The Real "On Eagles' Wings" and a Neglected Catholic Tradition

Sometimes composers set music to sacred texts that become so well-known that one can hardly read the words without hearing the tune. Who can ponder Isaiah 9 without hearing Haendel's "For Unto Us a Child is Born," or who can help but to think of Brahms' Requiem when St. Paul taunts, "Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?" These "ear worms" stay with us and heighten our appreciation of these Scriptural passages.

Alas, not all such situations are to be celebrated. Take Psalm 90, for instance. It is quite possible that many cringe at the mere reading of that text, for it immediately conjures up the sounds of one of the most popular--and one of the most poorly-written--pieces of music in the history of the Catholic Church. I speak, of course, of "On Eagles' Wings," or, as a friend of mine--no ideologue, she--calls it, "that yoohoo song." ("Excuse me!!!" she once said, approaching Michael Joncas, "aren't you the guy who wrote that yoohoo song?" Joncas, once he figured out what she was talking about, just laughed and admitted that he really should have revised the piece.)

What most people don't realize, however, is that the Church has had its very own setting of Psalm 90 for centuries, and it is sung in the Traditional Mass every year on the First Sunday in Lent. It is an ornate, haunting melody, full of richness and beauty, and it, being sung as the Tract (the chant which replaces the Alleluia during Septuagesima and Lent), sits in the center of a liturgy whose Propers are built around this profound Psalm text.

Let us not, however, jump to conclusions and assume that in the good old days this splendid work of anonymous monks lost in history would have been well-known to Catholics everywhere. The truth is that in most places, the authentic melodies of the Propers were replaced with simple, highly-repetitious Psalm tones which are incapable of communicating musical uniqueness tied to a given feast day or to a given liturgical action. This would have been even more particularly true of the Graduals, Alleluias, and Tracts, which are the most ornate pieces of the entire Gregorian chant repertoire.

These melodious chants, especially the Tracts, also take the longest time to sing, and they are often ripped from the liturgy in favor of Psalm tones, sadly, not for reasons of necessity but for reasons of expediency. This leads us to a question that must be answered: Why should these ornate, seemingly time-consuming chants be sung? And why should we listen attentively to them?

In exploring this problem it is crucial to consult the motu proprio on sacred music issued by Pope St. Pius X, called Tra le sollecitudini. Therein, St. Pius X says that all sacred music should have three qualities: holiness, universality, and goodness of forms (in the plural). Why "forms" in the plural and not just "form"? Professor William Mahrt of Stanford University has opined--and there is much in papal documents to reaffirm this interpretation--that this crucial plural noun references the various liturgical actions that take place during the Mass, each of which requires a different kind of musical form. Indeed, even Pope John Paul II wrote that the music used at Mass must be appropriate to the liturgical action which it accompanies.

Dr. Mahrt has gone to great lengths in his work to illustrate the ways in which the Gregorian chant repertoire offers a paradigm of these various liturgical forms. The Introits, which accompany the opening procession, musically convey movement or motion, just as a procession represents movement--in fact a pilgrimage toward the Eternal Jerusalem. The Communion chants, too, convey motion, since this moment in the liturgy is also a procession. The Graduals, Alleluias, and Tracts, however, are much different. Careful listening to these will reveal the fact that in these chants there are many musical notes set to each syllable of the text. This slows down the rate at which the text is articulated, and this facilitates meditation upon these priceless scriptural passages. "Wisdom, be attentive!" they say in the Eastern Liturgy before the Scriptures are read. Indeed, we are to hear, to be attentive, and the chants of the Mass of the Catechumens facilitate this listening, this attentive meditation.

One is reminded of St. Teresa's exhortation to pray the Our Father, but to take an hour to say it. The ornate chant melodies of the Gradual, Alleluia, and Tract force us to slow down, to treat the treasures we have been given with due care. Barking them out on a Psalm tone, however, only conjures up memories of the infamous machine-gun fire mumblings in Catholic liturgies of yore. As Fr. Benedict Groeschel once said, "In the old days, the Mass was not celebrated in Latin; it was celebrated in gibberish."

"This is all well and good," some might say, "but I still don't get it." Others might think that such academic lines of reasoning are merely an excuse to beat up on the people who use those dreadful Rossini Propers. Are there any more practical, more down-to-earth reasons, to stand loyally by the authentic melodies of the Roman Gradual? The appropriate retort here involves looking upon singing as a sacrifice. Recall that the Psalmist speaks of the "sacrifice of jubilation." Ask anyone who sings the Church's liturgy, from priest to choir member, and all will attest that it is hard work. Imagine being a monk, singing nine hours a day! This is hardly the kind of singing that is merely for entertainment or even artistic purposes. It is hard work; it is a sacrifice. Here, ora and labora meet in a unique way.

But the listeners sacrifice, too. It comes in terms of the time spent listening (though it really isn't that much time); it is manifested in the meditation that is facilitated by the ornate melodies; and perhaps there is also sacrifice involved in learning to appreciate these foreign melodies, these unique chants which might not be catchy but nevertheless deserve a receptive posture on our part, a willingness to be taught, to learn.

This approach militates against an entertainment paradigm when it comes to sacred music, an attitude that music loses its usefulness when it ceases to tickle our ears or bring a tear to our eyes. There is more to sacred music than entertainment; there is even more to it than its ability to inspire us to become better men. Its ultimate purpose is the worship of God, and proper worship is a sacrifice.

There is no better time of year than the season of Lent to renew our offerings, to lift up our spiritual sacrifices with "full heart and mind and voice to the unseen God," as the Exultet of the Easter Vigil says. The long, Lenten tracts give way to the joyful shouts of Easter, and all along our sacrifices of jubilation anticipate the saving acts of Christ, who hears our cries and puts a New Song into our mouths, a hymn to our God, which shall forever be sung by angels and saints alike in the Heavenly Liturgy.

Jeffrey Herbert on the Liturgical-Industrial Complex

If can't beat 'em, join 'em. That appears to be the new modus operandi of the mainstream music establishment, who for the past two to three generations have been offering Catholics little more than bubble gum music to sing. Jeffrey Herbert slices and dices the issue.

h/t to Aristotle.

S. Clement's: The Paradigm of Catholic Worship in Philadelphia

Last evening I marked the end of the Christmas season by attending Mass at S. Clement's, an Anglo-Catholic parish here in Philadelphia which I frequent from time to time and where I have a number of friends. This parish is well-known for its excellent liturgical praxis (indeed, orthopraxis) and music. One of my own schola members even came along for the experience and left impressed. "The choir was as advertised," he said.

S. Clement's uses a Mass that is essentially the Traditional Mass said in a sacral vernacular, translated by someone who was clearly literate and aesthetically sensible. It offers perhaps the solution that Rome should have pursued in the mid 20th century. Alas, I need hardly comment on how far afield we've gone from that.

While the Traditional Rite translated tastefully into the vernacular may offer a simple solution to the present liturgical upheaval, it also gets to the white-hot center of the issue: bad taste. More than once, while marveling at the beauty of a Mass at S. Clement's, I've had the thought, "We should do this: translate the authentic Roman Rite into good English, and everything will be fine." But soon my delightful daydreams are rudely interrupted by the recollection of this bad taste problem which will in most places inevitably invade any liturgical rite. I, being the snot-nosed kid that I was, used to think less of Thomas Day's book _Why Catholics Can't Sing_ because it wasn't academic enough and didn't seem to offer many concrete solutions, but recently I have come to admire it as one of the most important books on the liturgy, precisely because Day fearlessly tackles American Catholicism's knack for the liturgically insipid and ugly.

Bad taste. It's such an easy problem to state, not difficult to summarize, but nearly impossible to solve, for it is a function of pervasive ideas in the minds of what Albert Jay Nock called the mass man, and these are not easily overcome. In fact, one wonders about the wisdom of systematically trying to overcome them. It seems far better to start small, convinced communities who believe in the importance of the liturgy, and then let them perform their mustard seed-like miracles. There are two such parishes in the Diocese of Camden, and there is one in South Philadelphia that looks like it's on its way.

Of course, many Catholics immediately turn up their noses at the mere mention of S. Clement's. In a fit of reeking, ultramontane, pious self-righteousness, they dismiss the beautiful Masses at S. Clement's as some kind of pretentious British chauvinism, not worthy of being acknowledged whatsoever. (It's worth pointing out that the same people often turn around and call for religious dialogue with churches that are theologically and liturgically much further afield than the Anglo-Catholics.) Such provincialism breeds mediocrity, for when the really excellent is hidden from view, people are kept from knowing what is truly possible if only there were the necessary dedication to make it happen. (One of my relatives calls this the "mushroom technique": Keep' em in the dark and feed 'em you-know-what.)

In the title of this post I called S. Clement's the paradigm of Catholic worship in Philadelphia, but truly this is an understatement. In all honesty, I've never seen better liturgies on such a consistent basis anywhere in this country. Rather than ignoring them, we ought to be asking them how they manage to achieve all this. (The short answer is a lot of hard work by a small group of highly dedicated individuals who probably read more in one year than most of us do in a lifetime.)

Bad taste. It's a depressing problem, and perhaps we musicians have to deal with it more than anyone else. If there is anything that can be done, I suppose the best course of action is to provide a good example of what is truly excellent, good, and beautiful, and S. Clement's is a good place to start.

A priest devotes entire sermon to sacred music

Yesterday, at the Traditional Latin Mass (What a clumsy term! It should just be called "Mass." It's the Novus Ordo that ought to have all the adjectives.) at St. Peter's in Merchantville, NJ, the pastor, Fr. Anthony Manuppella, devoted his entire sermon to sacred music. This same sermon was recently published in Sacred Music under the title "The Furious Power of Sacred Music."

I have been sitting on the organ bench and directing choirs for almost ten years now, and not once--never before!--have any of my employers devoted such a magnanimous effort toward the promotion of sacred music. I sat back in my little corner where I chill out during the sermon and got misty-eyed thinking about the implications of this. An entire sermon on sacred music! I've only ever heard one other in my entire life, that one having been delivered by Fr. Robert Pasley, the esteemed Rector of Mater Ecclesiae in Berlin, NJ, one of the finest Traditional Rite parishes in the country.

Now if all this preaching were just mere words, as unfortunately so often can happen, it would actually be an abomination, Pharisaical ear-candy for the chant enthusiasts in the crowd. But such was not the case here. I have worked at St. Peter's for a year, and I can say that our pastor sees to it that I have everything that we need to do a good job. Music is important; indeed, it is a priority.

If it wouldn't threaten my job security I'd be campaigning for Fr. Manuppella to be made a seminary rector, or something, for the importance of sacred music is not an issue that is popular in the clerical ranks, though, in a paradox of paradoxes, the Diocese of Camden seems to have more of them per capita than most.

Pastors, study sacred music. And preach on it. If nothing else, it will give your musicians sufficient energy to get through Easter twice over.