many of these articles warranted a wider audience, so I view their publication in book form as an excellent thing. There is a certain cohesion to the work, thanks to its good structure, but there are also a number of places where quite similar material is repeated. Some readers will wish that these sections had been edited so as not to be so repetitive.
I find the text especially praiseworthy for its encouragement to become “missionaries for the beautiful” (p. 75). In this respect, there remains much mission territory in the Church today.
