A musical challenge to go forward: Vatican's top musican argues against romanticizing pre-Vatican II era

National Catholic Reporter, April 16, 2004 by John L. Allen, Jr.

For all those who romanticize about a "golden age" of sacred music prior to the Second Vatican Council, for all those who would banish any melody but Gregorian chant from the Mass, the Catholic church's top musician has a simple message: Get over it.

"Any kind of guerrilla action against Vatican II doesn't produce good fruits," said Msgr. Giuseppe Liberto, maestro of the pope's own Sistine Chapel Choir. "The council's principles by now are untouchable."

By that, Liberto does not mean that the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) tossed out the great musical patrimony of the church--far from it, since the Sistine Chapel Choir routinely performs Gregorian chant. What he means, however, is that the great challenge posed by the council is not conservation but creativity, finding new musical wine to pour into new liturgical wineskins.

That, he said, is a work largely yet to be done.

Since 1997, Liberto has been the force behind the music at all papal liturgies and other Vatican events. His 55-member choir includes 35 boys and 20 adults. Liberto spoke April 7 in an exclusive interview with NCR in his Vatican apartment, just before the peak period of Holy Week.

"Liturgical music isn't an abstract art," Liberto told NCR. "In fact, you can't start from the music at all. You have to start from the revised Missal, the new rites. Music has to be at the service of the celebration."

In that context, Liberto said, the main artistic challenge is not to go back but to go forward.

"Vatican II had two beautiful phrases," he said. "We must conserve, but we must also augment. Conservation of the antique musical repertory is a custodial duty, but this can't block the charism and the prophecy of inventing new forms."

Liberto's comments come amid a growing debate over music within Catholicism, as pressure for more traditional forms of verbal expression, especially in the translation of liturgical texts, is being matched in some quarters by pressure for more traditional music. Above all, this usually means Gregorian chant and polyphony.

Liberto insisted that the "disappearance" of Gregorian chant and ancient forms of polyphony was not the fault of Vatican II.

"In the parishes, before the council, who sang Gregorian chant?" he asked. "It was sung, if at all, by small groups. The people knew how to pray the rosary and to sing the 'Salve Regina' to the Madonna, and that was it."

Yet even if widespread use of Gregorian chant were somehow possible today, Liberto said, it wouldn't be enough.

"By now the liturgy is in Italian, in French, in German, in all the languages," he said. "Certainly a minimum of Gregorian should be conserved, especially for international Masses. But in most other contexts, it won't work. Music is a language, and we just can't speak today in the language of the fourth century or the 14th. Today, the musical language is truly heterogeneous. We have to find a language for celebration that is comprehensible and practical."

The Word From Rome

Liberto, 61, is a native of Sicily who in 1997 was called to Rome to replace the legendary head of the Sistine Chapel Choir, Domenico Bartolucci, who had been named to the post by Pins XII in 1956. Many observers saw the switch as a choice in favor of a more modern, post-Vatican II musical style, driven in part by the pope's top liturgist, Archbishop Piero Marini.

None of this, Liberto insisted, means that he is insensitive to traditional forms of music or to the need for deep liturgical reverence. He, too; has been disappointed by some of the more banal music written after the council, the kind that inspired protests like the 1991 book Why Catholics Can't Sing. Liberto acknowledged that he, too, sometimes "has difficulties" with the more Broadwayesque features of papal liturgies.

"When I'm directing the choir, I'm also celebrating the Mass. I give Communion to my singers. The aim is to live the mystery liturgically through all those gestures and other elements, but it's not easy. It's a very real problem."

At the same time, Liberto said, it's pointless to romanticize about the preconciliar period.

"The church doesn't go backward," he said. "Those who don't want the council have to realize that the battle has already been lost."

When I lecture on Vatican affairs, inevitably one of the first questions to come up is, "What does the Vatican think about the priest shortage?" To many Catholics, especially Europeans and North Americans watching their pastors age and their parishes close or consolidate, the problem seems more urgent than ever, and they wonder how it looks in Rome.

On April 6, we got an answer.

Based on comments from Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, and his deputy, Hungarian Archbishop Csaba Ternyak, the Vatican's attitude boils down to: 1) things are not as bad as it might seem; and 2) to make them even better, get back to basics. The best way to generate vocations, the two men suggested, is to foster holiness among priests--happy, holy priests will naturally induce others to follow their path.