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So how soon will it be when parishes here in the USA start replacing their guitar music with Gregorian Chant. I'm getting very impatient.
Bob K.,
"Never" seems like the most realistic answer, though at least a few are going in the right direction.
Really interesting! Apparently, Messiaen's music often employs rhythmic palindromes, providing both variety, order, and an impression of timelessness.
Michael and/or Pes, can you point to any online resources for Messiaen study? I'd like to do some work analyzing his works, but obviously it's quite different from looking at any other composer or style - even 12 tone makes sense to some degree!
As far as Gregorian chant goes, I'd point out that much of what I read has Messiaen identifying with nature most of all. After all, have you ever heard a bird chirping out a 4/4 cadence? Clearly Messiaen, as a devout Catholic and chant fan, was influenced by chant, butisn't it possible that chant is just a natural type of music? If you have a text and someone says "sing it", isn't the most obvious route to chant it? So perhaps Messiaen goes to a level of primitivity BEYOND chant. Interesting idea, to say the least.
And this reminds me of the "beauty" discussion on the forum. Pes said something roughly to the effect that beauty is an experience of the divine. Well, in the ads for that movie "The Apparition of the Eternal Church" many of the listeners to the namesake piece had a (good/bad) religious experience. That and the similarity to chant would dictate that Messiaen's music is "beautiful" (I use quotes to distinguish the objective idea of beauty). Of course try explaining that to one of our parishioners after All Saints Day Mass!
Gavin,
About "explaining it to the people," I think most people expect some kind of pious mood music in church, a la the Cecilians. They think that "holy" means that the music has to be innocuous. I'm not sure there's a way to break this spell without shocking the daylights out of the faithful.
I know a priest who complained about a very wonderful pianist. "He plays all this Messiaen. ('Mess-EYE-yan,' he mispronounced it) We're not going to win over any converts that way," he fussed.
Then he invited me to a Broadway show he was producing in a local parish gymnasium. I don't think he fully realized who he was talking to:)
BTW, that priest was a degreed musician.
I'm not sure if I should say well-educated, however. There's are distinctions to be made there.
Thank you for the insight Michael. Someday I hope to throw myself into this music. I feel a sense of loss that I don't know it.
pious mood music in church, a la the Cecilians
Cue the inevitable Pes Defense of the Indefensibly Insipid... (charging into an empty room with an antique rapier:)
Well what's wrong with pious mood music? I think Messaien's music is very often so incomprehensible as to amount to mere atmospherics as well. Only it's less easy on the ears!
The function of sacred music is not to epater le bourgeois.
At least, not directly. Frontal assaults on listening habits just as often produce consternation and rejection as insight and liberation. Actually, it's probable that playing Messiaen will turn more people off than on. It's very confrontational.
But, in this day and age, there is absolutely zero confrontation going on in your average parish music program. Quite the opposite. So the danger on the other side is complacency so complacent as to be immobile, like a gelatinous pudding.
There is a middle way. We need bridges. Write sacred music that represents a movement toward Messiaen, that has one foot in common practice and one foot in the Musical Beyond.
Starting to listen to Messiaen:
1. Le Banquet Celeste
2. Dieu parmi nous
3. Serene Alleluias (from Ascension suite)
Close your eyes when you listen to these things and imagine the sunlit interior of a cathedral as carefully as you can. En printemps.
I've never heard Messiaen, but a question accured to me while reading the comments. We have a parish in which there is an attachment to piano "mood music" (as some have called it) following the communion hymn, during the cleansing of the vessels. Would Messiaen be a reasonable middle way here? What other piano pieces could I introduce, that move in the direction of chant?
New DOM, pick up the Dom Benoit book, "Modal Elevations". It has TONS of great short music in modal keys. I use it for an "emergency book".
New DOM
I'm guessing Messiaen would not be a middle way. Most of his music is exceedingly difficult to execute.
The "lounge tinkling" you describe is annoying, isn't it? I wonder why they do it. Do they miss the heyday of the "piano bar"? Do they think every moment of silence is an indictment against their musical direction? Do they wish to support prayer at this moment of sublimity by suffusing it with bathos? It is a mystery.
The organ is the most appropriate liturgical instrument, following the voice. A pedal tone with light modal improvisation is all that's required.
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