I mentioned over in Substack Land (300+ subscribers!) that this week’s comments-open post will be on the subject of music. I’m sure it won’t be the only post on that subject, but it’s a start.
Just so that post isn’t super content-heavy, I’m going to post some material over here, and just link it there on Friday. Since I don’t want that space to be a point-and-laugh or warzone – because that’s not my take on the past, ever, anyway – I thought some stage-setting would be helpful.
So over the weekend, I read Ken Canedo’s very good history of the period, Keep the Fire Burning. You can purchase it anywhere or read it on Scribd. In addition, on my way back from Louisville on Sunday, I listened to most of the podcasts Canedo produced to support the book. He’s got them linked on his website, but the links don’t seem to work. I listened to them via archive.org. The podcasts don’t repeat a lot of the information that’s in the book, but rather give samples of the music Canedo discusses, which is helpful, clarifying and, for some of us, memory-scraping. Yes, that was me singing “Shout from the highest mountain the (clap!) glory of the Lord!” on I-65 south on Sunday afternoon in cases you were wondering.
I thought it was appropriate, as well, to talk about this early period during this week of the bishops’ meeting because it’s really hard to deny that the mess of liturgical music, particularly in the English-speaking Church, happened because church leadership, especially bishops – since they’re supposed to be the guardians of all of this stuff – absolutely and totally dropped the ball.
There really could have been another path taken. That path would have involved a deep look at the role of music in the Mass, the singing habits and traditions of 20th century Catholic life, the distinction between Low and High Mass and the collapse of that distinction, with its implications for music, and just more attention to the zeitgeist in general.
No, the bishops and their staffs didn’t write the music or even publish it – and it some cases, they attempted to restrict or even ban its use in their dioceses – but their shortsightedness and inaction created the space in which, in a matter of just a few years, the nascent mid-century movement towards congregational chant, including English-language chant as the given framework for Catholic liturgical music collapsed like an exploded building, with the pervasive rhythm of down-down-up-up-down-up to chords printed in purple ink on mimeographed paper filling the vacuum.
What happened? A great deal, of course, but the highlights, as recounted by Canedo:
In the pre-Conciliar Mass, there was, of course, a distinction between High Mass and Low Mass. For our purposes, the most important aspect of this distinction to understand is that there was no musical element or, of course, vocal congregational participation in a Low Mass. The priest and servers did their thing, and however the congregation chose to engage with that was up to them. Music could happen at a Low Mass, but it was over and around and not related to what was happening in the sanctuary.
In that context, in the late 50’s, a young man named Dennis Fitzpatrick was involved with the music program in a Chicago suburban parish. He had the idea of composing English-language chants for the school children to sing at Mass, but in a specific place: during the moment during the Mass in which the priest was praying that prayer in Latin. So Fitzpatrick composed an English “Holy, Holy, Holy,” for example, that the congregation would chant while the priest was praying the Sanctus in Latin during the Low Mass.
Inspired by this success, Fitzpatrick composed an entire Mass, which he called the Demonstration English Mass. He published it, he recorded it. He began an organization called “Friends of the English Liturgy” which put on performances of the setting – with a layman in the role of the “celebrant” for groups in the area, including, for example, an audience of 1500 at the University of Chicago. In the summer of 1963, the group sent copies of the recording and the missal to every American bishop in anticipation of the forthcoming session of the Second Vatican Council.
Here’s the recording of the Entrance rite. It is dignified, simple chant.
So…what happened?
A few things. The Conciliar reforms resulted in the abandonment of the High/Low Mass distinction, leaving only the form of the Mass with no more specific musical guidance, much less regulation, given to American Catholics on the First Sunday of Advent 1964. Boom. Here you go. American Catholics who, we should add, were not at all in the habit of singing during Mass. As Thomas Day observes in Why Catholics Can’t Sing – it was even a point of pride that Catholic congregations didn’t “need” to sing during their worship.
Fitzgerald and FEL published a complete missal with chant propers, but in the meantime, other forces were stirring. Namely, the growing popularity of folk music: easy to sing and play, familiar, and with themes of justice and seeking that lent themselves, not only to coffeehouses, but to recreational time in seminaries and youth groups and eventually, to liturgies with a very thin available repertoire.
Enter a young man named Ray Repp, a seminarian for St. Louis, who, along with 400 other Catholic young people, spent a month in Chicago in the summer of 1965, training to be a lay volunteer for the Catholic Extension Society. Repp was a musician, and a priest asked him if he could play organ for Mass. Repp said no, but he had his guitar and some songs he’d written…
At the end of the training, these 400 volunteers spread through the country, taking with them mimeographed copies of Repp’s music.
Around the same time, FEL’s English Liturgy Hymnal– Fitzpatrick’s work of the English chant Mass, propers and Psalms – was underselling. The People’s Mass Book from World Library, which contained traditional hymns, was outselling it, and FEL was experiencing financial problems. Fitzpatrick ran across a recording of Repp’s music. He and his partner, both classically trained, did not much care for the music, but knew that the folk idiom was growing in popularity, even in the context of the Mass. Canedo does not say this, but it’s hard not to wonder, especially since the FEL leaders didn’t personally like using folk music in Mass, what the motivation was for deciding to publish Repp. But..publish him they did. And so…Here we are.
I’ll be back with more on this tomorrow and the rest of the week – including tales of copyright and lawsuits – but a couple of last things today.
Secondly, if you go to these videos and read the comments, you will read many, may fond memories people have of this music.
I don’t necessarily have fond memories of this era’s music, but I certainly do have memories. Listening to the podcast, I was shocked by how much I could just join right in on after not having sung any of it for decades.
Of my hands, I give…to you….Oh Lord….
Charlotte was Both 
I’m following this with great interest because, at least from my adjacent perspective, this seems to have given a fair amount of wind into the sails of the subsequent Contemporary Christian Music phenomenon that’s largely consumed Protestantism. So there’s a genealogical interest for me . . .
I was just 12 when this started in ’65. Fortunately our parents got us out of our parish church (which was pretty awful anyway) and we went to Daylesford (PA) Abbey. There were only maybe two hundred in the pews then with Father Mark leading from a lavolier mike, singing these songs, which I still love.
I think the problem was not the enjoyment of the music, which was singable and invited participation. Rather, there was a lack of anything formative theologically, both in the lyrics and in the use of the music liturgically, as it was (and still is) grafted on. Indeed, I think the problem is that this happened “outside” the creation of the NO and still is not integrated.
I’ve been Eastern Rite for a couple of decades, where we chant everything in the Divine Liturgy and where we “sing our theology”, and the “liteness” of the NO is stunning to me when I attend one. The most substantive NOs usually follow the rubrics that were promulgated for the interaction of the congregation, including the music.
I’m young enough that this music is more or less before my time, but I’m enjoying “mass for young Americans” more than contemporary Christian music. It’d be distracting during mass, but it’s actually a pretty good fit for doing housework.
Part of that might be the retro appeal. It’s definitely from a particular time and place.
I think what you find is that there’s an ebb and flow. A lot of the super early “folk music” was Scripture-based. And then it went a little off the rails. And then in the early 70’s the St. Louis Jesuits came along, and even those who don’t like them and their impact admit that their music was almost all based on Scripture and therefore a step up. So much of what’s “contemporary” now is quite different than that and seems to be cut from the same Jesus is my Boyfriend template.
At least this was obviously Church music, as opposed to some of the stuff we sang, which could have been a pop love sonf.
The title reveals the major fault of the whole ‘new music-new Mass’ movement: ‘. . . young americans.’ Each Mass is for everyone! The ‘young’ do not need a Mass specifically for them, and it is not edifying to them to be given one. ‘Americans’ do not need a Mass specifically for them, and it is not edifying to them to be given one. Retaining Latin, the language of the Church for millenniums, makes it accessible to the entire world, at all times. It takes a small effort to learn the meaning of a few pages of Latin, and to learn to chant. That is what it means to be a catechumen. Anything worth dying for, is surely worth a little work upon entry. The easier it is to get in the club, the easier it is to wander away from something the insiders place so little value on. It is so typical of the modern relativist world to divide mankind into divisive subcategories such as youth, Americans, various ethnic and racial divisions. I’m waiting for the Senior’s Mass which features musical styles from the 60’s and 70’s. Oh! I guess we still have that as the ‘Youth Mass.’ (Remember the early Church denied catechumens access to the most important parts of the Mass: Canon and Eucharist. Recall how powerful and moving is the description of the entrance of the catechumens into the church at Easter Vigil and all that went before it in preparation.) The more unique (sacred) the identifying, central ritual of faith is, the more its value and compelling fidelity is communicated. The modern world, as in man’s nature, values ease, personalization, individuation, noncommittal disunity and the resulting chaos. The early Church Fathers banned certain styles of music, not because the words were heretical, but because the style of music was similar to the Greek style and that which the diasporic Jewish community had adopted in their synagogues. The organ was similarly banned for centuries because of its heritage and association with the pagan world. Association! By association with the pagan world it is not sacred-separate. In and of itself they were not sinful nor heretical. The Mass is not ours and neither is its music. No one should be allowed to think that the music of the Mass should represent their personal taste in style, anymore than a priest should insert his personality into the Mass. Both are vehicles of transport. The liturgy and its music must transcend the world, not reflect it and its occupants. We are in the world to change it, not to lure it in under false pretenses, pretending we are mostly just like them.
Much, if not all of the problematic liturgical music of today finds whatever popularity it has, rooted in its human ‘feel.’ “It makes me feel good, I want to clap for joy, make a loud noise, sway to the rhythm, repeat the saccharine treacly cliches so comfortable to me and express my humanity.” Anyone familiar with the Psalms knows that there is clearly a time and place for this personal religious expression of joy and gratitude, our natural humanity directed towards our God. The Mass is not that time and place. What is it that it should be reduced to a vulgar(common) expression of mankind? Is that really what the Mass is? You can not sincerely start out with ‘Júdica me, Deus . . . Confíteor Deo . . . Misereátur vestri . . . Indulgéntium, absolutiónem, et remissiónem . . . Kyrie eléison . . .’ move on through ‘Glória in excélsis Deo . . . Credo in unum Deum . . . Vere dignum et justum est . . . Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus . . .Agnus Dei . . . and end up at ‘Dómine, non sum
dignus,’ with the sense that your personal preferences matter at all and that the music used to communicate these essentials must be the style you are used to, the style you understand, the one that is rooted in humanity and its bodily impulses of feeling, and not the one which rises above all that to communicate God’s real presence and why. Style is important. The text can indeed by scriptural, making a step above so much else, and yet inappropriate by style to the Mass. However, not without value in another time and place.
I found the song my high school used the most, with the word dear changed to Lord and the second verse changed to “whom you need most they say.” Another you by the Seekers. Be grateful you had Christian music not live songs at Mass.
That should by love not live.
I had to laugh when you mentioned the book “Why Catholics Can’t Sing.” We are reading it in my Catholic book club now!