Good ritual music is a complex package

National Catholic Reporter, May 12, 1995 by Dawn Gibeau

To hear good Christian ritual music, go to Blessed Sacrament Parish in Alexandria, Va.; to the cathedral in St. Louis; to Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago; or to St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Los Angeles.

Fr. Virgil Funk, executive director of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, said in those churches, an eclectic repertoire - from different periods and styles - can be heard, appropriate to the natures of the assemblies and the acoustic integrity of the buildings. Those factors affect the choice of ritual music, Funk said. "The Roman Catholic church is committed to not emphasizing one period (of music) as being an exceptional revelation of God as opposed to another period," he said.

Choice is also influenced by who is in attendance and the structure of the building. In a cathedral, Funk said, the music ought to accommodate or accent the reverberation; but a different form might be appropriate in a building designed to provide immediate contact among people.

Christian ritual music is the term that several Minnesota composers who talked to NCR said they preferred for church music. "I find the term `liturgical music'... amorphous," Marty Haugen said.

"Happy Birthday," he said, is the consummate example of secular ritual music, a tune everybody knows and sings but that no one would request at a piano bar. "It's inconceivable being separated from the ritual,' he said. Good ritual music finds its full meaning and value within the context of the ritual. It's the difference between songs in the liturgy and songs of the liturgy."

Haugen said "classic criteria after the Second Vatican Council were musical, liturgical and pastoral judgments." The musical criterion asks, "Is it music worthy of being done?" The second, liturgical question tests how well the music functions, and the third concerns text.

"The text drives the music rather than the reverse," he said. "Within the liturgy, word and action are primary. The word determines what the music will be. That's why chant was such a perfect melding of text and music." Lyric song poses a danger that the music will overwhelm the text, he said.

The council's "Constitution on the Liturgy" says "all musical expressions are valid as long as they are used in a pastoral and liturgical manner," David Haas said. Yet he finds that "every person in the pew is a music expert," judging music according to their likes and dislikes.

Fr. Jan Michael Joncas, asked about how to judge good or bad music, said, "To put it bluntly, I don't know what bad music means." A particular piece of music within a particular genre could be well or poorly written, he said, but aesthetic judgments differ from judgments about how music works in ritual prayer.

When Joncas gives workshops, he said, he discusses three approaches to liturgy planning: The rubrical approach, which says: "As long as these events and texts are performed in the order that the book gives us, we have done good liturgy", the reflective approach, which says, "We begin with these liturgical books, but the issue is not making sure these texts and ceremonies are done in this order, but how they reflect the faith experience of the gathered community"; and the third approach, which is radical: "It tends not to pay attention to the liturgical books as published but begins with the spiritual experience of a given community and then tries to ritualize it."

His task, he said, is to step back from each of the three approaches and assess its pluses and minuses. For instance, a plus to the rubrical approach: "You are not at the idiosyncratic mercy of whatever the presiding priest happens to want to do that morning."

A person who prefers the radical approach would criticize the rubrical, saying "any doing of worship without a commitment to justice and peace eviscerates worship."

Jesuit Fr. Roc O'Connor asks himself whether music "helps me be present to the mystery of the risen Christ." He quotes Scottish philosopher John Macmurray: "Art without fear tends toward sentimentality.' The liturgy is not art," he said, but some of the same principles apply in assessing both.

"Liturgy without some kind of edge -- I'm not sure fear is the only one - tends toward sentimentality," he said. "I don't want to preside at, I don't want to preach, I don't want to lead or sing music that tends toward sentimentality."

To Tom Conry, good ritual music must be appropriate for singing by large groups. He, too, mentioned "Happy Birthday." Some people say that's not real music, he said. "Yes, it is. That's really the music large groups of people can sing."

Music must also be truthful, Conry said. "By that I mean I think the lectionary proposes a certain set of questions about God and about people and about the relation between God and people. It's good or bad as to how authentically it presents that set of questions," which differ as lectionary readings change.

Haas said "the average parishioner couldn't care less about music" but cares rather about feeding the family, holding onto a job and dealing with broken relationships. Quoting Conry, Haas said, "`The issue isn't so much how do you get people to sing, but what do they have to sing about?' I think that's the million-dollar question right now in liturgy and music.