Style

Part 2: Church Music and Style

Why then is style so important in music for Church? The Church herself is not interested in style as such. The Second Vatican Council says clearly that all kinds of truly artistic music that are sacred and useful have a place in the liturgy. Each generation has contributed its genius and left a treasury of sacred music that the council ordered to be used and preserved. While giving its own Gregorian chant (which in its turn has many different styles) a primacy of place in the celebration of the liturgy, the Church welcomes the styles of the many schools of composers, the various national styles, writing that is polyphonic, monodic, with or without instrumental accompaniment, new and old. She is not primarily concerned with style for its own sake. What she seeks and demands is that music be true art and sacred. Those requirements can be fulfilled by many diverse styles. Music may exist in an authentic style and be well-performed and stylistically correct, but not be acceptable for the liturgy. A well-trained brass band playing the marches of Sousa demonstrates a fine example of military style music. A well-rehearsed combo can show what contemporary folk or western music should be, an example of those styles. A great symphony orchestra, playing the best of the orchestral literature, can be in first place in performance of classical or romantic or contemporary styles. But the judgement about such efforts for church use must cause us to reject them all, since they do not fulfill the requirement of sacredness. They may be art; they certainly show a good performance practice.

On the other hand, some music, while taken to be sacred because of the sacred texts or because the melody is known as a sacred song, fails because of the lack of true art, either in the composing of the piece or in the manner of performance. Regardless of the century, the vocal or instrumental requirements, or the good intentions of the composer and the performers, it is unacceptable since it lacks a goodness of form. It is not art.

Because the Vatican Council allowed for a wide freedom in the music used for liturgical worship, many have thought that to permit all styles has meant permission to employ all music in the liturgy. The criterion established by connotation must be maintained, and it will exclude everything that is not sacred. The baroque distinction remains at the basis of connotation. What is meant for recreation, entertainment, military purposes, ostentatious technical display by soloists, advertising, opera, stage or concert use is easily detected because it does not denote a sacred purpose. It is for that reason that the vast majority of Catholic people sense an irreverence in the use of secular music in church. It is for that reason that the sensus ecclesiae affirms the holiness of Gregorian chant.

Will these ideas ever change? They might, so that the twenty-first century may develop its own style. It may well invent a style that is truly art and is sacred. What that style may be we do not know; the twentieth century failed to establish its own. But even in the twenty-first century the same criteria will be used to judge compositions of every style: are they true art and sacred?