Hitting the Wrong Note
Thomas Day on Church Music
The telephone voice message, from a stranger, sounds desperate: “I must speak with you. Please call me as soon as possible. I need your help.” I return the call and listen to a long tale of anguish and emotional suffering that comes close to physical pain. The topic of the lament is liturgical music in a particular Roman Catholic parish.
About thirty years ago I began to scribble commentaries on the less-than-perfect state of music in Catholic parishes. Ever since then I have been receiving these distress calls with their requests for some kind of advice and consolation. Now these messages are also arriving by e-mail. The details of the complaint will vary. Musicians might give precise descriptions of things that are wrong, such as the parish’s musical repertory or organ pipes that do not function. Others are not as clear about what irks them and refer only to “the loss of the sacred” or “those people,” who are denounced as liberal or conservative or ignorant.
My response usually begins thus: “I have heard this same story before.” In fact, I have heard the same troubled complaint dozens of times. The details may differ, yet the complaints always seem to come down to one source of pain: the feeling of exile. My correspondents sense that they are being driven out of their spiritual home—exiled—by music. What the parish calls liturgical music seems to be part of a cultural cleansing program for the expulsion of undesirables: them. This is a troubling development, but in the history of Christianity it is, once again, a story that has been heard before.
A Display & A Signal
Christians, probably going back to the apostles, have always sensed that music during worship is not just pretty sounds. It is also a way of displaying orthodoxy, confidence, solidarity, and even a kind of territorial “ownership.” For example, the Russian Orthodox Church and Baptist Church have developed different creeds and theologies; at the same time, they have also developed different music to proclaim their uniqueness. The music of one of these churches might cause bewilderment or even anger if used for worship in the other. Unfortunately, Christians are also capable of interpreting the different varieties of church music as ways of signaling which socio-economic or ethnic group is in charge or which group does not belong.
I sometimes ask my troubled correspondents to ponder for a moment the music of youth culture. For generations, maybe centuries, youth culture has used certain music as an internal coded language that ratifies the values of that culture and establishes a territory where the uncomprehending outsiders do not belong. Then I ask my correspondents to ponder the shops and malls that play classical or old popular music in order to drive away loitering youths and drug dealers. After such pondering my distressed telephone correspondents begin to realize that they are not hallucinating; music can, indeed, be a method of expulsion.
Roman Catholicism, as James Joyce put it, might be described as, “Here comes everybody.” The Church has tried to make clear that worship is for everybody: rich, poor, and every ethnic group. In the past and in Western culture, the Church’s system for bringing in everybody was the Latin language and liturgical music that was not identified as the property of one particular ethnic group. It is true that Latin-rite congregations east of the Rhine had a long folk tradition of singing vernacular songs while the priest quietly celebrated what was called the Low Mass. But the Church of “Here comes everybody” could always claim that there was also a repertory of Latin liturgical music that belonged to this everybody.
That arrangement (praising God in a universal song but sometimes in a local vernacular song) began to break down centuries ago. Today, it is close to extinction in many parts of the world. My correspondents suffer because they are subjected to a liturgical music that seems to be militantly local, with a message that sounds like this: “Here comes us, we are the ascendant group—and if you are not us, go away.”
Who is this us? According to my correspondents, us can be found among the nicest people—from the fiercely conservative to the New Age Catholics who have drifted into a kind of Christian pantheism. When they assemble at prayer, they all have one thing in common: individuals who assume the role of strong leaders. These leaders will be members of the clergy or musicians who reassure, motivate, inspire, gather, and essentially control the assembled faithful (usually by means of excessive amplification of their voices).
A strong leader priest may be a very pleasant person who seems to be conducting the congregation on a tour of a stately mansion. Occasionally, he may be much more intrusive. (A correspondent told me about the priest who began a Liturgy by telling everyone to turn to the individuals around them and ask each one: “What is your favorite dessert?” And that was only the beginning.)
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
32.1—January/February 2019
on Down Syndrome & the Lives That Matter by David F. Watson
31.4—July/August 2018
Labels & the Ecumenism of Discipleship by James M. Kushiner
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
