Bach and Newton

"In August 1750, just days after Bach's death, Agricola wrote:

He [Finazzi] denies his [Bach's] music the effect of pleasure for the listener who would not savor such difficult harmony. Yet, assuming the harmonies [that is, musical structure] of this great man were so complex that they would not always achieve the intended result, they nevertheless serve for the connoisseur's genuine delight. Not all learned people are able to understand a Newton, but those who have progressed far enough in the profound science so they can understand him will find the greatest gratification and real benefit in reading his work."

("Prologue: Bach and the Notion of 'Musical Science'". Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. Christoph Wolff.)

Several interesting things here - the fact that Wolff feels that "harmonies" and "musical structure" are somewhat synonymous in the 18th century German tongue (drawing any tempting conclusions would be unsubstantiated conjecture on my part) and also the fact that, were it a reference to what we'd actually call Bach's harmonies, we wouldn't think of them as complex at all. We've been acclimatized in that respect. If it's a broader "musical structure" that's so complex (such as setting a poetic German text to 9 part choral harmony and two separate orchestras), I see what they mean. Finazzi's still wrong, though. Bach's congregations didn't seem to mind his "difficult harmony" so much, after all.

Exulting in the Three-Fold God

One of the most beloved descriptions of the Trinity by all of its students is Gregory Nazianzus':

"No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three I think of Him as the Whole.... When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the Undivided Light."

Many things have been compared to this dizzying concept of triunity—a family, mosaics, an irreducibly complex biological system—but what better picture of it in corporate worship is there than polyphony? One often hears that, in polyphony, each voice remains independent throughout. Quite the contrary, no voice could be removed from polyphonic music without the rest of the voices losing their aesthetic appeal. The same is not true in homophonic music, where there is simply a melody and chords whose presence or exact manifestation is optional. Polyphony exults in the distinguishability but inseparability of its voices. That same desire to bask in the simultaneous unity and diversity of the Trinity in Nazianzus is present in John Dunstable. Anyone, be he Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox, wishing to see an exuberant understanding of the Trinity spill into aesthetics need look no farther than the Burgundian music of the Middle Ages. This is music "exulting in the three-fold God".

Good Advice from the Episcopalians (of 1940)

For being the product of a church characterized now by both of these errors, the Handbook for Clergymen, Organist, and Choir Directors accompanying the Hymnal (1940) offers some great advice.

"Those in charge of the music in the small church need to beware of the sin of carelessness. Those with richer resources need to beware lest they become concerned with a 'good show' and forget that the music of the Church is an offering to God, and that its primary purpose is to convey the Word of God and to contribute to the corporate worship of the congregation."

Those are two of the best criteria for judging both music and its performance in church: (1) conveying (I'd get picky and say "representing", but okay) the Word of God and (2) contributing to the corporate worship of the congregation. Especially (2) is an excellent wording - it doesn't mean that all music has to be congregational, but all music has to contribute to the corporate worship of the congregation. This includes a trained choir and the organ playing prelude music. That's appropriate, only insofar as it enhances the congregation's worship.

So, then, what culture does the Church belong to?

"Culture is not a shadowy something existing in secret 'behind' its 'manifestations' in language, rites, and disciplines. Culture is a people organized and united by its language, rites, rules, and mechanisms of enforcement.

So also is the covenant.

So also is the Church."

(Against Christianity, Peter Leithart, pg. 51.)

How Not to Argue about Church Music

There are a lot of common avenues of arguing about Church music that I think are seriously flawed and particularly destructive because they may be arguing for the right music for the wrong reasons. Here I'm simply outlining the ways I think are particularly unwise—perhaps in another place I can begin to outline the ways I think one ought to do it. (The bold affirms what I do not.)

1. Church music must be old. I've addressed this a bit already, but let me restate here. All music is, in a fundamental sense, traditional. It simply depends on what tradition you're plugging yourself into. Any contemporary Christian artists or praise choruses are doing just that—plugging themselves into musical traditions. Similarly, it did not take a thick layer of dust on Bach's manuscripts for his music to become traditional. His music was traditional from the moment he wrote it. It was in the tradition of Praetorius, Schütz, Pachelbel et al.

This is also a theological point. Most famously, but certainly not the only instance of it, Psalm 98 enjoins us to sing a new song to the Lord. More than simply citing chapter and verse is involved here, though. The Biblical principle is that of the Davidic liturgical revolution, where David took the dust-gathering Levitical traditions and started improvising. Peter Leithart in From Silence to Song points out that David seemed to herald in a special liturgical period, where he and the musicians could worship with the Ark of the Covenant face to face. If the Davidic liturgical revolution took place under these circumstances, how much more should music be jubilant, noisy, and, above all, new now that the veil has been torn?

2. Church music must be complex. The voice of the Church past speaks out strongly against this one. That's not an infallible argument, but nonetheless one difficult to reckon with. There is nothing complex about Gregorian chant or a Lutheran or Calvinist hymn or Anglican chant. If you're calling yourself a traditionalist, this is probably not the argument you want to employ. It's also important to remember that contemporary music is difficult for many people to sing along with for a reason—the rhythm tends to be devilishly hard. None of this is to say that Church music can't be complex. The really complex thing here is the issue, not the music.

3. Church music must be Classical. Sed contra. This is one I particularly take issue with. I would say the opposite—Church music needs to be not Classical. Remember what Classical means. Classical doesn't just connote "older", like classic rock connotes Led Zepplin (old, ha, ha, ha), but it also connotes the real Classical era, the era of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. It's no coincidence that these men are one of the first recorded instances of art for art's sake and the use of the stage rather than the altar or the hearth as the background for music. Nor is it a coincidence that the movement that molded the direction Classical music would go was a group of Renaissance men who thought music needed to be less sacred and more like, of all things, the era of Classical drama. More about that here.

Think about it this way. If you have a problem with taking the devil-worship words out of a metal song and putting in great theology, then you should also consider there's a similar (maybe not so drastic) problem with Mozart's Requiem. Think about it—the same compositional techniques Mozart used for his definitively secular symphony he is now using for his ostensibly sacred requiem. If you think that simply slipping in good theology (well, even that's debatable) on top of secular music is in general a bad principle, then Classical music is precisely what you don't want your Church music to be.

This also gets into how you define Classical music, of course, but I think it's vital to understand it as a secular project, not a sacred one. So, this ends up going both ways—music that is truly sacred can't be considered Classical music. This isn't just an arbitrarily subversive category. Church music does need to be culture defining, not culture defined. It necessitates careful distinctions, and the clearest one is between High music that is sacred and High music that is secular. If this involves declaring that BWV 244 is not Classical music in the normal sense, oh well. It's a distinction that still needs to be made.

I'd also like to address, at some point, the concept of music as a mood enhancer. This should be enough for now.

Live Performance and Praetorius' Polychorality

"Praetorius' music stems from a tradition of congregational involvement which is at the core of Lutheranism. Although his output includes some of the most elaborate sacred repertoire of the time, most of it is skilfully written to allow for the inclusion of the various musical groups that took part in music within the church: town waits, school children, the Collegium Musicum of amateur musicians, and the professional Kantorei. ...In addtion, Praetorius offers advice regarding the displacement of the musicians, who were frequently positioned around the church, especially in galleries. This basic polychorality allows the music to envelop the congregation in the act of worship." - Paul McCreesh and Robin A. Leaver

Music and the Public Square

While I am the last person to have an unnatural desire to apply Marxist historicism to everything I can get my hands on, it's worth noting that Classical music is, in much of its history, a matter of social distinction. You go to Classical music concerts if you're rich and you can pay for it. These boundaries are largely destroyed in the advent of commercial recording, but even now they still exist. If you want the real taste of Classical music, the live performance, the aspect of the connoisseur, you must go rub shoulders with the city councilmen and the local music theory faculty at a live performance. Maybe your dentist, your family doctor, your French teacher. Chances of seeing the plumber there? Adjuster? Not really that high. It's a bit like golf, but worse.

Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. But it is worth noting that it can be fallacious when people formulate bombastic apologiai for Classical music, trying to win "back" the younger generation and the majority of people to the aesthetically superior form of music. The problem is, Classical music has never had a wide audience and, quite possibly due to commercial availability, never wider than today. It isn't a matter of getting Classical music back to a position of wide-spread appeal, since it may not have had it in the first place.

On the other hand, not all Classical music is like this. It doesn't seem likely that you're going to hear Brahms' 2nd piano concerto if you're a 19th century Dickensesque inn keeper. It does seem considerably more likely that you hear a Bach cantata if you're an 18th century inn keeper. Bach's music was music that was heard in church and, while, at its more corrupt moments, the Church's liturgy has been a matter of class, music of the church is music that is heard by all the congregation. And, in early Lutheran Protestantism more than anywhere else, perhaps, the music is informed (but not dictated) by the congregants' needs and their level of musical education. These early Protestant churches love congregation-lead music.

I've talked before about the tune that most of us sing O Sacred Head Now Wounded to—it was apparently a German love song. Both his predecessors and Bach himself took this tune and set it many different ways. (And, so did a few composers who came after him, most famously Brahms.) This is an example of the composers of High music lifting folk and popular tunes out of the culture and implementing them in a religious context. I think it would be a little unrealistic simply to attribute that to some already-existing quality in the folk song that merited its use in worship. Bach et al were, to some degree, trying to teach and edify by using something that would be, to most of the congregation, familiar.

Bach is an excellent example, but he's not the only example. As I've mentioned before, Josquin and Dufay do this with the famous tune L'homme arme, just barely leaving the tune recognizable but ubiquitous in their Missae L'homme arme. There's even a rumor that the tune Pange Lingua, to which is set St. Thomas' famous poem, was in fact a Roman marching song.

But does that mean that modern Church music composers should take a "melody" (coughcoughcough) from Coldplay or Regina Spektor and use it as the basis of a Kyrie? Yyyeah, no. That's dubious, to say the least. Not that I have anything against Coldplay or Regina Spektor (that would be appropriate in this post), but the issue is one of apples and oranges. Bach and Josquin were working on generations upon generations of people who had built up a Christo-centric culture. The music that came out of that culture was certainly not sinless and certainly not totally consistent with a Christian worldview. But the music didn't clash with Christian doctrine. Today, we have a totally different field to play on. Inevitably, a song (regardless of the ethos of its authors) that hits the top of the commercial music list is going to clash with the catechesis of Christian worship. That doesn't mean it's not going to work 100% of the time, but it does mean that there are many more issues to weigh in the balance and many more insidious cultural connotations to deal with. Bach and Josquin had a level playing field—they weren't in a battle with the majority of the culture. We are.

When the music of a culture is defined by the music of its Church (I don't think it ever isn't), when, in short, at the center of the public square is the music of worship, the effects on folk and pop music will be drastic. When this happens in Christian Churches, and we all come to hear, worship with, love, and understand the High music of the church, the gap between the aesthetically richest 10% and the aesthetically poorest 10% will be narrowed. But, as usual, it doesn't work to regulate that. It has to happen organically, over the course of generations and academic years and, uh, counterpoint classes. But then we won't be far from the sort of culture that writes quodlibets for a pastime. Everyone will be edified, musically, by being immersed in music they have, over time, come to understand. The give-and-take between the music of the Church and the music of the culture will be such as was not really possible for the majority of the history of Classical music.

Olivier Messiaen

The following article I wrote is taken from Quo Vadis, a Catholic periodical written by the students and faculty of Regina Coeli Academy. Reproduced with the permission of Quo Vadis.

Many of the Catholics spearheading a full return to the Tridentine Mass in America have started to meet during the summer at a Sacred Music Colloquium. This year they're meeting at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. The Colloquium, on its website at MusicaSacra.com, points out that "[A]s Pope Benedict XVI and the Second Vatican Council have emphasized, [Gregorian chant] is integral to Catholic liturgical life and should be heard and experienced with wide participation in every parish." The weekend is spent educating congregants, choirmasters, and organists to read, become facile with, and themselves to be able to teach Gregorian chant to their respective parishes.

But, the average layman attending the conference will be in for a totally unexpected ride. After having heard the sublime and accessible (or so he might think) Gregorian chant during the Mass on Sunday morning, he may hear this piece, or one like it, for the postlude. The chords strike us as dissonant, ominous, jarring, angular, formless, arbitrary—all of which are nice for the background while Voldemort is doing damage with his magic wand, but what are they doing here, you ask, in liturgy? And what does this piece have to do with its title, "Dieu parmi nous", which is "God with us"?

Meet Olivier Messiaen. I'm 17 and he died the year I was born. He's recent. Messiaen (if you want to learn how to pronounce it, I recommend Mrs. Thompson's excellent French class) was a modern Classical composer. But I seriously doubt this is Classical music the likes of which you've heard before. In fact, I bet you haven't heard this kind of music anywhere before. Messiaen is unprecedented. There's no one like him. He's right there, teaching Pierre Boulez, hanging out with Schoenberg and Webern, and being one of the most popular modern Classical composers (which isn't saying much). Yet there's one strange thing about him that makes him totally different from everyone around him.

Messiaen claimed that his audience didn't really understand his music. And he wasn't just being your typical pouty artist complaining about how misunderstood he is. He said his audience didn't really understand his music because they didn't have even a basic grasp of Catholic theology. Yes, that's right, Olivier Messiaen was a devout Roman Catholic. "The illumination of the theological truths of the Catholic faith is the first aspect of my work, the noblest, and no doubt the most useful and valuable".

Nor was he (at least, by the end of his life) an overly-mystical, pagan-mixed, post-modern liberal Catholic who uses religion as an excuse to look more profound. (I'm thinking of someone like John Tavener, an English composer who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy...that is, before he converted to Hinduism.) Messiaen was a Thomas-Aquinas-saturated composer. His music, he claimed, dripped with Catholic theology and no secular audience could put a towel on it to dry it off. Of course, many of his (secular) friends, wet blankets that they were, liked calling his music "mystical". But he corrected them. He said his output was, "above all theological (and not mystical as the majority of my audience think)".

So, then, why does his music sound so strange? Why so surreal? And, if he thought his music really was an illumination of Catholic doctrine, how come he seems to be confusing the matter more with his really weird music? I can't claim to have a great answer to any of these questions. But I could draw a helpful analogy, perhaps. Messiaen understands something essential about theology—it's not always comfortable. In that way, he's a lot like another Catholic Thomistic writer, Flannery O'Connor. And, like with her, I'll warn you at the outset. Enter this strange world of theology-soaked art with caution. Those who have a strong, Medieval understanding of the world as a sacramental place know that you can't walk away from a visible means of invisible grace without being radically changed. The same holds true for the music of Messiaen.

This is Messiaen's Chorale of the Holy Mountain from his work "The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ". It's for a huge choir and a huge orchestra. You'll notice right off the bat that Messiaen has a bunch of strange sounding chords that always resolve to a gorgeous E major chord at the end of every phrase (with two exceptions, when it resolves to an F sharp minor seventh chord, also stunningly beautiful.) It will sound very weird to you at first. But picture what's going on here—the Transfiguration happens on top of a mountain. Music about a mountain should feel very immense and wide. And Messiaen still retains a sharp focus and clarity throughout the entire chorale, sort of like the air at high altitudes. If you think of this as Howard Shore's soundtrack to Lord of the Rings (it does bear some similarities), it might make more sense.

Slightly edgier is this piece "Candor est lucis aeternae" from the same work. Here Messiaen is concentrating on "candor", which is a bright-sounding and bright-meaning word. If you listen closely (which you must, if you want to get anything out of this music), you'll hear the altos in the background singing the words. Everything else is an exuberant and dizzying frenzy of shininess. If you saw the old BBC Tailor of Gloucester with Ian Holmes, this may remind you of Christmas.

Now, why am I doing all this? Am I or are those crazies at the Sacred Music Colloquium suggesting that a return to Gregorian Chant and Palestrina entails the use of this kind of stuff? Messiaen may have been a Catholic, you say, but that doesn't excuse him from writing some ugly music.

Well, anyone who has read Shakespeare and certainly anyone who likes reading Shakespeare will tell you that you can't read Shakespeare and get it in the first 15 minutes. I had trouble keeping awake through the majority of MacBeth. And it's supposed to be riveting. But, of course, those who like Shakespeare, myself included, know it's an acquired taste. Like blue cheese. Like Messiaen. You have to read lots of Shakespeare and take it on faith that it's worth your time. Messiaen is obviously not as reputed as Shakespeare, but I'd still say he's worth your time. This music won't make sense to you the first time you listen to it, most likely. Okay. It didn't to me either. Keep trying. It's rewarding.