NE OF MY favorite composers is DOM ANTHONY GREGORY MURRAY. I think his compositions are absolutely beautiful. I’m more than happy to overlook his ever-changing views on plainsong. At first, Dom Murray was a staunch supporter of Dom Mocquereau’s rhythmic alterations to the official edition, but then he changed his mind and became (perhaps) the most well-known critic of Dom Mocquereau’s theories. In the late 1950s—based upon a misunderstanding of a few texts by medieval theorists—Dom Murray became enamored with an obscure ‘mensuralist’ approach to Gregorian rhythm promoted by a Jesuit who’s completely forgotten today. He tried to apply what he called the “authentic” rhythm to variants that came hundreds of years later, and the results can only be described as grotesque. Later, he changed his mind yet again, deciding that GREGORIAN CHANT (no matter what rhythm it has) was inappropriate for use at Mass, writing in the 1970s:
After long years of experience and careful study, I see clearly that the need for reform in liturgical music arose, not in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but a thousand years earlier—in the eighth and ninth centuries, or even before that. The abuses began, not with Mozart and Haydn, but with those over-enthusiastic medieval musicians who developed the elaborate and flamboyant Gregorian Chant.
Photograph • But—as I already made clear—I’m happy to overlook his views when it comes to CARMEN GREGORIANUM, since I love his compositions. Moreover, I thought our readers would enjoy seeing a photograph of Dom Anthony Gregory Murray:
The Truth Of Christ • I was pleased to learn that DOM ANTHONY GREGORY MURRAY was opposed to religious indifferentism (which means “one religion is as good as another”). We observe this in a letter he wrote to an English newspaper:
Transcription:
Sir,—Fr. Alec Robertson obviously misunderstands my reasons for refusing to be in any way associated with a public discussion, organized by a non-Catholic society, concerning the interpretation of plainsong. Pope Pius X described plainsong as “the chant proper to the Roman Church, the only chant which she has inherited from the ancient fathers, which she has jealously guarded for centuries in her liturgical codices, which she directly proposes to the faithful as her own.” Plainsong, then, is the exclusive property of the Catholic Church, whose official liturgical music it is. The question of its interpretation, therefore, is not, and cannot be, for me a merely musical matter, for it is not merely music but the Church’s liturgical music.
Moreover, if non-Catholics wish to discuss how it should be sung, it seems to me that they do so with the primary object of receiving assistance in the singing of plainsong in their own services. I am still further persuaded of this when I find the name of an “Anglican Benedictine” printed side by side with my own name on a leaflet advertising the discussion. I am not prepared to assist non-Catholics in the musical conduct of their services, nor will I take part in a discussion which is calculated to promote the use of the official liturgical music of the Church in heretical worship.
I suggest, therefore, that unless Catholic musicians, especially priests, are particularly careful in questions of this kind, they may easily encourage non-Catholics in the belief that the differences between Catholics and non-Catholics are of minor importance. I may add that I have acted throughout this matter with the advice and approval of eminent ecclesiastical authority.
Yours faithfully,
Dom Gregory Murray (9 October 1937).
ANTHONY GREGORY MURRAY, OSB (1905–1992) was born in Fulham, London, on 27 February 1905, and was educated at the Westminster Cathedral Choir School under SIR RICHARD RUNCIMAN TERRY (1914–1920) and at St Benedict’s Priory School, Ealing (1920–1922). He entered Downside Abbey in 1922, taking the monastic name Gregory, read History at Cambridge (1926–1929), served as organist and choirmaster at Downside from 1929 until 1941, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1932. Apart from the war years at Ealing Abbey (1939–1945) and a term as parish priest of St Benedict’s, Hindley (1948–1952), he remained attached to Downside for the whole of his life, serving the neighbouring parish of Stratton-on-the-Fosse from 1952 to 1987. As a composer he contributed to the Westminster Hymnal (1939) and produced A People’s Mass (1950), which he later adapted to the vernacular text as A New People’s Mass (1975); his hymn harmonizations—among them his justly admired setting of ST VENANTIUS—remain in use. A brilliant executant and a famously fluent improviser, he gave frequent BBC broadcasts from the Compton organ at Downside.
