Friday, June 30, 2006
I recently spoke with two people with a great interest in music, including church music, who told me that they had read that the Pope had just banned guitar masses and outlawed modern music in the Church. After doing some research, I sent them this message:
I suspected that the popular press coverage of Pope Benedict's recently expressed views on liturgical music was probably not entirely accurate. My quick internet research suggests that I was correct.
First, let me show you the article from the Telegraph in London (a version of which is probably the one that Sara saw) that, starting with the Headline, makes the Pope look like he is about to start a new inquisition into guitar masses and excommunicate exponents of modern music :
Silence modern music in church, says Pope
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
(Filed: 27/06/2006)
The Pope has demanded an end to electric guitars and modern music in church and a return to traditional choirs.
The Catholic Church has been experimenting with new ways of holding Mass to try to attract more people. The recital of Mass set to guitars has grown in popularity in Italy; in Spain it has been set to flamenco music; and in the United States the Electric Prunes produced a "psychedelic" album called Mass in F Minor.
However, the use of guitars and tambourines has irritated the Pope, who loves classical music. "It is possible to modernize holy music," the Pope said, at a concert conducted by Domenico Bartolucci the director of music at the Sistine Chapel. "But it should not happen outside the traditional path of Gregorian chants or sacred polyphonic choral music."
His comments prompted the newspaper La Stampa to compare him with Pope Pius X, who denounced faddish classical and baroque compositions and reinstated Gregorian chants in 1903.
The Pope's supporters argue that the music played during Mass is a vital part of the communion between worshippers and God, and that medieval church music, with the liturgy, creates the correct ambience for perceiving God's mystery.
Cardinal Ersilio Tonini, the Archbishop of Ravenna, said:"Mass is the presence of Christ and the music adds so much more when the harmony allows the mind to transcend the concrete to the divine."
But Cardinal Carlo Furno, grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, said it was "better to have guitars on the altar and rock and roll Masses than empty churches". The use of modern music was a "sign of the vitality of the faith".
The argument is part of a wider debate about the Latin Mass, restricted in the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s because it was seen to be putting worshippers off going to Church.
The Pope believes that if Latin Masses are reintroduced, more Catholics will learn the words to the Gregorian chants that he advocates.
OK. Now , lets compare the Telegraph's account with what he said as reported in the Catholic News Service (which is for the Catholic lay audience with a normal level of interest in the subject):
POPE-MUSIC Jun-27-2006 (260 words) xxxi
Pope says new liturgical music need not ignore older church music
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The latest musical compositions of the 89-year-old former director of the Sistine Chapel Choir demonstrate how new liturgical music can be created without ignoring the centuries of church music that came before it, Pope Benedict XVI said.
In the Sistine Chapel June 24, Msgr. Domenico Bartolucci, who directed the Sistine choir from 1956 to 1997, offered Pope Benedict and a select few a taste of his music and the music of the 16th-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.
The pieces included a special song of prayers for Pope Benedict that Msgr. Bartolucci composed shortly after the pope's election in 2005.
After the performance, Pope Benedict said that having Palestrina's music and Msgr. Bartolucci's music on the same program "confirms the conviction that sacred polyphony, particularly that of the so-called Roman school, is a heritage to preserve with care, to keep alive and to be made known."
The entire church should be able to hear that type of music, he said, because it is part of the church's "invaluable spiritual, artistic and cultural patrimony."
Pope Benedict said, "An authentic updating of sacred music cannot take place except in the wake of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony."
The pope said that in music, as in art and architecture, the church promotes and supports "new expressive means without denying the past -- the history of the human spirit -- which is also the story of its dialogue with God."
After comparing the two articles one need not wonder why Catholics are starting to think that they (and especially their leaders) do not always get a fair shake in the press these days. As you will note from the second article, it is not 'modern' music that the Pope objects to--he applauds the new piece written for the occasion--rather he takes issue with certain types of music as being inappropriate for liturgical pieces. "Promoting new expressive means without denying the past" would, apparently, have been a bit too subtle a thesis for the Telegraph.
Next is yet another article on this subject with a more detailed analysis of the approach of this Pope, written for those who are obviously highly interested in the subject of Catholic Church Music (and know quite a lot about Vatican politics and who is "in" and who is "out"). As one can see, its perspective is that the Pope is not out to "demand an end" (or issue a ban), but to lead by example:
A Change of Tune in the Vatican – And Not Only in the Secretariat of State. Bertone takes Sodano’s place. But an important shift is also taking place in liturgical music. The way was pointed out by a concert with the pope in the Sistine Chapel, conducted by maestro Bartolucci
by Sandro Magister
ROMA, June 27, 2006 – Step by step, Benedict XVI is impressing a new form and a new style on the governance of the universal Church.
Recent days were marked by the announcement of a change in the secretary of state: from Angelo Sodano to Tarcisio Bertone.
But another event orchestrated by pope Joseph Ratzinger is of no less importance: the concert conducted in the Sistine Chapel, on Saturday, June 24, by maestro monsignor Domenico Bartolucci.
With this concert, Benedict XVI has symbolically restored the Sistine Chapel to its true maestro. Because the famous chapel is not only the sacred place decorated with the frescoes of Michelangelo, it also gives the name to the choir that for centuries has accompanied the pontifical liturgies.
Maestro Bartolucci was named the "perpetual" director, the director for life, of the Sistine Chapel by Pius XII in 1959. Under this and later popes, he was an outstanding interpreter of the liturgical music founded upon Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony. But after a long period of opposition, in 1997 he was dismissed and replaced by a choirmaster thought to be more fitting for the "popular" music dear to John Paul II.
Bartolucci’s replacement was the finishing stroke of the almost complete elimination of Gregorian chant and polyphony as desired by the authors of the postconciliar liturgical reform.
The person responsible for Bartolucci’s removal in 1997 was the master of pontifical ceremonies, Piero Marini, still in service with Benedict XVI although close to his own dismissal. Marini brought in monsignor Giuseppe Liberto as head of the Sistine Chapel, having noticed and appreciated his work as music director during John Paul II’s visits to Sicily. It was easy to get pope Karol Wojtyla’s permission for the maneuver.
At the time, the only significant figure in the Roman curia who came to Bartolucci’s defense was Ratzinger, for reasons that were both musical and liturgical, as he explained in essays and books.
His positions then were isolated. But with his election as pope, Ratzinger immediately indicated his intention to proceed, in the liturgical and musical field, with what he calls "the reform of the reform."
This was clear from the inaugural Mass of his pontificate in St. Peter’s Square, the celebration of which was distinguished by a classical style that had been overshadowed in the mass rituals of his predecessor.
It was clear from one of his first changes in the Roman curia, when he replaced the secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship.
In the areas of liturgy and music, Benedict XVI knows that decrees from the authorities are not enough. His intention is that of reeducating more than issuing orders. The concert by maestro Bartolucci in the Sistine Chapel is one of these teaching moments that the pope wants to leave a mark.
In the concert, Bartolucci masterfully executed an offertory, two motets, and a "Credo" by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the prince of sacred Roman polyphonic music and maestro of the Sistine Chapel until the end of the 1500’s.
But he also executed some of his own compositions: three motets, an antiphon, a hymn, and an "Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Benedicto," composed in 2005 after Ratzinger’s election as pope.
The juxtaposition of ancient and modern polyphony was not a casual one. Speaking at the end of the concert, Benedict XVI noted:
"All of the selections we have listened to – and especially in their entirety, where the 16th and 20th centuries stand parallel – agree in confirming the conviction that sacred polyphony, in particular that of what is called the ‘Roman school’, constitutes a heritage that should be preserved with care, kept alive, and made better known, for the benefit not only of the scholars and specialists, but of the ecclesial community as a whole. [...] An authentic updating of sacred music can take place only in the lineage of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony."
Before this, maestro Bartolucci had addressed Benedict XVI:
"Most blessed Father, we all know the great love of Your Holiness for the liturgy, and thus for sacred music. Music is the art that has benefited the liturgy of the Church most of all: the space for the choir represented its cradle, thanks to which the Church was able to form the language that we admire today. The most beautiful examples that the faith of past centuries has left to us and which we must keep alive are Gregorian chant and polyphony: these require a constant practice capable of enlivening and animating divine worship."
Among the prelates of the Roman curia present at the concert were Marini and Liberto. But Benedict XVI’s attention was entirely dedicated to maestro Bartolucci – a vigorous 89 years old, – his choir, and the superb quality of their performances.
The pope defined these as "a vehicle of evangelization," but he doesn’t want them to remain simply the matter of concerts, but rather that they should again animate and adorn the liturgies. Beginning with the pontifical liturgies.
This is the road ahead. By restoring the Sistine Chapel to maestro Bartolucci, Benedict XVI has pointed it out in an unmistakable way.
If you have made it this far, and are willing to go deeper still, for a yet more detailed understanding of what the Pope thinks, the following lengthy article suggests why--love him or hate him--you cannot gainsay the careful, thoughtful and learned approach that Pope Benedict took towards this issue in several lengthy essays on the subject (written over the last 20 years) that are summarized in the article. I was struck, among other things, about this important statement about the arts:
"Music, after all, has the power to bring people together. . . . Yes, art is elemental. Reason alone as it’s expressed in the sciences can’t be man’s complete answer to reality, and it can’t express everything that man can, wants to, and has to express. I think God built this into man."
He also comments: "This means that musical expression is part of the proper human response to God’s self-revelation. . . .Mere speech, mere silence, mere action are not enough"
The author of the article also adds the following interesting comment: "The Cardinal wryly observes that, in a multicultural society, such an insistence on the vernacular [i.e. excluding Latin hymns from the modern Mass] has about as much logic to it as the demand for a hand-shaking, on-speaking-terms community does in an age of increased mobility. Harnoncourt notes that "The traditional, so-called ‘Latin Mass’ always had Aramaic (Amen, Alleluia, Hosanna, Maran atha) and Greek (Kyrie, Trisagion) parts, and the sermon was usually given in the vernacular. Real life is not acquainted with stylistic unity and perfection; on the contrary, where something is really alive, formal and stylistic variety will occur . . ., and the unity is an organic one"
The bottom line for the former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, is that music which is part of the liturgy must serve a theological purpose, should be appropriate for that purpose, and should connect with the history and tradition of the Church. While I admit I am biased, I would argue that regardless of ones views about any particular conclusion he reaches, from the Catholic point of view, the Pope has his priorities straight--his job is to have music serve the Church and promote the Catholic vision of the sacred, not the other way around. (And I still haven't seen him say a bad word about guitars.)
Cardinal Ratzinger on Liturgical Music,
by Michael J. Miller
(Reprinted from the July 2000 HPR)
In an article entitled "Liturgie und Kirchenmusik" published in 1986 in Communio, Cardinal Ratzinger referred to the incompatibility between rock music and the liturgy of the Church. A storm of progressive protest ensued, most of it aimed at the messenger instead of arguing to the contrary. How can a theologian judge modern music? What right does a Curia official have to say how today’s young people should participate in the Liturgy? Implicit in the controversy was the hackneyed caricature of Ratzinger as the "Teutonic academician turned doctrinal watchdog."
A revisionist view became necessary in 1996 with the publication of another book-length interview with the Cardinal (this time by German journalist Peter Seewald), because the second Ratzinger Report began with eighty pages of biographical information. His Eminence, we learn, is only human after all. Reminiscing about his childhood in Bavaria, Cardinal Ratzinger admits that music (especially Mozart) had a major role in his family life. "Music, after all, has the power to bring people together. . . . Yes, art is elemental. Reason alone as it’s expressed in the sciences can’t be man’s complete answer to reality, and it can’t express everything that man can, wants to, and has to express. I think God built this into man." 1
Being an intellectual does not disqualify one from commenting upon either music or liturgy, provided one recognizes the limits of rational discourse. As Cardinal Ratzinger himself put it, theologians "cannot enter into musical discussions per se, but they can nonetheless ask where the seams are, so to speak, that link faith and art." 2
What follows is a summary of three articles by Cardinal Ratzinger on liturgical music which appeared in German journals during the years 1986-1994 and were reprinted in English as part of the anthology, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today. 3The essays were written for different occasions, but they follow the same pattern: the author contrasts a problematic theory or a pernicious trend with the true theology of the liturgy, and from that draws conclusions as to the proper place of music in the liturgy and suggests guidelines for practical applications.
A) The cultural challenge vs. the biblical culture of Faith
(“‘Sing Artistically for God’: Biblical Directives for Church Music," pp. 94-110.)
"Since church music is faith that has become a form of culture, it necessarily shares in the current problematic nature of the relationship between Church and culture" (94). This relationship was in crisis during the Renaissance and the Reformation, but as of the Enlightenment, secular culture "emancipated" itself from the faith: they went their separate ways and have drifted further apart ever since.
Since the seventeenth century the Church has seen the Caecilian reform of sacred music, the rediscovery of Gregorian chant, and the renewal of polyphonic church music. Nevertheless, as a result of cultural dislocations, "we are at a loss as to how faith can and should express itself culturally in the present age" (95).
The picture from the culture’s side is bleak. In the absence of religion, art becomes groundless aestheticism with neither direction nor purpose. Music in particular has split into two worlds: pop (a manufactured commodity) and rationally constructed high-brow music (an elite, degenerate form of "classical" music). A middle ground remains: "a staying at home in the familiar music that preceded such divisions, touched the person as a whole and is still capable of doing this even today. . . . Church music mostly settles in this middle ground" (95).
Many are the calls for the Church to dialogue with culture today, but few imagine the talks as being bilateral. You can’t expect the Church to subject herself to modern culture, which, having lost its religious base, is in a never-ending process of self-doubt. Culture, too, must question itself radically and be opened to a cure, a reconciliation with religion.
Are there any biblical directives for the path that church music should take? Cardinal Ratzinger narrows the question: "Can we find one biblical text that sums up the way Holy Scripture sees the connection between music and faith" (96)?
The Bible contains its own hymnal: "the Psalter, born from the practice of singing and playing musical instruments during worship." Furthermore this practical tradition contains "essential elements of a theory of music in faith and for faith." Within the Old Testament, the Psalter is like a bridge between the Law and the Prophets; it also serves as a bridge connecting the two Testaments. From the earliest days of the Church, the psalms are prayed and sung as hymns to Christ, the Son of David the psalmist. "Christ himself thus becomes the choir director who teaches us the new song and gives the Church the tone and the way in which she can praise God appropriately and blend into the heavenly liturgy" (97).
Cardinal Ratzinger selects one psalm verse which appears throughout the history of theological reflection on church music. Psalm 47:7 (in some numberings Psalm 46 and/or the eighth verse) exhorts us to "Sing praises with a psalm" (RSV). The Hebrew word maskil is variously rendered in modern translations as "an inspired song" (M. Buber, German) or as playing "with all your skill" (Jerusalem Bible, French), or as singing "artfully" (in a version approved by the Italian Bishops Conference).
The ancient translations of the Church also shed light on the subject. "The Septuagint, which became the Old Testament of Christianity, wrote psalate synetos, which we might translate as: ‘. . . Sing with under-standing’—in both senses of the word: that you yourselves understand it and that it is understandable" (97). Of course this involves more than a merely rational act; we are to sing "in a way worthy of and appropriate to the spirit, disciplined and pure" (98). St. Jerome’s rendering is along the same lines: psallite sapienter. Sapientia means more than understanding; "[it] also denotes an integration of the entire human person . . . with all the dimensions of his or her existence." Just as the gift of wisdom integrates knowledge and experience with the requirements of Divine Law, so the singing of the inspired psalms involves the human person, body and soul, with all its faculties, in divine worship.
The first word of the verse, "Sing praises with a psalm," in Hebrew zamir, is also laden with history. "The emphasis is on articulated singing, a singing with reference to a text, which is instrumentally supported, as a rule" (98-99). In stark contrast to the orgiastic cult music of the pagans, zamir refers to "logoslike" music, "which incorporates a word or wordlike event it has received and responds to it in praise or petitions, in thanksgiving or lament." The Septuagint Bible chose psallein as its translation, giving a new, culturally conditioned meaning to a Greek word that previously had meant only to play a stringed instrument, but never to sing.
From this word study, Cardinal Ratzinger draws several conclusions about possible biblical directives for music in the Church.
1) The command, "Sing to the Lord," runs through all of Scripture as part of the call to worship and glorify God. "This means that musical expression is part of the proper human response to God’s self-revelation. . . .Mere speech, mere silence, mere action are not enough" (100).
2) There is no such thing as a faith completely undetermined by culture, which could then be inculturated any way you like. "The faith decision as such entails a cultural decision; . . . Faith itself creates culture and does not just carry it along like a piece of clothing. . . . This cultural given . . . is capable of encountering other contemporary cultures. . . . This ability to exchange and flourish also finds its expression in the ever-recurring imperative, ‘Sing to the Lord a new song.’” The Christological interpretation of the psalms is a particularly dramatic example of this capacity for development in what is an irrevocable and fundamental cultural form (101).
3) The various meanings to be found in the second word of our psalm verse range between the two translations sapienter and cum arte. Singing in accordance with wisdom implies a word-oriented art, which is not concerned merely with intelligibility but "stands under the primacy of logos" and makes demands upon our highest moral and spiritual powers. The second translation, artfully, tells us that encountering God challenges a person to respond to the best of his or her abilities. God gave Moses detailed specifications for the tabernacle; artistic endeavor in the book of Exodus is portrayed as a participation in God’s creativity (103).
The New Testament, by both frequent citation and explicit command, takes up the psalm tradition as an integral part of its own teaching and worship. "When you come together, each one has a hymn [Gk: psalmon], a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification" (1 Cor. 14:26). To the early Church the psalm appeared as a gift of the Spirit. The epistles also give evidence of exalted Christological hymns newly composed in Greek. By the second century, however, as a precaution after the musical innovations of the Gnostic sect, the Church reduced liturgical music to the Psalter. "The theology of the Psalter sufficed and set the standard in terms of content, but also . . . the way of making music specified by the Psalter became the musical model of emerging Christendom" (104). To put it in a less scholarly way, revelation was complete with the end of the apostolic age, and the divinely inspired hymns found in Sacred Scripture were sufficient for the Church’s worship.
In light of the foregoing discussion, both "pop" music and the music of elitist aesthetes are unsuitable for divine worship. The latter, proclaiming art to be "for art’s sake" and for no other purpose, elevates the composer to the level of a "pure creator." "According to Christian faith, however, it belongs to the essence of human beings that they come from God’s ‘art’. . . and as perceivers can think and view God’s creative ideas with him and translate them into the visible and the audible" (106).
On the other hand, hasn’t the Church’s liturgical music always drawn on popular music to renew itself? Isn’t "pop" music just what the Church needs in order to "relate" with contemporary culture? Cardinal Ratzinger recommends "treading carefully" in this area (107-108). In the past folk music was the expression of a clearly defined community held together by language, history and a way of life. Springing from fundamental human experience, it conveyed a truth, however naive the form may have been. Pop music, in contrast, is a standardized product of mass society, a function of supply and demand. The 20 th-century composer Paul Hindemith called the constant presence of such noise "brainwashing," and C. M. Johansson claims that hearing it gradually makes us incapable of listening attentively: "we become musically comatose. . . . This medium kills the message" (p. 108 cf. footnote 19).
Cardinal Ratzinger insists that the faith must not be trivialized in the name of inculturating it. Today we do not have to limit church music so strictly to chanting of the psalms, because we have "an infinitely larger trove" of good liturgical music to draw on. But to hold the line against the onslaught of misguided attempts to import "modern" musical forms into the liturgy requires "the courage of asceticism, the courage to contradict. Only from such courage can new creativity arise" (109).
B) The sociological challenge vs. true Christian anthropology
("The Image of the World and of Human Beings in the Liturgy and Its Expression in Church Music" pp. 111-127.)
"Conversation with God transcends the boundaries of human speech" (111); therefore it calls on music, both vocal and instrumental, for help.
After the Second Vatican Council there were disputes over the right form of music in worship. The initial clashes were between pastoral expediency ("We worship in the ver-nacular now . . .") and musicians who maintained that their traditional repertoire had intrinsic and pastoral value. The question underlying such differences of opinion then was: how do we apply liturgical directives? More recently, a second wave of controversy has been "pushing the questions forward, as far as the foundations themselves." The issue has become: what is liturgical action in the first place, what are its anthropological and theological foundations?
Symptomatic of the new thinking is the Nuovo Dizionario di Liturgica (1984), article on canto e musica. It declares the starting point of liturgy to be the gathering of two or three in the name of Christ (Matt. 18:20). This sounds harmless enough, but it gains revolutionary momentum when the verse is isolated and pitted against the entire liturgical tradition. Such a definition places the group before the Church and brings "autonomous" individuals into conflict with an "authoritarian" institution. "It is evident that with the adoption of sociological language the prior adoption of its evaluations has also occurred" (113). New music good; old music bad! Gregorian chant and Palestrina are seen as "tutelary gods" for those in power who, threatened by cultural change, cling to an ancient repertoire.
Cardinal Ratzinger turns the hermeneutic of suspicion back on the liturgical theorists. "There is of course not only an idolization of sociology at work here but also a complete separation of the New Testament from the history of the Church" (114). The notion, that the Church has been in decline since Jesus began it, is a familiar Enlightenment myth, which ultimately becomes an excuse for cut-and-paste editions of the Bible (like Jeffer-son’s) or the Marxist texts of the Missa Nicaraguensis sung in the 1980s.
What are the new and better ideas of the liturgical experts? They insist on two basic values: "The ‘primary value’ of a renewed liturgy is, we are told, ‘the full and authentic action of all persons.’” The people of God proclaims its identity in song. The second value judgment follows: music is the power that brings about cohesiveness within the group. Celebration, ergo, becomes creativity; the "how" becomes more important than the "what."
Condensed in this way, the argument reads like a lampoon. Yet Ratzinger’s full analysis of the effects of modern "scientific" sociology upon liturgical music is trenchant. "I would not be speaking of all this in so much detail if I thought that such ideas were attributable to only a few theoreticians" (115). It is all too common that "so-called creativity, the active participation of all present, and the relationship to a group in which everyone is acquainted with and speaks to everyone else" are mistaken for the real categories of the conciliar understanding of liturgy.
The philosophical basis of this sociological "take" on liturgy is the view that power opposes freedom. This assigns, a priori, a negative quality to the concept of "institution" and reduces the object of hope from Paschal redemption to social progress. Herein lies the "tragic paradox" of this trend in liturgical reform: the institutional Church is seen as a hindrance to "freedom," yet liturgy without the Church is a self-contradiction. "Here it has been forgotten that the liturgy should be the opus Dei in which God himself first acts and we become redeemed people precisely through his action. [If] the group celebrates itself . . . it is celebrating nothing at all since it is no cause for celebration" (117).
In actuality, the Church is the communio sanctorum of all places and all times (118). Romano Guardini has elaborated upon the momentous consequences of realizing that the communion of saints (and not the Base Community) is the true subject of the liturgy. The Church’s liturgy has an objective and positive character, because it lives in three ontological dimensions: cosmos, history and mystery. Liturgy has a cosmic dimension because as believers we do not create it, but participate in something greater that transcends us all. As a result of its historic dimension, it develops as a living thing while maintaining its identity (cf. the discussion of biblical culture, above). Finally, liturgy’s dimension of mystery means that we do not initiate the liturgical event; rather, it originates in a call and a divine act of love, to which our response is obedience.
This vantage point is of great importance for the artistic questions involved in preparing liturgical music. The music of emancipation is inconsistent with true liturgy. Furthermore, "creativity" that ignores the creaturely status of man "is by its very nature absurd and untrue since humans can only be themselves through receptivity and participation." The real human condition is that we stand in need of a redemption which human effort cannot bring about.
Our faith is Logocentric, and so must our worship be (Cf. logike latreia Rom. 12:1). "The ‘Word’ to which Christian worship refers is first of all not a text, but a living reality: a God . . . who communicates himself by becoming a human being. This incarnation is the sacred tent, the focal point of all worship which looks at the glory of God and gives him honor" (121).
"Liturgical music is a result of the claim and the dynamics of the Word’s incarnation. . . . Faith becoming music is a part of the process of the Word becoming flesh" (122). At the same time (one might say: in counterpoint), the flesh becomes "logocized" or spiritualized, restoring harmony to postlapsarian creation. "Wood and brass turn into tone; the unconscious and the unsolved become ordered and meaningful sound."
Our Incarnate Lord, who was raised up on the cross, raised up our fallen human nature. Western music, from Gregorian chant through Renaissance polyphony to Bruckner and beyond, lives from this great synthesis "of spirit, intuition and sensuous sound. . . . [T]heliturgical music of the Church must be subject to that integration of the human state which appears before us in incarnational faith" (124).
Practically speaking, the prerequisites for sacred music include "awe, receptivity and a humility that is prepared to serve by participating in the greatness which has already gone before" (125). Furthermore, the Church has posted road signs: the great liturgical texts (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) and the references in her official documents to Gregorian chant and Palestrina as models providing orientation.
C) The "postconciliar" challenge vs. the cosmic liturgy
(“‘In the Presence of the Angels I Will Sing Your Praise’; The Regensburg Tradition and the Reform of the Liturgy," pp. 128-146.)
The point of departure of this essay is a description of the medieval frescoes in the crypt of the monastery of Marienberg in South Tyrol. "The real focal point is the Majestas Domini, the risen Lord lifted up on high, who is seen at the same time and above all as the one returning, the one already coming in the Eucharist. . . . Liturgy is anticipated Parousia. . . ." (129).
Indeed, St. Benedict, in his Rule, reminds his monks of Psalm 138:1: "In the presence of the angels I will sing to you," and admonishes them, "Let us reflect on how we should be in the presence of God and the angels, and when we sing let us stand in such a way that our hearts are in tune with our voices." Cardinal Ratzinger goes on to explain, "The liturgy is not a thing the monks create. It is already there before them. It is entering into the liturgy of the heavens that has always been taking place." This is the clear mean-ing of the frescoes.
Sadly, this "already, but not yet" character of the earthly liturgy has been obscured lately by a preoccupation with a liturgical reform that is "already" with us but has "not yet" overcome the old Tridentine order. According to this strange perspective, "a chasm separates the history of the Church into two irreconcilable worlds: the preconciliar and the postconciliar" (130).
Cardinal Ratzinger’s brother served as choirmaster in the Regensburg cathedral from 1964 to 1994. When he began, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II had not yet been implemented. The music at Regensburg Cathedral realized in an exemplary way the artistic standards expressed in the motu proprio of Pius X, "Tra le sollecitudini" of November 22, 1903. As bishop of Mantua and patriarch of Venice, Pius X had opposed the operatic style of church music prevalent in Italy. "Insisting on chant as the truly liturgical music was for him part of a larger reform program that was concerned with restoring to worship its purity and dignity and shaping it according to its own inner claim" (131).
Another historical note helps to narrow the chasm between pre- and post-conciliar. Sacrosanctum Concilium, in laying the foundations for reform, constructed a large framework permitting a variety of actualizations. "The reform itself was then shaped by a post-conciliar commission and cannot in its concrete details simply be credited to the Council." The history of liturgy is always marked by the tension between continuity and renewal; in the twentieth century the real tension has not been between tired tradition and radical reform, but rather between two stages of reform.
The Cardinal warns that "the dualistic historical view of a pre- and postconciliar world" leads to notions that call the very essence of liturgy into question. One example of this exaggerated "either-or" is the idea that the priest alone was the celebrant of the liturgy before the Council, but now it is the assembled congregation. This implies that the congregation determines what happens in the liturgy. But the priest never had the right to decide arbitrarily what was to be done in the liturgy. It was a "rite," that is, an objective form of the Church’s corporate prayer (132).
The new Catechism, on the other hand, sums up the best insights of the Liturgical Movement. Liturgy means "service in the name of / on behalf of the people." But "the People of God is not simply there, as the Germans, French, Italians, or other peoples are; it comes into being again and again only through the service of the Son and by his lifting us into the community of God which we cannot enter on our own. . . . Every liturgical celebration is an action of Christ the priest and his Body which is the Church (p. 134; cf. CCC 1069-1070)."
Cardinal Ratzinger does not mince words. "Liturgy presupposes . . . that the heavens have been opened. . . . If the heavens are not open, then whatever liturgy was is reduced to role playing and, in the end, to a trivial pursuit of congregational self-fulfillment in which nothing really happens. The decisive factor, therefore, is the primacy of Christology" (133).
We must resolutely defend ourselves against "postconciliar" efforts to assign an absolute value to the "community." In the liturgy, the priest acts in persona Christi. The Catechism discusses the role of the congregation also, significantly in the chapter on the Holy Spirit: "The liturgical assembly derives its unity from the ‘communion of the Holy Spirit’ who gathers the children of God into the one Body of Christ.’ This assembly transcends racial, cultural, social—indeed, all human affinities. The assembly should prepare itself to encounter its Lord and to become ‘a people well-disposed’” (CCC 1097, 1098).
What significance does this Catholic understanding of liturgy have for church music? The Council’s reform was aimed at counteracting modern individualism and the moralism connected with it, so that the dimension of mystery in liturgy could reappear, its cosmic character which embraces heaven and earth (p. 135; cf. SC 8). For Christians, the Logos orients our worship towards the historical origin of faith, preserved for us in Scripture and Tradition. Church music should not be a performance on the occasion of worship, but is to be liturgy itself, "a harmonizing with the choir of the angels and saints." Gregorian chant and classic polyphonic music are ordered to the mystery in liturgy and to its Logos-character, as well as to its bond to the historical world. They furnish us with a norm which does not exclude new musical forms, but which guides us more surely toward what lies on the horizon.
Attention to the essence of liturgy clarifies the question concerning the place of music in liturgy. You might say, "As liturgy goes, so goes musica sacra." Philipp Harnoncourt has put it this way: "Jews and Christians agree with one another that their singing and music-making point to heaven, or rather that these come from heaven or are learned from heaven" (137). Cardinal Ratzinger elaborates: "Faith comes from listening to God’s word. But wherever God’s word is translated into human words there remains a surplus of the unspoken and unspeakable which calls us to silence—into a silence that in the end lets the unspeakable become song and also calls on the voices of the cosmos for help so that the unspoken may become audible."
Because church music comes from the Word—both as expression of the Truth and response to a call—its character must correspond to the words in which the Logos has expressed himself. Hence not all music is appropriate for liturgical use: "By its nature such music must be different from music that is supposed to lead to rhythmic ecstasy, stupefying anesthetization, sensual excitement, or the dissolution of the ego in Nirvana, to name just a few possibilities" (138). St. Cyp-rian’s treatise on the Lord’s Prayer offers a useful guideline: "Discipline, which includes tranquility and awe, belongs to the words and posture of praying." 4It should also belong to sacred song.
Cardinal Ratzinger quickly dismisses two other specious demands of the "new" liturgists. Some, mistaking external busyness for "active participation," would veto the use of the choir as intruding between the congregation and the liturgical action. But the choir is part of the community and its singing legitimately represents the prayer assembly. The concept of representation, of standing in for another, affects all levels of religious reality, including worship, and is a fundamental category of the Christian faith.
Another commonly heard "postconciliar" objection is a "fanaticism about vernacular," even to the point of forbidding chant and hymns in Latin. The Cardinal wryly observes that, in a multicultural society, such an insistence on the vernacular has about as much logic to it as the demand for a hand-shaking, on-speaking-terms community does in an age of increased mobility. Harnoncourt notes that "The traditional, so-called ‘Latin Mass’ always had Aramaic (Amen, Alleluia, Hosanna, Maran atha) and Greek (Kyrie, Trisagion) parts, and the sermon was usually given in the vernacular. Real life is not acquainted with stylistic unity and perfection; on the contrary, where something is really alive, formal and stylistic variety will occur . . ., and the unity is an organic one" (140).
In concluding his talk, Cardinal Ratzinger commends the departing cathedral choirmaster for striving "to manage continuity in development and development in continuity" during the theological and liturgical upheavals since the Council, "so that the liturgy in the Regensburg cathedral kept its dignity and excellence and remained transparent to the cosmic liturgy of the Logos in the unity of the whole Church without taking on a museum-like character" (140). He also expresses the hope that true reform will "flourish in the spirit of the Second Vatican Coun-cil—reform that is not discontinuity and destruction but purification and growth to a new maturation and a new fullness" (146).
In each of the articles just summarized, Cardinal Ratzinger responds to a specialized, academic-sounding challenge to the traditional Catholic understanding of the liturgy by considering the issue from a wider, ultimately theological perspective. To multiculturalist demands he replies with a reminder that Catholic faith and worship are rooted in a historical religion and thus are part and parcel of a specific cultural tradition. When the sociological gauntlet is thrown down, he arms himself with the insights of a comprehensive Christian anthropology. The notion that Vatican II divides Church history into a reactionary past and a glorious future is gently corrected with evidence that the reform of the liturgy has been the ongoing work of a century and more.
This technique of "taking the broader perspective" is evident in the very arrangement of essays in the anthology, A New Song for the Lord. The articles on liturgical music are grouped with one on church architecture at the end of Part II, preceded by an essay on "The Resurrection as the Foundation of the Christian Liturgy" (explaining Sunday as a Little Easter and the new Sabbath). Part I of the book, "Jesus Christ, Center of Faith and Foundation of Our Hope," treats more fundamental questions of Christology, catechesis and the true understanding of power in the Church. The essays are cogently argued and can be read independently, yet taken together they offer an almost systematic, theological treatise on the liturgy.
We have grown accustomed to hearing famous professors weigh in with expert commentary, each presenting his own abstruse "take" on a given issue. Not so when Cardinal Ratzinger writes about the liturgy or sacred music. The themes and arguments in his essays on liturgical music recur throughout his works, because he is writing about the lifeblood of the Mystical Body and the atmosphere that baptized souls breathe in their life of grace.
A few random examples illustrate this consistency. In Co-Workers of the Truth, a selection from Cardinal Ratzinger’s writings arranged as meditations for each day of the year, there are (besides excerpts from the articles summarized above) two other readings concerning sacred music:
"The first Christmas carol of history . . . had no human origins—Saint Luke records it as the song of the angels who were the evangelists of the holy night: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth among men, those with whom he is pleased, those of good will. This song sets a standard. . . . Peaceamong men results from God’s glory. Those who are concerned about the human race and its well-being have to be concerned about God’s glory first of all . . ., [which] is not some private concern . . . [but] a public affair."
"Three great symbols dominate the liturgy of this night of the Resurrection: light [the Paschal candle], water and ‘the new song,’ that is, the Alleluia. . . . Granted, we shall notsing this new song in its fullness until we are in the ‘new world,’ until God calls us by a ‘new name’ (Rev. 2:17), until everything has been made new. But we are permitted to anticipate something of this [beatific] newness in the great joy of the Easter vigil." 5
When arguing about the liturgy, one runs the risk of abstracting, of prescinding from the mystery. Cardinal Ratzinger’s well-reasoned essays on sacred music bring to mind vividly the fact that the liturgy is, after all, divine.
NOTES
1. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium (an interview with Peter Seewald, translated by Adrian Walker), Ignatius, San Francisco, 1997, p. 47.
2. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today (translated by Martha M. Matesich), The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1997, p. 96.
3. The Crossroad Publishing Company, 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017. In this summary, the actual title of each article is given after a descriptive heading in bold. Page numbers for citations are included in the text.
4. St. Cyprian, De oratione dominica, 4.
5. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (edited by Sr. Irene Grassl, translated by Sr. Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. and Rev. Lothar Krauth), Ignatius, San Francisco, 1992. The readings cited are for December 29 (pp. 408-409) and April 14 (pp. 123-124).
Mr. Michael J. Miller is a translator for Ignatius Press and a free-lance writer. His articles have been published in Faith and Reason, Catholic World Report and the Month. His last article in HPR appeared in March 1999.
(Reprinted from the July 2000 HPR)
I suspected that the popular press coverage of Pope Benedict's recently expressed views on liturgical music was probably not entirely accurate. My quick internet research suggests that I was correct.
First, let me show you the article from the Telegraph in London (a version of which is probably the one that Sara saw) that, starting with the Headline, makes the Pope look like he is about to start a new inquisition into guitar masses and excommunicate exponents of modern music :
Silence modern music in church, says Pope
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
(Filed: 27/06/2006)
The Pope has demanded an end to electric guitars and modern music in church and a return to traditional choirs.
The Catholic Church has been experimenting with new ways of holding Mass to try to attract more people. The recital of Mass set to guitars has grown in popularity in Italy; in Spain it has been set to flamenco music; and in the United States the Electric Prunes produced a "psychedelic" album called Mass in F Minor.
However, the use of guitars and tambourines has irritated the Pope, who loves classical music. "It is possible to modernize holy music," the Pope said, at a concert conducted by Domenico Bartolucci the director of music at the Sistine Chapel. "But it should not happen outside the traditional path of Gregorian chants or sacred polyphonic choral music."
His comments prompted the newspaper La Stampa to compare him with Pope Pius X, who denounced faddish classical and baroque compositions and reinstated Gregorian chants in 1903.
The Pope's supporters argue that the music played during Mass is a vital part of the communion between worshippers and God, and that medieval church music, with the liturgy, creates the correct ambience for perceiving God's mystery.
Cardinal Ersilio Tonini, the Archbishop of Ravenna, said:"Mass is the presence of Christ and the music adds so much more when the harmony allows the mind to transcend the concrete to the divine."
But Cardinal Carlo Furno, grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, said it was "better to have guitars on the altar and rock and roll Masses than empty churches". The use of modern music was a "sign of the vitality of the faith".
The argument is part of a wider debate about the Latin Mass, restricted in the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s because it was seen to be putting worshippers off going to Church.
The Pope believes that if Latin Masses are reintroduced, more Catholics will learn the words to the Gregorian chants that he advocates.
OK. Now , lets compare the Telegraph's account with what he said as reported in the Catholic News Service (which is for the Catholic lay audience with a normal level of interest in the subject):
POPE-MUSIC Jun-27-2006 (260 words) xxxi
Pope says new liturgical music need not ignore older church music
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The latest musical compositions of the 89-year-old former director of the Sistine Chapel Choir demonstrate how new liturgical music can be created without ignoring the centuries of church music that came before it, Pope Benedict XVI said.
In the Sistine Chapel June 24, Msgr. Domenico Bartolucci, who directed the Sistine choir from 1956 to 1997, offered Pope Benedict and a select few a taste of his music and the music of the 16th-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.
The pieces included a special song of prayers for Pope Benedict that Msgr. Bartolucci composed shortly after the pope's election in 2005.
After the performance, Pope Benedict said that having Palestrina's music and Msgr. Bartolucci's music on the same program "confirms the conviction that sacred polyphony, particularly that of the so-called Roman school, is a heritage to preserve with care, to keep alive and to be made known."
The entire church should be able to hear that type of music, he said, because it is part of the church's "invaluable spiritual, artistic and cultural patrimony."
Pope Benedict said, "An authentic updating of sacred music cannot take place except in the wake of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony."
The pope said that in music, as in art and architecture, the church promotes and supports "new expressive means without denying the past -- the history of the human spirit -- which is also the story of its dialogue with God."
After comparing the two articles one need not wonder why Catholics are starting to think that they (and especially their leaders) do not always get a fair shake in the press these days. As you will note from the second article, it is not 'modern' music that the Pope objects to--he applauds the new piece written for the occasion--rather he takes issue with certain types of music as being inappropriate for liturgical pieces. "Promoting new expressive means without denying the past" would, apparently, have been a bit too subtle a thesis for the Telegraph.
Next is yet another article on this subject with a more detailed analysis of the approach of this Pope, written for those who are obviously highly interested in the subject of Catholic Church Music (and know quite a lot about Vatican politics and who is "in" and who is "out"). As one can see, its perspective is that the Pope is not out to "demand an end" (or issue a ban), but to lead by example:
A Change of Tune in the Vatican – And Not Only in the Secretariat of State. Bertone takes Sodano’s place. But an important shift is also taking place in liturgical music. The way was pointed out by a concert with the pope in the Sistine Chapel, conducted by maestro Bartolucci
by Sandro Magister
ROMA, June 27, 2006 – Step by step, Benedict XVI is impressing a new form and a new style on the governance of the universal Church.
Recent days were marked by the announcement of a change in the secretary of state: from Angelo Sodano to Tarcisio Bertone.
But another event orchestrated by pope Joseph Ratzinger is of no less importance: the concert conducted in the Sistine Chapel, on Saturday, June 24, by maestro monsignor Domenico Bartolucci.
With this concert, Benedict XVI has symbolically restored the Sistine Chapel to its true maestro. Because the famous chapel is not only the sacred place decorated with the frescoes of Michelangelo, it also gives the name to the choir that for centuries has accompanied the pontifical liturgies.
Maestro Bartolucci was named the "perpetual" director, the director for life, of the Sistine Chapel by Pius XII in 1959. Under this and later popes, he was an outstanding interpreter of the liturgical music founded upon Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony. But after a long period of opposition, in 1997 he was dismissed and replaced by a choirmaster thought to be more fitting for the "popular" music dear to John Paul II.
Bartolucci’s replacement was the finishing stroke of the almost complete elimination of Gregorian chant and polyphony as desired by the authors of the postconciliar liturgical reform.
The person responsible for Bartolucci’s removal in 1997 was the master of pontifical ceremonies, Piero Marini, still in service with Benedict XVI although close to his own dismissal. Marini brought in monsignor Giuseppe Liberto as head of the Sistine Chapel, having noticed and appreciated his work as music director during John Paul II’s visits to Sicily. It was easy to get pope Karol Wojtyla’s permission for the maneuver.
At the time, the only significant figure in the Roman curia who came to Bartolucci’s defense was Ratzinger, for reasons that were both musical and liturgical, as he explained in essays and books.
His positions then were isolated. But with his election as pope, Ratzinger immediately indicated his intention to proceed, in the liturgical and musical field, with what he calls "the reform of the reform."
This was clear from the inaugural Mass of his pontificate in St. Peter’s Square, the celebration of which was distinguished by a classical style that had been overshadowed in the mass rituals of his predecessor.
It was clear from one of his first changes in the Roman curia, when he replaced the secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship.
In the areas of liturgy and music, Benedict XVI knows that decrees from the authorities are not enough. His intention is that of reeducating more than issuing orders. The concert by maestro Bartolucci in the Sistine Chapel is one of these teaching moments that the pope wants to leave a mark.
In the concert, Bartolucci masterfully executed an offertory, two motets, and a "Credo" by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the prince of sacred Roman polyphonic music and maestro of the Sistine Chapel until the end of the 1500’s.
But he also executed some of his own compositions: three motets, an antiphon, a hymn, and an "Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Benedicto," composed in 2005 after Ratzinger’s election as pope.
The juxtaposition of ancient and modern polyphony was not a casual one. Speaking at the end of the concert, Benedict XVI noted:
"All of the selections we have listened to – and especially in their entirety, where the 16th and 20th centuries stand parallel – agree in confirming the conviction that sacred polyphony, in particular that of what is called the ‘Roman school’, constitutes a heritage that should be preserved with care, kept alive, and made better known, for the benefit not only of the scholars and specialists, but of the ecclesial community as a whole. [...] An authentic updating of sacred music can take place only in the lineage of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony."
Before this, maestro Bartolucci had addressed Benedict XVI:
"Most blessed Father, we all know the great love of Your Holiness for the liturgy, and thus for sacred music. Music is the art that has benefited the liturgy of the Church most of all: the space for the choir represented its cradle, thanks to which the Church was able to form the language that we admire today. The most beautiful examples that the faith of past centuries has left to us and which we must keep alive are Gregorian chant and polyphony: these require a constant practice capable of enlivening and animating divine worship."
Among the prelates of the Roman curia present at the concert were Marini and Liberto. But Benedict XVI’s attention was entirely dedicated to maestro Bartolucci – a vigorous 89 years old, – his choir, and the superb quality of their performances.
The pope defined these as "a vehicle of evangelization," but he doesn’t want them to remain simply the matter of concerts, but rather that they should again animate and adorn the liturgies. Beginning with the pontifical liturgies.
This is the road ahead. By restoring the Sistine Chapel to maestro Bartolucci, Benedict XVI has pointed it out in an unmistakable way.
If you have made it this far, and are willing to go deeper still, for a yet more detailed understanding of what the Pope thinks, the following lengthy article suggests why--love him or hate him--you cannot gainsay the careful, thoughtful and learned approach that Pope Benedict took towards this issue in several lengthy essays on the subject (written over the last 20 years) that are summarized in the article. I was struck, among other things, about this important statement about the arts:
"Music, after all, has the power to bring people together. . . . Yes, art is elemental. Reason alone as it’s expressed in the sciences can’t be man’s complete answer to reality, and it can’t express everything that man can, wants to, and has to express. I think God built this into man."
He also comments: "This means that musical expression is part of the proper human response to God’s self-revelation. . . .Mere speech, mere silence, mere action are not enough"
The author of the article also adds the following interesting comment: "The Cardinal wryly observes that, in a multicultural society, such an insistence on the vernacular [i.e. excluding Latin hymns from the modern Mass] has about as much logic to it as the demand for a hand-shaking, on-speaking-terms community does in an age of increased mobility. Harnoncourt notes that "The traditional, so-called ‘Latin Mass’ always had Aramaic (Amen, Alleluia, Hosanna, Maran atha) and Greek (Kyrie, Trisagion) parts, and the sermon was usually given in the vernacular. Real life is not acquainted with stylistic unity and perfection; on the contrary, where something is really alive, formal and stylistic variety will occur . . ., and the unity is an organic one"
The bottom line for the former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, is that music which is part of the liturgy must serve a theological purpose, should be appropriate for that purpose, and should connect with the history and tradition of the Church. While I admit I am biased, I would argue that regardless of ones views about any particular conclusion he reaches, from the Catholic point of view, the Pope has his priorities straight--his job is to have music serve the Church and promote the Catholic vision of the sacred, not the other way around. (And I still haven't seen him say a bad word about guitars.)
Cardinal Ratzinger on Liturgical Music,
by Michael J. Miller
(Reprinted from the July 2000 HPR)
In an article entitled "Liturgie und Kirchenmusik" published in 1986 in Communio, Cardinal Ratzinger referred to the incompatibility between rock music and the liturgy of the Church. A storm of progressive protest ensued, most of it aimed at the messenger instead of arguing to the contrary. How can a theologian judge modern music? What right does a Curia official have to say how today’s young people should participate in the Liturgy? Implicit in the controversy was the hackneyed caricature of Ratzinger as the "Teutonic academician turned doctrinal watchdog."
A revisionist view became necessary in 1996 with the publication of another book-length interview with the Cardinal (this time by German journalist Peter Seewald), because the second Ratzinger Report began with eighty pages of biographical information. His Eminence, we learn, is only human after all. Reminiscing about his childhood in Bavaria, Cardinal Ratzinger admits that music (especially Mozart) had a major role in his family life. "Music, after all, has the power to bring people together. . . . Yes, art is elemental. Reason alone as it’s expressed in the sciences can’t be man’s complete answer to reality, and it can’t express everything that man can, wants to, and has to express. I think God built this into man." 1
Being an intellectual does not disqualify one from commenting upon either music or liturgy, provided one recognizes the limits of rational discourse. As Cardinal Ratzinger himself put it, theologians "cannot enter into musical discussions per se, but they can nonetheless ask where the seams are, so to speak, that link faith and art." 2
What follows is a summary of three articles by Cardinal Ratzinger on liturgical music which appeared in German journals during the years 1986-1994 and were reprinted in English as part of the anthology, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today. 3The essays were written for different occasions, but they follow the same pattern: the author contrasts a problematic theory or a pernicious trend with the true theology of the liturgy, and from that draws conclusions as to the proper place of music in the liturgy and suggests guidelines for practical applications.
A) The cultural challenge vs. the biblical culture of Faith
(“‘Sing Artistically for God’: Biblical Directives for Church Music," pp. 94-110.)
"Since church music is faith that has become a form of culture, it necessarily shares in the current problematic nature of the relationship between Church and culture" (94). This relationship was in crisis during the Renaissance and the Reformation, but as of the Enlightenment, secular culture "emancipated" itself from the faith: they went their separate ways and have drifted further apart ever since.
Since the seventeenth century the Church has seen the Caecilian reform of sacred music, the rediscovery of Gregorian chant, and the renewal of polyphonic church music. Nevertheless, as a result of cultural dislocations, "we are at a loss as to how faith can and should express itself culturally in the present age" (95).
The picture from the culture’s side is bleak. In the absence of religion, art becomes groundless aestheticism with neither direction nor purpose. Music in particular has split into two worlds: pop (a manufactured commodity) and rationally constructed high-brow music (an elite, degenerate form of "classical" music). A middle ground remains: "a staying at home in the familiar music that preceded such divisions, touched the person as a whole and is still capable of doing this even today. . . . Church music mostly settles in this middle ground" (95).
Many are the calls for the Church to dialogue with culture today, but few imagine the talks as being bilateral. You can’t expect the Church to subject herself to modern culture, which, having lost its religious base, is in a never-ending process of self-doubt. Culture, too, must question itself radically and be opened to a cure, a reconciliation with religion.
Are there any biblical directives for the path that church music should take? Cardinal Ratzinger narrows the question: "Can we find one biblical text that sums up the way Holy Scripture sees the connection between music and faith" (96)?
The Bible contains its own hymnal: "the Psalter, born from the practice of singing and playing musical instruments during worship." Furthermore this practical tradition contains "essential elements of a theory of music in faith and for faith." Within the Old Testament, the Psalter is like a bridge between the Law and the Prophets; it also serves as a bridge connecting the two Testaments. From the earliest days of the Church, the psalms are prayed and sung as hymns to Christ, the Son of David the psalmist. "Christ himself thus becomes the choir director who teaches us the new song and gives the Church the tone and the way in which she can praise God appropriately and blend into the heavenly liturgy" (97).
Cardinal Ratzinger selects one psalm verse which appears throughout the history of theological reflection on church music. Psalm 47:7 (in some numberings Psalm 46 and/or the eighth verse) exhorts us to "Sing praises with a psalm" (RSV). The Hebrew word maskil is variously rendered in modern translations as "an inspired song" (M. Buber, German) or as playing "with all your skill" (Jerusalem Bible, French), or as singing "artfully" (in a version approved by the Italian Bishops Conference).
The ancient translations of the Church also shed light on the subject. "The Septuagint, which became the Old Testament of Christianity, wrote psalate synetos, which we might translate as: ‘. . . Sing with under-standing’—in both senses of the word: that you yourselves understand it and that it is understandable" (97). Of course this involves more than a merely rational act; we are to sing "in a way worthy of and appropriate to the spirit, disciplined and pure" (98). St. Jerome’s rendering is along the same lines: psallite sapienter. Sapientia means more than understanding; "[it] also denotes an integration of the entire human person . . . with all the dimensions of his or her existence." Just as the gift of wisdom integrates knowledge and experience with the requirements of Divine Law, so the singing of the inspired psalms involves the human person, body and soul, with all its faculties, in divine worship.
The first word of the verse, "Sing praises with a psalm," in Hebrew zamir, is also laden with history. "The emphasis is on articulated singing, a singing with reference to a text, which is instrumentally supported, as a rule" (98-99). In stark contrast to the orgiastic cult music of the pagans, zamir refers to "logoslike" music, "which incorporates a word or wordlike event it has received and responds to it in praise or petitions, in thanksgiving or lament." The Septuagint Bible chose psallein as its translation, giving a new, culturally conditioned meaning to a Greek word that previously had meant only to play a stringed instrument, but never to sing.
From this word study, Cardinal Ratzinger draws several conclusions about possible biblical directives for music in the Church.
1) The command, "Sing to the Lord," runs through all of Scripture as part of the call to worship and glorify God. "This means that musical expression is part of the proper human response to God’s self-revelation. . . .Mere speech, mere silence, mere action are not enough" (100).
2) There is no such thing as a faith completely undetermined by culture, which could then be inculturated any way you like. "The faith decision as such entails a cultural decision; . . . Faith itself creates culture and does not just carry it along like a piece of clothing. . . . This cultural given . . . is capable of encountering other contemporary cultures. . . . This ability to exchange and flourish also finds its expression in the ever-recurring imperative, ‘Sing to the Lord a new song.’” The Christological interpretation of the psalms is a particularly dramatic example of this capacity for development in what is an irrevocable and fundamental cultural form (101).
3) The various meanings to be found in the second word of our psalm verse range between the two translations sapienter and cum arte. Singing in accordance with wisdom implies a word-oriented art, which is not concerned merely with intelligibility but "stands under the primacy of logos" and makes demands upon our highest moral and spiritual powers. The second translation, artfully, tells us that encountering God challenges a person to respond to the best of his or her abilities. God gave Moses detailed specifications for the tabernacle; artistic endeavor in the book of Exodus is portrayed as a participation in God’s creativity (103).
The New Testament, by both frequent citation and explicit command, takes up the psalm tradition as an integral part of its own teaching and worship. "When you come together, each one has a hymn [Gk: psalmon], a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification" (1 Cor. 14:26). To the early Church the psalm appeared as a gift of the Spirit. The epistles also give evidence of exalted Christological hymns newly composed in Greek. By the second century, however, as a precaution after the musical innovations of the Gnostic sect, the Church reduced liturgical music to the Psalter. "The theology of the Psalter sufficed and set the standard in terms of content, but also . . . the way of making music specified by the Psalter became the musical model of emerging Christendom" (104). To put it in a less scholarly way, revelation was complete with the end of the apostolic age, and the divinely inspired hymns found in Sacred Scripture were sufficient for the Church’s worship.
In light of the foregoing discussion, both "pop" music and the music of elitist aesthetes are unsuitable for divine worship. The latter, proclaiming art to be "for art’s sake" and for no other purpose, elevates the composer to the level of a "pure creator." "According to Christian faith, however, it belongs to the essence of human beings that they come from God’s ‘art’. . . and as perceivers can think and view God’s creative ideas with him and translate them into the visible and the audible" (106).
On the other hand, hasn’t the Church’s liturgical music always drawn on popular music to renew itself? Isn’t "pop" music just what the Church needs in order to "relate" with contemporary culture? Cardinal Ratzinger recommends "treading carefully" in this area (107-108). In the past folk music was the expression of a clearly defined community held together by language, history and a way of life. Springing from fundamental human experience, it conveyed a truth, however naive the form may have been. Pop music, in contrast, is a standardized product of mass society, a function of supply and demand. The 20 th-century composer Paul Hindemith called the constant presence of such noise "brainwashing," and C. M. Johansson claims that hearing it gradually makes us incapable of listening attentively: "we become musically comatose. . . . This medium kills the message" (p. 108 cf. footnote 19).
Cardinal Ratzinger insists that the faith must not be trivialized in the name of inculturating it. Today we do not have to limit church music so strictly to chanting of the psalms, because we have "an infinitely larger trove" of good liturgical music to draw on. But to hold the line against the onslaught of misguided attempts to import "modern" musical forms into the liturgy requires "the courage of asceticism, the courage to contradict. Only from such courage can new creativity arise" (109).
B) The sociological challenge vs. true Christian anthropology
("The Image of the World and of Human Beings in the Liturgy and Its Expression in Church Music" pp. 111-127.)
"Conversation with God transcends the boundaries of human speech" (111); therefore it calls on music, both vocal and instrumental, for help.
After the Second Vatican Council there were disputes over the right form of music in worship. The initial clashes were between pastoral expediency ("We worship in the ver-nacular now . . .") and musicians who maintained that their traditional repertoire had intrinsic and pastoral value. The question underlying such differences of opinion then was: how do we apply liturgical directives? More recently, a second wave of controversy has been "pushing the questions forward, as far as the foundations themselves." The issue has become: what is liturgical action in the first place, what are its anthropological and theological foundations?
Symptomatic of the new thinking is the Nuovo Dizionario di Liturgica (1984), article on canto e musica. It declares the starting point of liturgy to be the gathering of two or three in the name of Christ (Matt. 18:20). This sounds harmless enough, but it gains revolutionary momentum when the verse is isolated and pitted against the entire liturgical tradition. Such a definition places the group before the Church and brings "autonomous" individuals into conflict with an "authoritarian" institution. "It is evident that with the adoption of sociological language the prior adoption of its evaluations has also occurred" (113). New music good; old music bad! Gregorian chant and Palestrina are seen as "tutelary gods" for those in power who, threatened by cultural change, cling to an ancient repertoire.
Cardinal Ratzinger turns the hermeneutic of suspicion back on the liturgical theorists. "There is of course not only an idolization of sociology at work here but also a complete separation of the New Testament from the history of the Church" (114). The notion, that the Church has been in decline since Jesus began it, is a familiar Enlightenment myth, which ultimately becomes an excuse for cut-and-paste editions of the Bible (like Jeffer-son’s) or the Marxist texts of the Missa Nicaraguensis sung in the 1980s.
What are the new and better ideas of the liturgical experts? They insist on two basic values: "The ‘primary value’ of a renewed liturgy is, we are told, ‘the full and authentic action of all persons.’” The people of God proclaims its identity in song. The second value judgment follows: music is the power that brings about cohesiveness within the group. Celebration, ergo, becomes creativity; the "how" becomes more important than the "what."
Condensed in this way, the argument reads like a lampoon. Yet Ratzinger’s full analysis of the effects of modern "scientific" sociology upon liturgical music is trenchant. "I would not be speaking of all this in so much detail if I thought that such ideas were attributable to only a few theoreticians" (115). It is all too common that "so-called creativity, the active participation of all present, and the relationship to a group in which everyone is acquainted with and speaks to everyone else" are mistaken for the real categories of the conciliar understanding of liturgy.
The philosophical basis of this sociological "take" on liturgy is the view that power opposes freedom. This assigns, a priori, a negative quality to the concept of "institution" and reduces the object of hope from Paschal redemption to social progress. Herein lies the "tragic paradox" of this trend in liturgical reform: the institutional Church is seen as a hindrance to "freedom," yet liturgy without the Church is a self-contradiction. "Here it has been forgotten that the liturgy should be the opus Dei in which God himself first acts and we become redeemed people precisely through his action. [If] the group celebrates itself . . . it is celebrating nothing at all since it is no cause for celebration" (117).
In actuality, the Church is the communio sanctorum of all places and all times (118). Romano Guardini has elaborated upon the momentous consequences of realizing that the communion of saints (and not the Base Community) is the true subject of the liturgy. The Church’s liturgy has an objective and positive character, because it lives in three ontological dimensions: cosmos, history and mystery. Liturgy has a cosmic dimension because as believers we do not create it, but participate in something greater that transcends us all. As a result of its historic dimension, it develops as a living thing while maintaining its identity (cf. the discussion of biblical culture, above). Finally, liturgy’s dimension of mystery means that we do not initiate the liturgical event; rather, it originates in a call and a divine act of love, to which our response is obedience.
This vantage point is of great importance for the artistic questions involved in preparing liturgical music. The music of emancipation is inconsistent with true liturgy. Furthermore, "creativity" that ignores the creaturely status of man "is by its very nature absurd and untrue since humans can only be themselves through receptivity and participation." The real human condition is that we stand in need of a redemption which human effort cannot bring about.
Our faith is Logocentric, and so must our worship be (Cf. logike latreia Rom. 12:1). "The ‘Word’ to which Christian worship refers is first of all not a text, but a living reality: a God . . . who communicates himself by becoming a human being. This incarnation is the sacred tent, the focal point of all worship which looks at the glory of God and gives him honor" (121).
"Liturgical music is a result of the claim and the dynamics of the Word’s incarnation. . . . Faith becoming music is a part of the process of the Word becoming flesh" (122). At the same time (one might say: in counterpoint), the flesh becomes "logocized" or spiritualized, restoring harmony to postlapsarian creation. "Wood and brass turn into tone; the unconscious and the unsolved become ordered and meaningful sound."
Our Incarnate Lord, who was raised up on the cross, raised up our fallen human nature. Western music, from Gregorian chant through Renaissance polyphony to Bruckner and beyond, lives from this great synthesis "of spirit, intuition and sensuous sound. . . . [T]heliturgical music of the Church must be subject to that integration of the human state which appears before us in incarnational faith" (124).
Practically speaking, the prerequisites for sacred music include "awe, receptivity and a humility that is prepared to serve by participating in the greatness which has already gone before" (125). Furthermore, the Church has posted road signs: the great liturgical texts (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) and the references in her official documents to Gregorian chant and Palestrina as models providing orientation.
C) The "postconciliar" challenge vs. the cosmic liturgy
(“‘In the Presence of the Angels I Will Sing Your Praise’; The Regensburg Tradition and the Reform of the Liturgy," pp. 128-146.)
The point of departure of this essay is a description of the medieval frescoes in the crypt of the monastery of Marienberg in South Tyrol. "The real focal point is the Majestas Domini, the risen Lord lifted up on high, who is seen at the same time and above all as the one returning, the one already coming in the Eucharist. . . . Liturgy is anticipated Parousia. . . ." (129).
Indeed, St. Benedict, in his Rule, reminds his monks of Psalm 138:1: "In the presence of the angels I will sing to you," and admonishes them, "Let us reflect on how we should be in the presence of God and the angels, and when we sing let us stand in such a way that our hearts are in tune with our voices." Cardinal Ratzinger goes on to explain, "The liturgy is not a thing the monks create. It is already there before them. It is entering into the liturgy of the heavens that has always been taking place." This is the clear mean-ing of the frescoes.
Sadly, this "already, but not yet" character of the earthly liturgy has been obscured lately by a preoccupation with a liturgical reform that is "already" with us but has "not yet" overcome the old Tridentine order. According to this strange perspective, "a chasm separates the history of the Church into two irreconcilable worlds: the preconciliar and the postconciliar" (130).
Cardinal Ratzinger’s brother served as choirmaster in the Regensburg cathedral from 1964 to 1994. When he began, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II had not yet been implemented. The music at Regensburg Cathedral realized in an exemplary way the artistic standards expressed in the motu proprio of Pius X, "Tra le sollecitudini" of November 22, 1903. As bishop of Mantua and patriarch of Venice, Pius X had opposed the operatic style of church music prevalent in Italy. "Insisting on chant as the truly liturgical music was for him part of a larger reform program that was concerned with restoring to worship its purity and dignity and shaping it according to its own inner claim" (131).
Another historical note helps to narrow the chasm between pre- and post-conciliar. Sacrosanctum Concilium, in laying the foundations for reform, constructed a large framework permitting a variety of actualizations. "The reform itself was then shaped by a post-conciliar commission and cannot in its concrete details simply be credited to the Council." The history of liturgy is always marked by the tension between continuity and renewal; in the twentieth century the real tension has not been between tired tradition and radical reform, but rather between two stages of reform.
The Cardinal warns that "the dualistic historical view of a pre- and postconciliar world" leads to notions that call the very essence of liturgy into question. One example of this exaggerated "either-or" is the idea that the priest alone was the celebrant of the liturgy before the Council, but now it is the assembled congregation. This implies that the congregation determines what happens in the liturgy. But the priest never had the right to decide arbitrarily what was to be done in the liturgy. It was a "rite," that is, an objective form of the Church’s corporate prayer (132).
The new Catechism, on the other hand, sums up the best insights of the Liturgical Movement. Liturgy means "service in the name of / on behalf of the people." But "the People of God is not simply there, as the Germans, French, Italians, or other peoples are; it comes into being again and again only through the service of the Son and by his lifting us into the community of God which we cannot enter on our own. . . . Every liturgical celebration is an action of Christ the priest and his Body which is the Church (p. 134; cf. CCC 1069-1070)."
Cardinal Ratzinger does not mince words. "Liturgy presupposes . . . that the heavens have been opened. . . . If the heavens are not open, then whatever liturgy was is reduced to role playing and, in the end, to a trivial pursuit of congregational self-fulfillment in which nothing really happens. The decisive factor, therefore, is the primacy of Christology" (133).
We must resolutely defend ourselves against "postconciliar" efforts to assign an absolute value to the "community." In the liturgy, the priest acts in persona Christi. The Catechism discusses the role of the congregation also, significantly in the chapter on the Holy Spirit: "The liturgical assembly derives its unity from the ‘communion of the Holy Spirit’ who gathers the children of God into the one Body of Christ.’ This assembly transcends racial, cultural, social—indeed, all human affinities. The assembly should prepare itself to encounter its Lord and to become ‘a people well-disposed’” (CCC 1097, 1098).
What significance does this Catholic understanding of liturgy have for church music? The Council’s reform was aimed at counteracting modern individualism and the moralism connected with it, so that the dimension of mystery in liturgy could reappear, its cosmic character which embraces heaven and earth (p. 135; cf. SC 8). For Christians, the Logos orients our worship towards the historical origin of faith, preserved for us in Scripture and Tradition. Church music should not be a performance on the occasion of worship, but is to be liturgy itself, "a harmonizing with the choir of the angels and saints." Gregorian chant and classic polyphonic music are ordered to the mystery in liturgy and to its Logos-character, as well as to its bond to the historical world. They furnish us with a norm which does not exclude new musical forms, but which guides us more surely toward what lies on the horizon.
Attention to the essence of liturgy clarifies the question concerning the place of music in liturgy. You might say, "As liturgy goes, so goes musica sacra." Philipp Harnoncourt has put it this way: "Jews and Christians agree with one another that their singing and music-making point to heaven, or rather that these come from heaven or are learned from heaven" (137). Cardinal Ratzinger elaborates: "Faith comes from listening to God’s word. But wherever God’s word is translated into human words there remains a surplus of the unspoken and unspeakable which calls us to silence—into a silence that in the end lets the unspeakable become song and also calls on the voices of the cosmos for help so that the unspoken may become audible."
Because church music comes from the Word—both as expression of the Truth and response to a call—its character must correspond to the words in which the Logos has expressed himself. Hence not all music is appropriate for liturgical use: "By its nature such music must be different from music that is supposed to lead to rhythmic ecstasy, stupefying anesthetization, sensual excitement, or the dissolution of the ego in Nirvana, to name just a few possibilities" (138). St. Cyp-rian’s treatise on the Lord’s Prayer offers a useful guideline: "Discipline, which includes tranquility and awe, belongs to the words and posture of praying." 4It should also belong to sacred song.
Cardinal Ratzinger quickly dismisses two other specious demands of the "new" liturgists. Some, mistaking external busyness for "active participation," would veto the use of the choir as intruding between the congregation and the liturgical action. But the choir is part of the community and its singing legitimately represents the prayer assembly. The concept of representation, of standing in for another, affects all levels of religious reality, including worship, and is a fundamental category of the Christian faith.
Another commonly heard "postconciliar" objection is a "fanaticism about vernacular," even to the point of forbidding chant and hymns in Latin. The Cardinal wryly observes that, in a multicultural society, such an insistence on the vernacular has about as much logic to it as the demand for a hand-shaking, on-speaking-terms community does in an age of increased mobility. Harnoncourt notes that "The traditional, so-called ‘Latin Mass’ always had Aramaic (Amen, Alleluia, Hosanna, Maran atha) and Greek (Kyrie, Trisagion) parts, and the sermon was usually given in the vernacular. Real life is not acquainted with stylistic unity and perfection; on the contrary, where something is really alive, formal and stylistic variety will occur . . ., and the unity is an organic one" (140).
In concluding his talk, Cardinal Ratzinger commends the departing cathedral choirmaster for striving "to manage continuity in development and development in continuity" during the theological and liturgical upheavals since the Council, "so that the liturgy in the Regensburg cathedral kept its dignity and excellence and remained transparent to the cosmic liturgy of the Logos in the unity of the whole Church without taking on a museum-like character" (140). He also expresses the hope that true reform will "flourish in the spirit of the Second Vatican Coun-cil—reform that is not discontinuity and destruction but purification and growth to a new maturation and a new fullness" (146).
In each of the articles just summarized, Cardinal Ratzinger responds to a specialized, academic-sounding challenge to the traditional Catholic understanding of the liturgy by considering the issue from a wider, ultimately theological perspective. To multiculturalist demands he replies with a reminder that Catholic faith and worship are rooted in a historical religion and thus are part and parcel of a specific cultural tradition. When the sociological gauntlet is thrown down, he arms himself with the insights of a comprehensive Christian anthropology. The notion that Vatican II divides Church history into a reactionary past and a glorious future is gently corrected with evidence that the reform of the liturgy has been the ongoing work of a century and more.
This technique of "taking the broader perspective" is evident in the very arrangement of essays in the anthology, A New Song for the Lord. The articles on liturgical music are grouped with one on church architecture at the end of Part II, preceded by an essay on "The Resurrection as the Foundation of the Christian Liturgy" (explaining Sunday as a Little Easter and the new Sabbath). Part I of the book, "Jesus Christ, Center of Faith and Foundation of Our Hope," treats more fundamental questions of Christology, catechesis and the true understanding of power in the Church. The essays are cogently argued and can be read independently, yet taken together they offer an almost systematic, theological treatise on the liturgy.
We have grown accustomed to hearing famous professors weigh in with expert commentary, each presenting his own abstruse "take" on a given issue. Not so when Cardinal Ratzinger writes about the liturgy or sacred music. The themes and arguments in his essays on liturgical music recur throughout his works, because he is writing about the lifeblood of the Mystical Body and the atmosphere that baptized souls breathe in their life of grace.
A few random examples illustrate this consistency. In Co-Workers of the Truth, a selection from Cardinal Ratzinger’s writings arranged as meditations for each day of the year, there are (besides excerpts from the articles summarized above) two other readings concerning sacred music:
"The first Christmas carol of history . . . had no human origins—Saint Luke records it as the song of the angels who were the evangelists of the holy night: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth among men, those with whom he is pleased, those of good will. This song sets a standard. . . . Peaceamong men results from God’s glory. Those who are concerned about the human race and its well-being have to be concerned about God’s glory first of all . . ., [which] is not some private concern . . . [but] a public affair."
"Three great symbols dominate the liturgy of this night of the Resurrection: light [the Paschal candle], water and ‘the new song,’ that is, the Alleluia. . . . Granted, we shall notsing this new song in its fullness until we are in the ‘new world,’ until God calls us by a ‘new name’ (Rev. 2:17), until everything has been made new. But we are permitted to anticipate something of this [beatific] newness in the great joy of the Easter vigil." 5
When arguing about the liturgy, one runs the risk of abstracting, of prescinding from the mystery. Cardinal Ratzinger’s well-reasoned essays on sacred music bring to mind vividly the fact that the liturgy is, after all, divine.
NOTES
1. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium (an interview with Peter Seewald, translated by Adrian Walker), Ignatius, San Francisco, 1997, p. 47.
2. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today (translated by Martha M. Matesich), The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1997, p. 96.
3. The Crossroad Publishing Company, 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017. In this summary, the actual title of each article is given after a descriptive heading in bold. Page numbers for citations are included in the text.
4. St. Cyprian, De oratione dominica, 4.
5. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (edited by Sr. Irene Grassl, translated by Sr. Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. and Rev. Lothar Krauth), Ignatius, San Francisco, 1992. The readings cited are for December 29 (pp. 408-409) and April 14 (pp. 123-124).
Mr. Michael J. Miller is a translator for Ignatius Press and a free-lance writer. His articles have been published in Faith and Reason, Catholic World Report and the Month. His last article in HPR appeared in March 1999.
(Reprinted from the July 2000 HPR)
Monday, June 06, 2005
There have been several articles in the Wall Street Journal or from Journal columnists, that have made similar points about the arts to those set forth in my recent blog entries. Whether this is due to my developing a grasp of the obvious, surfing a critical tide, or just being lucky, I do not venture to say. Terry Teachout has an article that was in a shorter form in the Journal and longer form here, about politics in theatre.
In Museums: Why Should We Care? by Philippe de Montebello, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in The Wall Street Journal, Leisure & Arts Section
Wednesday, June 1, 2005, we have the following comments, which I take to be a ringing endorsement of the theory that what we think of as "the Arts" should be an effort to focus on excellence:
In Museums: Why Should We Care? by Philippe de Montebello, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in The Wall Street Journal, Leisure & Arts Section
Wednesday, June 1, 2005, we have the following comments, which I take to be a ringing endorsement of the theory that what we think of as "the Arts" should be an effort to focus on excellence:
But in attempting to answer the question "why should be care?" I'd like to
suggest a final, more broadly significant lesson. It is mankind's
awe-inspiring ability, time and again, to surpass itself. What this means
is that no matter how bleak the times we may live in, we cannot wholly
despair of the human condition.Thus, when he looks around his museum and seeks a reason to care about its value, he falls back upon the following:
My question is: Who made these things? The answer: We did, our species
did. Isn't that reason enough to maintain our faith in humankind?
Especially when you consider that wars, massacres and nature's indiscriminate
destructive forces have occurred throughout recorded history, and always will,
and that through it all, men and women of genius have managed to give us their
vision of the moment, at the highest level of inspiration. What we learn
is that no matter the degree of chaos and adversity surrounding him, man has
shown his capability to excel, to surpass. That is the ultimate assurance
of renewal and survival. And it is one of the great lessons of the art
museum.
In additon, Jay Nordlinger, in National Review On-Line had the following interesting observations:
You may know of Joseph Horowitz, who makes a living saying
that classical music is dying, or dead, in America, thanks mainly to the
stupidity of this culture. You’ll never go broke proclaiming the death of
classical music — they’ve done it in every generation for centuries now.
There’s
always a willing audience. As Charles Rosen, the scholar-pianist,
once wrote,
“The death of classical music is perhaps its oldest continuing
tradition.”
You’ll love this — it reads like a parody that one of us
might
have written, in a particularly unkind mood. In The New Statesman,
Horowitz
published a piece titled “Classical Music in America: An Oxymoron?”
(Europeans
would love to think so. In reality, these are boom times for
classical music in
America. But you can’t spoil these people’s treasured
line.) Horowitz
writes,
With the re-election of George W. Bush, many
Americans found
themselves asking questions about the future of American
democracy: about the
impact of money and of political machination, and about
the power of both to
sway an electorate already addicted to fast-food news
and talk radio.
Considered as an experiment in the democratisation of high
culture,
classical music in America restates these questions.
The
indulged and
uninquisitive American electorate [!] is paralleled by
classical music audiences
that ask for little and give little back. A
tangible acuity of knowing attention
still found in Berlin or Budapest is no
longer much encountered in New
York.
Yeah, right. As I say, some people
aren’t open to persuasion, or
reason. They have a great investment —
primarily an emotional one — in the
belief that America is inhospitable to
music. In the meantime, there is a
cornucopia of music around them: more
orchestras, opera companies, chamber
festivals, etc., than ever before. More
musicians, more presenting
organizations, than ever before. More recordings
than ever before. (But, true,
the big labels are going bust, as well they
should, for all their
errors.)
Gary Graffman, the pianist and longtime
director of the Curtis
Institute of Music, has wearily tried to puncture the
myth of classical music’s
death, or ill health. He was forced to title one
speech “Dead Again” — for
classical music is always “dead,” even as it
lives, or thrives.
The myth will
never die, but neither will music,
thank goodness. In some areas, we’re hurting,
for no age is a perfect one.
The recital is in trouble — largely because of the
explosion of chamber
music — and music education, in primary and secondary
schools, is not what
it should be. This is so even though schools have more
money than ever
before in our history. It’s a question of priorities, not
resources.
Anyway . . .
Oh, and, by the way, you’ll hear people wail over
“the
graying of the audience.” There’s no one but old people in the audience!
This, too, you hear in every generation. It has always been thus, and ever
will
be.
For those more than ordinarily interested, I have a long
examination of
this question in a New Criterion book, Lengthened
Shadows: America and Its Institutions in the Twenty-first Century.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Thoughts on the supposed death of classical music PART IV
Politics and Ideology As noted in Part I, there is nothing illegitmate about the insight that art, including music, has a political component. This was true of a Mozart opera such as The Marriage of Figaro, with its lampoon of artistocratic mores and behavior, much of Verdi's work, which was a significant boon to Italian Natiionalist sentiment, works of Beehtoven, Copland, etc. Of course, earlier music that was intended for the glory of God can now be read as 'political' if one wishes to conflate religion and politics ( although I would not; they are two distinct spheres; the fact that one's religious beliefs or worldview have an impact on one's political beliefs does not make them the same). Having conceded the point, however, it strikes me that the political component of classical music was of a different kind than that which we have today. Ironicly enough, it appears to me that it was at a far higher level of abstraction on the political side, while the detail focused on the human. On the other hand, political expression in music today seems far more particularistic, focused on specific contermporay events, while the human element is what is abstracted. This, I think, is an artistic mistake. What artists do most compellingly is analyze what they know well, which is usually other human beings and the circumstances of their lives and interactions with their enviornment. Their political views tend to be two dimensional, hackneyed, strident and overly-emotional (those trained and experienced in politics tend to be more artistic politicians and those trained and experienced in music tend to be more artistic musicians). A greater emphasis on telling human stories in an insightful, three dimensional and deeply felt way through music will, I would argue, provide a far better result, with the political dimension as part of a broader background. When we have an increasing amount of artistic time and energy expended on performances about President Bush, the Iraq War, or particular causes of the moment that focus squrely on issues and talking points, I think we get little in the way of good art and lots in the way of amateur politics. Human stories against the backdrop of contemporary events might produce far better results. It also seems obvious that by politicizing art in the sense that I am discussing, the audience is not only frustrated but disappointed. Most people come to the theatre or the concert hall for something other than a political rally, or to affirm to one another their ideological point of view. Rather, they come for an artistic experience which is achieved through a totally different medium than they can experience on cable news. Similarly, because there is a dominance of a single point of view in the arts world today ( a very left liberal perspective ) there tends to be a cloying conformity in the ideology that infroms modern music. The fact that the perspective is from the left does not make it any less smoothering or disdainful of other perspectives when it was largely from the right. Conformity is conformity; the fact that confromity comes in the pose of rebellion from the status quo only introduces an appropriate element of irony to this postmodern condition. For this reason, I suspect, the most interesting new trends will probably be conservative ones, as the true rebels of the new generation will bridle at the postmodernist conformity of the old. There is already a revival going on in early music, with its profoundly religious component, and a classical revival may not be far behind. What will be intersting to see is how the leaders of the now "old school" of moderns and post-moderns will look down on, and seek to thwart the ambitions of the neo-classicists and neo-romantics and neo-medeivalists, as they see their triumphs undermined and their legacy challenged. Of course, this will mean what survives the assault will be particularly compelling and exciting, and therefore popular, which gives me hope for the future.
Politics and Ideology As noted in Part I, there is nothing illegitmate about the insight that art, including music, has a political component. This was true of a Mozart opera such as The Marriage of Figaro, with its lampoon of artistocratic mores and behavior, much of Verdi's work, which was a significant boon to Italian Natiionalist sentiment, works of Beehtoven, Copland, etc. Of course, earlier music that was intended for the glory of God can now be read as 'political' if one wishes to conflate religion and politics ( although I would not; they are two distinct spheres; the fact that one's religious beliefs or worldview have an impact on one's political beliefs does not make them the same). Having conceded the point, however, it strikes me that the political component of classical music was of a different kind than that which we have today. Ironicly enough, it appears to me that it was at a far higher level of abstraction on the political side, while the detail focused on the human. On the other hand, political expression in music today seems far more particularistic, focused on specific contermporay events, while the human element is what is abstracted. This, I think, is an artistic mistake. What artists do most compellingly is analyze what they know well, which is usually other human beings and the circumstances of their lives and interactions with their enviornment. Their political views tend to be two dimensional, hackneyed, strident and overly-emotional (those trained and experienced in politics tend to be more artistic politicians and those trained and experienced in music tend to be more artistic musicians). A greater emphasis on telling human stories in an insightful, three dimensional and deeply felt way through music will, I would argue, provide a far better result, with the political dimension as part of a broader background. When we have an increasing amount of artistic time and energy expended on performances about President Bush, the Iraq War, or particular causes of the moment that focus squrely on issues and talking points, I think we get little in the way of good art and lots in the way of amateur politics. Human stories against the backdrop of contemporary events might produce far better results. It also seems obvious that by politicizing art in the sense that I am discussing, the audience is not only frustrated but disappointed. Most people come to the theatre or the concert hall for something other than a political rally, or to affirm to one another their ideological point of view. Rather, they come for an artistic experience which is achieved through a totally different medium than they can experience on cable news. Similarly, because there is a dominance of a single point of view in the arts world today ( a very left liberal perspective ) there tends to be a cloying conformity in the ideology that infroms modern music. The fact that the perspective is from the left does not make it any less smoothering or disdainful of other perspectives when it was largely from the right. Conformity is conformity; the fact that confromity comes in the pose of rebellion from the status quo only introduces an appropriate element of irony to this postmodern condition. For this reason, I suspect, the most interesting new trends will probably be conservative ones, as the true rebels of the new generation will bridle at the postmodernist conformity of the old. There is already a revival going on in early music, with its profoundly religious component, and a classical revival may not be far behind. What will be intersting to see is how the leaders of the now "old school" of moderns and post-moderns will look down on, and seek to thwart the ambitions of the neo-classicists and neo-romantics and neo-medeivalists, as they see their triumphs undermined and their legacy challenged. Of course, this will mean what survives the assault will be particularly compelling and exciting, and therefore popular, which gives me hope for the future.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Thoughts on the supposed death of classical music PART III
3. Pessimism as life's guiding philosophy If you believe that life is a cruel joke and that daily existence is absurdity on the road to despair, chances are you will tend to view the glass as half full and emptying fast. Consequently, if you are an artist, or a critic or an observer trained in this manner of thinking (as sadly so many of our artists, critics and observers have been trained in modern universities, conservatories and think tanks) it is no wonder that things look bleak for classical music, the arts and culture. Furthermore, your work will reflect that outlook--your songs will be depressing, your theatre will make you suicidal and your criticisms will drive you to drugs or drink. The best classical music today is written for the movies, where composers, despite whatever they have learned, are forced to write for shows that actually have more to say than life is an empty, barren way station on the journey to nothingness ( I like these travel metaphors, as you can tell). And people like this music! Does that mean that it is schlock? Only if the definition of good modern music is only that which is depressing and despairing and I think a moments reflection tells us that such a definition is unsustainable. Indeed, like anything else, cheerful (or at least not depressing) music can be bad or good. And some of it is very good indeed, which is why more and more orchestras play movie music. It is easy to be pessimistic about the future of classical music and the arts when you are pessimistic about everything. Once you embrace the notion that life can be good, that human beings for all their faults, can be responsible for enduring achievements and great nobility, even without embracing the ultimate optimism of religious faith, not only can you cheer up, but you can also start to think that there can be a future for classical music. But, if you think that its death is imminent, than wishing can truly make it so.
3. Pessimism as life's guiding philosophy If you believe that life is a cruel joke and that daily existence is absurdity on the road to despair, chances are you will tend to view the glass as half full and emptying fast. Consequently, if you are an artist, or a critic or an observer trained in this manner of thinking (as sadly so many of our artists, critics and observers have been trained in modern universities, conservatories and think tanks) it is no wonder that things look bleak for classical music, the arts and culture. Furthermore, your work will reflect that outlook--your songs will be depressing, your theatre will make you suicidal and your criticisms will drive you to drugs or drink. The best classical music today is written for the movies, where composers, despite whatever they have learned, are forced to write for shows that actually have more to say than life is an empty, barren way station on the journey to nothingness ( I like these travel metaphors, as you can tell). And people like this music! Does that mean that it is schlock? Only if the definition of good modern music is only that which is depressing and despairing and I think a moments reflection tells us that such a definition is unsustainable. Indeed, like anything else, cheerful (or at least not depressing) music can be bad or good. And some of it is very good indeed, which is why more and more orchestras play movie music. It is easy to be pessimistic about the future of classical music and the arts when you are pessimistic about everything. Once you embrace the notion that life can be good, that human beings for all their faults, can be responsible for enduring achievements and great nobility, even without embracing the ultimate optimism of religious faith, not only can you cheer up, but you can also start to think that there can be a future for classical music. But, if you think that its death is imminent, than wishing can truly make it so.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Thoughts on the Supposed Death of Classical Music Part II
2. The Cult of the New. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, modern artists seem to have an overwhelming fear of the past in any guise or permutation. Thus, the guiding principal of modern classical music is not classicist at all, but novelty. The result is an obscure ethos that is divorced from many of the principals that have made classical music attractive--melody, harmony, structure and drama. Clearly each new era of composition brought new ideas to the table, but at least the casual observer sees continuity as well as change. The movement toward atonality, aggressive dissonance and a rejection of melody and lyricism has alienated even the limited existing audiences of classical music lovers, let alone potential newcomers. Without exciting new classical music, there is not enough "buzz" and life in the classical music world. Retrospective, reissues and remembrances create a mummified world. Premieres, exciting projects--even if they are great failures--generate interest and enthusiasm. For classical music to become healthy--which it can--it needs modern work that is less concerned about being "new" and more concerned about being transcendent. After all, the work will be "new" by definition--short of plagiarism, every composer leaves his or her own mark. And artists should not be modest--they need to dare to do great things, not merely fill some safe academic niche.
2. The Cult of the New. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, modern artists seem to have an overwhelming fear of the past in any guise or permutation. Thus, the guiding principal of modern classical music is not classicist at all, but novelty. The result is an obscure ethos that is divorced from many of the principals that have made classical music attractive--melody, harmony, structure and drama. Clearly each new era of composition brought new ideas to the table, but at least the casual observer sees continuity as well as change. The movement toward atonality, aggressive dissonance and a rejection of melody and lyricism has alienated even the limited existing audiences of classical music lovers, let alone potential newcomers. Without exciting new classical music, there is not enough "buzz" and life in the classical music world. Retrospective, reissues and remembrances create a mummified world. Premieres, exciting projects--even if they are great failures--generate interest and enthusiasm. For classical music to become healthy--which it can--it needs modern work that is less concerned about being "new" and more concerned about being transcendent. After all, the work will be "new" by definition--short of plagiarism, every composer leaves his or her own mark. And artists should not be modest--they need to dare to do great things, not merely fill some safe academic niche.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Thoughts on the supposed death of classical music PART I
Much continues to be said in the arts world on the health of classical music and the forces that seem to be killing it. The latter include competition from popular culture, a lack of government support, a failure of education, the death of classical radio and a general lack of interest among young people. While reasonable arguments have been constructed for the view that classical music and other "high art" such as opera, are being destroyed from without, my own sense is that there is a more compelling argument to be made that they are being destroyed from within. In other words, the classical arts world is not being killed, it is committing suicide.
I believe that the ongoing effort of the classical arts world to poison itself can be seen in the following phenomenon:
1. A crisis of confidence. The classical world is suffering with a terrible self-image in the minds of too many of the people who should be its strongest supporters.
First among these are academics and intellectuals. Sadly, the modern academic world by and large seems to have taken some reasonable insights, such as the permeability of the boundaries between high and low culture, the fact that there are class and economic influences on art, the fact that art can have political significance, the fact that artists are people and therefore suffer from human imperfections despite having prodigious talent ( e.g. Wagner was an anti-Semite ), and pushes them to the logical extreme, that there can be no intrinsic value in art, that all art is political, that high art was merely a method to repress the lower classes, etc. As a result, those who might be expected to have a love for classical art ( warts and all ) instead have developed a passion for focusing solely on its imperfections, or the imperfections of the times in which it was created, rather than celebrating its achievements. Rather than concluding, as I believe it is appropriate to do, that the greatness of art is that it transcends the pettiness of the times in which it is created and the personal failings of those who created it. Rather than marveling that flawed people, living in times in which ignorance and cruelty often seems to overwhelm all else, find the capacity to create things that are moving, beautiful to the senses and touch some inner place that we may not have previously experienced, they focus solely on the context in which the work is created and refuse to acknowledge the transcendence of the work--or even that transcendence is possible. Further, they seek to elevate the least of our achievements to the level of art and thus deprive the term of its meaning. Hence, a urinal can be said to be art if it is contextualized in a museum, because art is dependent upon its context for its definition. To paraphrase my daughter Diana, the Mona Lisa would be art even if it were hung in a bathroom, and a urinal is not art even if hung in the gallery of the Louvre. In saying this I do not mean to disparage the beauty or value of everyday things ( after all, I believe air conditioning to be one of the seminal advances of mankind ), but not every well done thing is at the level that we require to call it art. Those things which we as people make fall on a continum in terms of beauty and aesthetic appeal; in that sense, all is art. But most things fall on the lower or middle side of the continum--it is only the truly exemplary that we call "art", just as only the finest lawyers are called great, or the best doctors, or the best athletes. Each practices their "art" but only a few do it so well that we point to them and say "This level of practice is worth celebrating and remembering." This is why we have a hall of fame and it is why we have museums. It is not to celebrate the mediocre (which is not to say there is not a time and a place to celebrate when the common place achieves occasional greatness) nor to celebrate equivalencies--we have other disciplines and ethics to do that (one man one vote does not mean that all musical compositions were created equal); it is to celebrate excellence. Todays intellectuals and academics seem to think that while they are each excellent, everyone else is relatively the same. A moments reflection tells us that the two thoughts are incompatible. We all recognize degrees of excellence among those we deal with and common sense tells us that similar degrees of excellence exist in all human institutions and pursuits. The arts are no difference. That is not to say that it is not hard to identify criteria or to make valid comparisons across or among different genres. But the difficulty of a task does not necessarily make it impossible.
Much continues to be said in the arts world on the health of classical music and the forces that seem to be killing it. The latter include competition from popular culture, a lack of government support, a failure of education, the death of classical radio and a general lack of interest among young people. While reasonable arguments have been constructed for the view that classical music and other "high art" such as opera, are being destroyed from without, my own sense is that there is a more compelling argument to be made that they are being destroyed from within. In other words, the classical arts world is not being killed, it is committing suicide.
I believe that the ongoing effort of the classical arts world to poison itself can be seen in the following phenomenon:
1. A crisis of confidence. The classical world is suffering with a terrible self-image in the minds of too many of the people who should be its strongest supporters.
First among these are academics and intellectuals. Sadly, the modern academic world by and large seems to have taken some reasonable insights, such as the permeability of the boundaries between high and low culture, the fact that there are class and economic influences on art, the fact that art can have political significance, the fact that artists are people and therefore suffer from human imperfections despite having prodigious talent ( e.g. Wagner was an anti-Semite ), and pushes them to the logical extreme, that there can be no intrinsic value in art, that all art is political, that high art was merely a method to repress the lower classes, etc. As a result, those who might be expected to have a love for classical art ( warts and all ) instead have developed a passion for focusing solely on its imperfections, or the imperfections of the times in which it was created, rather than celebrating its achievements. Rather than concluding, as I believe it is appropriate to do, that the greatness of art is that it transcends the pettiness of the times in which it is created and the personal failings of those who created it. Rather than marveling that flawed people, living in times in which ignorance and cruelty often seems to overwhelm all else, find the capacity to create things that are moving, beautiful to the senses and touch some inner place that we may not have previously experienced, they focus solely on the context in which the work is created and refuse to acknowledge the transcendence of the work--or even that transcendence is possible. Further, they seek to elevate the least of our achievements to the level of art and thus deprive the term of its meaning. Hence, a urinal can be said to be art if it is contextualized in a museum, because art is dependent upon its context for its definition. To paraphrase my daughter Diana, the Mona Lisa would be art even if it were hung in a bathroom, and a urinal is not art even if hung in the gallery of the Louvre. In saying this I do not mean to disparage the beauty or value of everyday things ( after all, I believe air conditioning to be one of the seminal advances of mankind ), but not every well done thing is at the level that we require to call it art. Those things which we as people make fall on a continum in terms of beauty and aesthetic appeal; in that sense, all is art. But most things fall on the lower or middle side of the continum--it is only the truly exemplary that we call "art", just as only the finest lawyers are called great, or the best doctors, or the best athletes. Each practices their "art" but only a few do it so well that we point to them and say "This level of practice is worth celebrating and remembering." This is why we have a hall of fame and it is why we have museums. It is not to celebrate the mediocre (which is not to say there is not a time and a place to celebrate when the common place achieves occasional greatness) nor to celebrate equivalencies--we have other disciplines and ethics to do that (one man one vote does not mean that all musical compositions were created equal); it is to celebrate excellence. Todays intellectuals and academics seem to think that while they are each excellent, everyone else is relatively the same. A moments reflection tells us that the two thoughts are incompatible. We all recognize degrees of excellence among those we deal with and common sense tells us that similar degrees of excellence exist in all human institutions and pursuits. The arts are no difference. That is not to say that it is not hard to identify criteria or to make valid comparisons across or among different genres. But the difficulty of a task does not necessarily make it impossible.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. I have always loved the movie of the same name; I have also said that I thought that it was a very religious, and in many ways, very Catholic movie. I am pleased that I do not need to spell out my argument, because a Catholic Professor of Theology at Notre Dame has already done so:
Phil’s Shadow
Michael P. Foley on the Lessons of Groundhog Day
Last December the New York Times ran an intriguing article about a Museum of Modern Art movie series on film and faith. What attracted the Times to the series was not its pageant of grave Swedish cinema but its opening feature, the 1993 romantic comedy Groundhog Day. The curators, polling “critics in the literary, religious and film worlds,” found that the movie “came up so many times that there was actually a squabble over who would write about it in the retrospective’s catalog.”
The movie, the article went on to observe, “has become a curious favorite of religious leaders of many faiths, who all see in Groundhog Day a reflection of their own spiritual messages.” A professor at NYU shows it in her classes to illustrate the doctrine of samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth Buddhists seek to escape), while a rabbi in Greenwich Village sees the film as hinging on mitvahs (good deeds). Wiccans like it because February 2nd is one of the year’s four “great sabbats,” while the Falun Dafa sect uses the movie as a lesson in spiritual advancement.
Deciphering which, if any, of these interpretations is correct is no easy task, especially since the director and co-writer of the film, Harold Ramis, has ambiguous religious beliefs (he is an agnostic raised Jewish and married to a Buddhist). The commentators also seem wedded to a single hermeneutical lens, forcing them to ignore contradictory data.
A more fruitful approach, I suggest, would involve following all of the clues, clues that lead not only to religion but also to the great conversation of philosophy. Once we do so, Groundhog Day may be seen for what it is: a stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim’s Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos.
Typical Modern
Groundhog Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:
The wretch, concentred all in self,Living, shall forfeit fair renown,And, doubly dying, shall go downTo the vile dust, from whence he sprung,Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.
By refusing to die to himself, Phil and those like him are doomed to die doubly, triply, innumerably.
The Punxsutawney celebration of Groundhog Day culminates with the town elders consulting a real woodchuck, also named Phil, about the next six weeks. The groundhog sees his shadow, an omen that more winter is to come.
Connors cannot wait to return to Pittsburgh, but trapped by a blizzard (which he failed to predict), he and the crew must stay another night in Punxsutawney. When he awakes the next morning, Phil discovers to his dismay that it is February 2nd—again. The same thing happens the next day, and the next. For reasons that are never made clear, Phil is condemned to live Groundhog Day over and over.
Phil’s situation is unique, yet the movie hints that it is not unrelated to our own quotidian lives. Commiserating with two locals over beers, Phil asks, “What would you do if every day was the same, and nothing you did ever mattered?” The men’s faces grow solemn, and one of them finally belches, “That about sums it up for me.” Phil’s preternatural plight bears a twin resemblance to ours: first, as a symbol for the Fall, with its “doubly dying” estrangement from God and return to the vile dust from whence we sprang; and second, as a symbol for life in the wake of postmodern philosophy.
For the great father of this philosophy is Nietzsche, and the idea that frightened him most was the “the eternal recurrence of the same,” i.e., that even the superior human being must bear the same dreary existence an infinite number of times. Like us, Phil is the modern man who must now confront the hardship of postlapsarian life on the one hand and the metaphysical meaninglessness of postmodern thought on the other.
Indeed, Phil’s various reactions to his enslavement read like the history of philosophy in reverse. Phil is shocked at his own impotence, so much faith had he put in his meteorological training. (“I make the weather!” he tells an unconvinced state trooper.) Phone lines and automobiles prove useless, as do his visits to a doctor and a therapist. All of the Enlightenment’s societal buttresses—technology, natural science, and social science—collapse under the weight of a problem outside the parameters of space and time.
Failure & Happiness
Once Phil realizes that in his Nietzschean quagmire there are no consequences to his actions, he also experiences modern philosophy’s liberation from any sense of eternal justice. “I am not going to play by their rules any longer,” he gleefully announces. His reaction epitomizes Glaucon’s argument in Plato’s Republic. Remove the fear of punishment, Glaucon argued, and the righteous will behave no differently than the wicked. Nineteen hundred years later, Machiavelli, arguably the father of modern philosophy, elevated this view to a philosophical principle.
And Phil embodies it perfectly: Once he learns that he can get away with anything he wants, he becomes Machiavelli’s prince. He unhesitatingly steals money from a bank, cold-cocks a life insurance agent, and seduces an attractive woman.
To Phil’s surprise, however, this life of instant gratification proves unfulfilling, leading him to set his sights on Rita, his beautiful and wholesome co-worker. The name “Rita,” I contend, tells us something about the role she plays in Phil’s life. Rita is short for Margarita, the Latin word for “pearl.” To Phil, Rita is the pearl of great price. We know from Matthew’s Gospel that this pearl is the kingdom of Heaven, but it may also be appropriate to think of it as happiness, since, according to Aristotle, happiness is that towards which everything in our life is ordered.
And so the overriding question of the story becomes clear: What will it take to attain true happiness? What will it take to buy the pearl?
Phil’s initial attempts to win Rita again betray his Machiavellian instincts. Machiavelli contended that it is better for a prince to appear to be virtuous—which fosters in others a gullible trust—than to be virtuous, which hamstrings his actions. And so Phil goes to extraordinary lengths to learn about Rita’s aspirations and then to feign the same. (The logic here is also Hegelian: Injustice is justified in the name of historical progress.) Yet the ruse never works; each night ends with Phil receiving a slap in the face rather than acquiescence to his overtures. The pearl of happiness, it turns out, cannot be bought with counterfeit money.
Phil’s failures lead to despair. At the end of his rope, he now commits suicide—over and over. Yet no matter how often he jumps off buildings or electrocutes himself, he stills wakes up to another Groundhog Day. His poignant awareness of his emptiness recalls the chilling line from St. Augustine’s Confessions: “I went far from you, my God, and I became to myself a wasteland.” Liberation from the divine law initially sounds thrilling, but such freedom proves to be not only hollow, but self-squandering annihilation. As Phil says, “I’ve killed myself so many times, I don’t even exist anymore.”
And so Phil, with nowhere else to go, unconsciously turns from modern philosophy, with its “concentred” individualism, to ancient philosophy, with its praise of the just life as the best way to live. Phil begins pursuing excellence (which in Greek is the same word as virtue), not for any ulterior motive but because he enjoys it. In good Aristotelian fashion, he cultivates moral virtues (e.g., saving a choking victim), intellectual virtues (reading Chekhov), and a proficiency in the arts (playing the piano). And thus Phil starts to become happy, for he is now fulfilling the conditions of happiness identified by the moralists of antiquity: knowing, doing, and loving the good.
Not God
One can also argue that there is a theological dimension to Phil’s transformation. Part of his conversion involves recognizing that there is a God and he is not it. Like most moderns, Phil thinks of himself as (in Freud’s immortal phrasing) “a prosthetic god,” someone who “makes the weather” through his mastery of science. Later, after his unsuccessful suicides, he tries to convince Rita that he is a god, a claim she rejects on account of her “twelve years of Catholic school” (this is the only time in the movie a religion is explicitly mentioned).
But Phil’s conviction evaporates once he is forced to acknowledge the inevitable death of an old beggar whose life he repeatedly tries to save. In the final scene of this subplot, he is kneeling down, vainly administering CPR to the man, when he stops and plaintively looks heavenward. And in an unrelated moment, he indirectly acknowledges God as Creator by reciting the verse, “Only God can make a tree.” God alone, Phil learns, is the Lord of life and death.
And then there is the pearl. On what ends up being the cycle’s last day, Rita is mesmerized by Phil’s now luminous character. As the first item for sale at a fund-raising event in which eligible bachelors are auctioned to the highest bidder, Phil generates tremendous interest from the town’s ladies, but Rita grandly outbids them all by offering the contents of her checking account. In a happy peripety, rather than Phil buying the pearl with everything he has, the pearl buys him with everything she has.
Like grace, Rita comes to Phil as a freely given gift; like the kingdom of Heaven, she confers on him an ineffable bliss. Rita’s purchase of Phil is literally a redemption or buying back from the slave block. (As she coos to him later, “You’re mine; I own you.”)
It is only after this redemption that Phil—and Rita—wake up the following day to February 3rd. The seemingly endless recurrence of the same has been broken by a love born of virtue, and the couple is now free to live happily ever after. (Because the cycle is broken by the consummation of love and desire rather than the abandonment of it, the story cannot be seen as an allegory for Eastern religious thought. And because this “eternal” recurrence is terminated by love and classical virtue, it is a refutation rather than an endorsement of Nietzsche.)
Though Phil and Rita’s romance is essential to the plot, it is not, however, the only gauge of progress. Throughout the movie, the groundhog seems to function as Phil’s nonhuman doppelganger. Both are weathermen and they share the same name. Phil suspects a link but wrongly concludes that as long as Phil the groundhog sees his shadow, he will be doomed to relive February 2nd. (This initiates a tragicomic incident in which he kills himself and the groundhog.) But what we eventually come to realize is that it is not Phil the groundhog’s shadow that proves crucial, it is Phil the man’s. As long as Phil wakes up in the morning and sees his shadow, there will be for him more winter, more of the same. But if he awakes without a shadow, he will be given spring, new life.
What is Phil Connors’s “shadow”? It is his vices, his bad habits and sinful ways that detract from and diminish his God-given goodness. The equation of shadow with vice is apposite, since both are, in St. Augustine’s terms, a privation: Shadows are a privation of light, and evil and vice are a privation of the good. Significantly, when one of the townies hears Phil Connors’s name, he teases him with the admonition, “Watch out for your shadow there, pal!” And significantly, the townie’s name is Gus—short, of course, for Augustine.
I should add, though, that the movie is not perfect. Rita’s final “redemption” of Phil, for instance, results in their sleeping together the next morning. (Call it the incense that had to be thrown on the Hollywood fire.) Also, despite promising hints, Phil’s turn to God is underdeveloped and falls short of a full religious conversion.
Purifying the Ground
Nonetheless, Groundhog Day exemplifies genuine pro-gress, from the nadir of contemporary thought to the apex of classical philosophy, from depravity to virtue, from wretchedness to happiness. And perhaps more interestingly, the movie taps into a Christian symbol of which its makers were no doubt unaware.
February 2nd in the liturgical calendar is the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, the feast that commemorates the presentation of her Son in the Temple 40 days after his birth. It was on this occasion that the aged Simeon declared the infant Jesus a “light for the revelation of the gentiles.” Traditionally, candles are blessed on the feast, with a prayer that “just as visible fire dispels the shadows of the night, so may invisible fire, that is, the brightness of the Holy Spirit, free us from the blindness of every vice.”
Simeon’s prophecy led to a folk belief that the weather of February 2nd had a prognostic value. If the sun shone for the greater part of the day, there would be 40 more days of winter, but if the skies were overcast, there would be an early spring. The badger was added later in Germany, but the Germans who emigrated to Pennsylvania could only find what native Americans in the area called a wojak, or woodchuck. Since the Indians considered the groundhog a wise animal, it seemed only natural to appoint him, as we learn in the movie, “Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators.”
The ground of Groundhog Day, in other words, is Catholic. And just as our secular celebration of the day unwittingly echoes a deeper truth about the Light revealed to the gentiles, so too does the movie unwittingly point the way back to that truth. And who knows, perhaps Rita, with her twelve years of Catholic school, knew this all along.
Michael P. Foley currently teaches in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. The New York Times article to which he refers is Alex Kuczynski’s “Groundhog Almighty,” December 7, 2003.
Phil’s Shadow
Michael P. Foley on the Lessons of Groundhog Day
Last December the New York Times ran an intriguing article about a Museum of Modern Art movie series on film and faith. What attracted the Times to the series was not its pageant of grave Swedish cinema but its opening feature, the 1993 romantic comedy Groundhog Day. The curators, polling “critics in the literary, religious and film worlds,” found that the movie “came up so many times that there was actually a squabble over who would write about it in the retrospective’s catalog.”
The movie, the article went on to observe, “has become a curious favorite of religious leaders of many faiths, who all see in Groundhog Day a reflection of their own spiritual messages.” A professor at NYU shows it in her classes to illustrate the doctrine of samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth Buddhists seek to escape), while a rabbi in Greenwich Village sees the film as hinging on mitvahs (good deeds). Wiccans like it because February 2nd is one of the year’s four “great sabbats,” while the Falun Dafa sect uses the movie as a lesson in spiritual advancement.
Deciphering which, if any, of these interpretations is correct is no easy task, especially since the director and co-writer of the film, Harold Ramis, has ambiguous religious beliefs (he is an agnostic raised Jewish and married to a Buddhist). The commentators also seem wedded to a single hermeneutical lens, forcing them to ignore contradictory data.
A more fruitful approach, I suggest, would involve following all of the clues, clues that lead not only to religion but also to the great conversation of philosophy. Once we do so, Groundhog Day may be seen for what it is: a stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim’s Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos.
Typical Modern
Groundhog Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:
The wretch, concentred all in self,Living, shall forfeit fair renown,And, doubly dying, shall go downTo the vile dust, from whence he sprung,Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.
By refusing to die to himself, Phil and those like him are doomed to die doubly, triply, innumerably.
The Punxsutawney celebration of Groundhog Day culminates with the town elders consulting a real woodchuck, also named Phil, about the next six weeks. The groundhog sees his shadow, an omen that more winter is to come.
Connors cannot wait to return to Pittsburgh, but trapped by a blizzard (which he failed to predict), he and the crew must stay another night in Punxsutawney. When he awakes the next morning, Phil discovers to his dismay that it is February 2nd—again. The same thing happens the next day, and the next. For reasons that are never made clear, Phil is condemned to live Groundhog Day over and over.
Phil’s situation is unique, yet the movie hints that it is not unrelated to our own quotidian lives. Commiserating with two locals over beers, Phil asks, “What would you do if every day was the same, and nothing you did ever mattered?” The men’s faces grow solemn, and one of them finally belches, “That about sums it up for me.” Phil’s preternatural plight bears a twin resemblance to ours: first, as a symbol for the Fall, with its “doubly dying” estrangement from God and return to the vile dust from whence we sprang; and second, as a symbol for life in the wake of postmodern philosophy.
For the great father of this philosophy is Nietzsche, and the idea that frightened him most was the “the eternal recurrence of the same,” i.e., that even the superior human being must bear the same dreary existence an infinite number of times. Like us, Phil is the modern man who must now confront the hardship of postlapsarian life on the one hand and the metaphysical meaninglessness of postmodern thought on the other.
Indeed, Phil’s various reactions to his enslavement read like the history of philosophy in reverse. Phil is shocked at his own impotence, so much faith had he put in his meteorological training. (“I make the weather!” he tells an unconvinced state trooper.) Phone lines and automobiles prove useless, as do his visits to a doctor and a therapist. All of the Enlightenment’s societal buttresses—technology, natural science, and social science—collapse under the weight of a problem outside the parameters of space and time.
Failure & Happiness
Once Phil realizes that in his Nietzschean quagmire there are no consequences to his actions, he also experiences modern philosophy’s liberation from any sense of eternal justice. “I am not going to play by their rules any longer,” he gleefully announces. His reaction epitomizes Glaucon’s argument in Plato’s Republic. Remove the fear of punishment, Glaucon argued, and the righteous will behave no differently than the wicked. Nineteen hundred years later, Machiavelli, arguably the father of modern philosophy, elevated this view to a philosophical principle.
And Phil embodies it perfectly: Once he learns that he can get away with anything he wants, he becomes Machiavelli’s prince. He unhesitatingly steals money from a bank, cold-cocks a life insurance agent, and seduces an attractive woman.
To Phil’s surprise, however, this life of instant gratification proves unfulfilling, leading him to set his sights on Rita, his beautiful and wholesome co-worker. The name “Rita,” I contend, tells us something about the role she plays in Phil’s life. Rita is short for Margarita, the Latin word for “pearl.” To Phil, Rita is the pearl of great price. We know from Matthew’s Gospel that this pearl is the kingdom of Heaven, but it may also be appropriate to think of it as happiness, since, according to Aristotle, happiness is that towards which everything in our life is ordered.
And so the overriding question of the story becomes clear: What will it take to attain true happiness? What will it take to buy the pearl?
Phil’s initial attempts to win Rita again betray his Machiavellian instincts. Machiavelli contended that it is better for a prince to appear to be virtuous—which fosters in others a gullible trust—than to be virtuous, which hamstrings his actions. And so Phil goes to extraordinary lengths to learn about Rita’s aspirations and then to feign the same. (The logic here is also Hegelian: Injustice is justified in the name of historical progress.) Yet the ruse never works; each night ends with Phil receiving a slap in the face rather than acquiescence to his overtures. The pearl of happiness, it turns out, cannot be bought with counterfeit money.
Phil’s failures lead to despair. At the end of his rope, he now commits suicide—over and over. Yet no matter how often he jumps off buildings or electrocutes himself, he stills wakes up to another Groundhog Day. His poignant awareness of his emptiness recalls the chilling line from St. Augustine’s Confessions: “I went far from you, my God, and I became to myself a wasteland.” Liberation from the divine law initially sounds thrilling, but such freedom proves to be not only hollow, but self-squandering annihilation. As Phil says, “I’ve killed myself so many times, I don’t even exist anymore.”
And so Phil, with nowhere else to go, unconsciously turns from modern philosophy, with its “concentred” individualism, to ancient philosophy, with its praise of the just life as the best way to live. Phil begins pursuing excellence (which in Greek is the same word as virtue), not for any ulterior motive but because he enjoys it. In good Aristotelian fashion, he cultivates moral virtues (e.g., saving a choking victim), intellectual virtues (reading Chekhov), and a proficiency in the arts (playing the piano). And thus Phil starts to become happy, for he is now fulfilling the conditions of happiness identified by the moralists of antiquity: knowing, doing, and loving the good.
Not God
One can also argue that there is a theological dimension to Phil’s transformation. Part of his conversion involves recognizing that there is a God and he is not it. Like most moderns, Phil thinks of himself as (in Freud’s immortal phrasing) “a prosthetic god,” someone who “makes the weather” through his mastery of science. Later, after his unsuccessful suicides, he tries to convince Rita that he is a god, a claim she rejects on account of her “twelve years of Catholic school” (this is the only time in the movie a religion is explicitly mentioned).
But Phil’s conviction evaporates once he is forced to acknowledge the inevitable death of an old beggar whose life he repeatedly tries to save. In the final scene of this subplot, he is kneeling down, vainly administering CPR to the man, when he stops and plaintively looks heavenward. And in an unrelated moment, he indirectly acknowledges God as Creator by reciting the verse, “Only God can make a tree.” God alone, Phil learns, is the Lord of life and death.
And then there is the pearl. On what ends up being the cycle’s last day, Rita is mesmerized by Phil’s now luminous character. As the first item for sale at a fund-raising event in which eligible bachelors are auctioned to the highest bidder, Phil generates tremendous interest from the town’s ladies, but Rita grandly outbids them all by offering the contents of her checking account. In a happy peripety, rather than Phil buying the pearl with everything he has, the pearl buys him with everything she has.
Like grace, Rita comes to Phil as a freely given gift; like the kingdom of Heaven, she confers on him an ineffable bliss. Rita’s purchase of Phil is literally a redemption or buying back from the slave block. (As she coos to him later, “You’re mine; I own you.”)
It is only after this redemption that Phil—and Rita—wake up the following day to February 3rd. The seemingly endless recurrence of the same has been broken by a love born of virtue, and the couple is now free to live happily ever after. (Because the cycle is broken by the consummation of love and desire rather than the abandonment of it, the story cannot be seen as an allegory for Eastern religious thought. And because this “eternal” recurrence is terminated by love and classical virtue, it is a refutation rather than an endorsement of Nietzsche.)
Though Phil and Rita’s romance is essential to the plot, it is not, however, the only gauge of progress. Throughout the movie, the groundhog seems to function as Phil’s nonhuman doppelganger. Both are weathermen and they share the same name. Phil suspects a link but wrongly concludes that as long as Phil the groundhog sees his shadow, he will be doomed to relive February 2nd. (This initiates a tragicomic incident in which he kills himself and the groundhog.) But what we eventually come to realize is that it is not Phil the groundhog’s shadow that proves crucial, it is Phil the man’s. As long as Phil wakes up in the morning and sees his shadow, there will be for him more winter, more of the same. But if he awakes without a shadow, he will be given spring, new life.
What is Phil Connors’s “shadow”? It is his vices, his bad habits and sinful ways that detract from and diminish his God-given goodness. The equation of shadow with vice is apposite, since both are, in St. Augustine’s terms, a privation: Shadows are a privation of light, and evil and vice are a privation of the good. Significantly, when one of the townies hears Phil Connors’s name, he teases him with the admonition, “Watch out for your shadow there, pal!” And significantly, the townie’s name is Gus—short, of course, for Augustine.
I should add, though, that the movie is not perfect. Rita’s final “redemption” of Phil, for instance, results in their sleeping together the next morning. (Call it the incense that had to be thrown on the Hollywood fire.) Also, despite promising hints, Phil’s turn to God is underdeveloped and falls short of a full religious conversion.
Purifying the Ground
Nonetheless, Groundhog Day exemplifies genuine pro-gress, from the nadir of contemporary thought to the apex of classical philosophy, from depravity to virtue, from wretchedness to happiness. And perhaps more interestingly, the movie taps into a Christian symbol of which its makers were no doubt unaware.
February 2nd in the liturgical calendar is the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, the feast that commemorates the presentation of her Son in the Temple 40 days after his birth. It was on this occasion that the aged Simeon declared the infant Jesus a “light for the revelation of the gentiles.” Traditionally, candles are blessed on the feast, with a prayer that “just as visible fire dispels the shadows of the night, so may invisible fire, that is, the brightness of the Holy Spirit, free us from the blindness of every vice.”
Simeon’s prophecy led to a folk belief that the weather of February 2nd had a prognostic value. If the sun shone for the greater part of the day, there would be 40 more days of winter, but if the skies were overcast, there would be an early spring. The badger was added later in Germany, but the Germans who emigrated to Pennsylvania could only find what native Americans in the area called a wojak, or woodchuck. Since the Indians considered the groundhog a wise animal, it seemed only natural to appoint him, as we learn in the movie, “Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators.”
The ground of Groundhog Day, in other words, is Catholic. And just as our secular celebration of the day unwittingly echoes a deeper truth about the Light revealed to the gentiles, so too does the movie unwittingly point the way back to that truth. And who knows, perhaps Rita, with her twelve years of Catholic school, knew this all along.
Michael P. Foley currently teaches in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. The New York Times article to which he refers is Alex Kuczynski’s “Groundhog Almighty,” December 7, 2003.
