A Defense of Musical Instruments in Church and the Orchestral Mass
In his 1903 motu proprio “Tra Le Sollecitudini” (“Among the Concerns”), Pope St. Pius X stated: “The employment of the piano is forbidden in church, as is also that of noisy or frivolous instruments such as drums, cymbals, bells and the like.”
We should of course read the sainted pope's comments in context. By the turn of the century in Italy, theatrical operatic music dominated in churches, much (or even most) of it was schmaltzy and not of very high quality, and it was being performed with the instruments Pope St. Pius X lists above. Churches were even known to set liturgical texts directly to popular Italian opera pieces, such as the quartet from Verdi’s “Rigoletto.” Chant and polyphony were barely being sung in this place and at this time. Therefore, it makes sense that Pope St. Pius X’s 1903 document, plus documents written over the next 66 years - namely, 1) Pius XI's 1928 apostolic constitution “Divini Cultus" (“Divine Worship”), 2) Pius XII's 1947 “Mediator Dei" (“God the Mediator”) and 1955 “Musicae Sacrae” encyclicals, 3) the Sacred Congregation for Rites' 1958 instruction “De Musica Sacra”, and 4) Vatican II's 1963 “Sacrosanctum Concilium” (“Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy”) and 1969 instruction “Musicam Sacram" - prioritized the revival of chant, polyphony and organ.
Now that chant, polyphony and organ have actually been quite heavily restored to (traditional) Catholic liturgies over the last 100 years (largely due to Pope St. Pius X's original early 20th-century efforts), perhaps traditional Catholic musicians can survey the last 2,000 years of Catholic western sacred music history - from psalm tones, to syllabic Gregorian chants, to more melismatic chants, to organum, to 12th-16th century polyphony, to 17th-century concerted liturgical music forms, to 18th-century orchestrated Masses, to 19th-century revival of 16th-17th-century forms and continuation/development of 18th-century forms. Perhaps said musicians can both 1) appreciate what all of these different musical styles accomplish theologically and artistically and 2) resurrect some liturgical music forms (namely, 18th-19th century ones) that have fallen out of favor (albeit, some for good reasons!). Although orchestral instruments and piano “got a bad rap” in the Catholic Church by 1900 due to their use in so much low-quality, theatrical, operatic music (especially in Italy), contemporary traditional Catholic musicians may be well-equipped to carefully resurrect 1) pieces from this 19th-century repertoire that are higher quality and 2) instrumental liturgical pieces from the 16th to 18th centuries.
While debate regarding 18th-century orchestral Masses remains, and rightfully so, one can without a doubt clearly and authentically place Mozart and Haydn in the aforementioned Western Catholic high art music trajectory, and one should recognize these men clearly as master composers in the Western music canon. Mozart and Haydn Masses, which should likely be reserved for very particular liturgical occasions, are spectacular and sensational, conveying the glory and majesty of God. On the other hand, 16th-century polyphonic Masses, for example, can be identified as more transcendent, solemn, prayerful, meditative and contemplative (and more closely musically tied to the “original” Gregorian chant of the Church). Although our contemporary, 21st-century, tonal/post-tonal ears may favor the sweet sonorities of 16th-century polyphony, the modality (and textual intelligibility, at times) of 13th-15th century polyphony can add very much to the sense of the mystery of the Mass.
Whereas Baroque, 17th century instrumental liturgical music seems to retain the sense of solemnity that sacred Renaissance polyphony exudes, 18th-century instrumental liturgical music feels more transitional, in that orchestral Mass music seems to contain a stronger flare of the secular. 16th-17th century instrumentation acts under and with the formal structure and pure vocal style of the liturgical vocal music. On the other hand, 18th-century orchestral Masses directly imitate the secular opera of that time period in their very style and structure - for example, in A) their clearly opera-overture-like introductions to the choral singing of the Kyrie and B) their aria-like solo sections, which often feature opera-chorus-like singing underneath the solo vocal lines, in movements such as the Benedictus. Examples of both of these musical tendencies in Joseph Haydn’s Missa in Angustiis (“Mass in troubled times”), also known as the “Lord Nelson Mass.” The decline in the quality of much operatic writing in late-19th century Italy, which mirrors what some have named as the decline of the quality of liturgical music in other countries, such as (Victorian) England (see “O Thou, the Central Orb”), should be considered in the context of the political and ideological modernism flooding into the Church, against which Pope St. Pius X’s predecessor Pope Pius IX had fought so hard in his 1864 “Syllabus of Errors”, among other documents.
While one can of course point to structural, stylistic and melodic similarities between, for example, Mozart’s Masses and his operas, one can also point to similar (although perhaps less pronounced) similarities between 16th-century sacred polyphony and secular madrigals written in the same time period. Indeed, one can point to a wonderfully integrated, fluid sense of the sacred and secular through Western (particularly pre-Protestant Revolution) history, which is of course visible in Western musical history. There is truly a sense in which pre-modern (if we accept early modernity as beginning around 1500 AD) secular and sacred artistic materials synergistically spoke the same language in a society that still welded together the manifested institutions of church and state. In this pre-modern era, we can point to much natural, organic infusion of high art into “low”, folk art and popular culture.
Richard Grablin beautifully writes:
“These musical artifacts also speak to a time when there wasn't a need to push folk music (authentic or not) into the liturgy because of 1) that close interconnection between the sacred and secular spheres that existed in wider culture (where culture flowed out of devotion to the Mass and didn't need to be artificially inserted back into it by ‘experts’), and 2) far more opportunities for lay/popular devotions and expressions of piety in para- or extra-liturgical practices, whether on all the great feast days and surrounding customs of celebration, processions, stations of the cross or three hours devotions, passion plays, first Saturdays (for a more recent example), etc. In these two elements, rooted in history and culture, one would find fertile ground for the regrowth of folk music with a ‘sacred flare.’
Another problem (again) with 20th-century, heavy-handed, top-down, Liturgical-Movement-inspired Roman consolidation of liturgical praxis was the forcing of all of the above expressivity into the Mass (and Office, which of course is hardly ever celebrated) alone, which as recent history has amply demonstrated is impossible, and has contributed to the free-for-all feel of liturgical art in the past 60-70 years. When Mass becomes the end-all-be-all of folk piety (because the academic theologians consider the ‘folks’ to be illiterate, ignorant, and superstitious, and must be saved from themselves, an attitude evidenced in plenty of academic articles on the ‘theology of devotions’ from the 1940s-'50s), the ‘folk’ aspect becomes ‘transmogrified,’ and so do piety and liturgy for that matter.”
The Western Christian artistic tradition (as opposed to, for example, the Eastern Christian one) has always taken secular or “profane” materials and transformed them into sacred works that are still recognizable as what they before but have taken on an entirely new character. How powerfully symbolic this is! Does this not mirror the baptized person? Think of the major appropriation of Greco-Roman architectural styles (Ionian/Dorian/Corinthian columns, anyone?) by early Christian builders of basilicas or the use of pagan putti (essentially, chubby little babies with wings) to represent angels in Christian art. Similarly, 16th-century composers (such as Palestrina) frequently wrote polyphonic Masses based off of secular tunes, such as the drinking song known as “L’homme arme.” The symbolic brilliance of the “armed man” is that he is a drunken man in a bar, a crusader, the pope, the Christian person armed against sin, the devil, and Christ - all at once. (It may be worth noting here that few, if any folks in the pews in our times could recognize by ear any Renaissance secular tunes embedded in sacred polyphony. The extent to which people could 500 years ago may warrant a separate investigation and discussion.)
Perhaps this secular-to-sacred journey is more “successful” in the case of, for example, 16th-century sacred polyphony than Mozart Masses, but perhaps there is still room for the latter in our liturgies! (Although Mozart operas can be considered part of the popular/pop music of the 18th-century day, we can surely point to a difference in artistic quality between Mozart’s secular music and much of the popular/pop music we hear on the radio in our times.)
The Western Church, as opposed to the Eastern one, organically developed to embrace the use of musical instruments. The organ, based on air like the human voice, developed at the same as did the vocal practice of organum, and singers of polyphonic music were called organistas. These terms (“organum” and “organistas”) reflect the ever-present understanding of a strong relationship between the organ and the human voice. Although legend has it that Pope Vitalian, Bishop of Rome from 657 to 672, first introduced the organ to churches, organs actually first came to be used in Catholic churches - monastic ones, in particular - by the year 1100.
As early as the 15th century, instruments besides the organ were certainly being used to accompany church polyphony - particularly in Spain. However, the extent to which these musical instruments A) played certain musical passages solo, B) simply reinforced human voices or C) were even used at all, is uncertain. Most likely, these instruments simply doubled or substituted for human voices, having no independent function. Further, these instruments were assigned to different human voices based on their pitch, not their timbre or tone. Violins and flutes functioned as soprano and alto voices; horns and trombones, tenor and bass.
The liturgical instruments that were heavily used in the 16th and 17th centuries (especially with the organ), such as lute (used as basso continuo, like the harpsichord), other string instruments (such as the viola da gamba, a precursor of sorts to the modern cello), and wind instruments (such as the sackbut, a precursor to the modern trombone), grew out of the sound world of the organ and were always fundamentally compatible with it. Indeed, organ stops and pipes were named after these instruments and were designed to aurally imitate them.
Here, we can note that Pius XII in “Musicae Sacrae” notes that “besides the organ, other instruments can be called upon to give great help in attaining the lofty purpose of sacred music, so long as they play nothing profane, nothing clamorous or strident and nothing at variance with the sacred services or the dignity of the place. Among these, the violin and other musical instruments that use the bow are outstanding.” Since the violin and “other musical instruments that use the bow” are simply “among” the other instruments that can be used “besides the organ.” However, among these other instruments, Pius XII clearly seems to give violin and “other musical instruments that use the bow” a certain pride of place.
When 16th-century polyphony - namely, that of Palestrina - was “rediscovered” in the Catholic Church in the 19th century, it was assumed that this music was always performed without instrumental accompaniment, due to the absence of written instrumental parts in many manuscripts. However, in actuality, 16th-century instruments would have at least sometimes doubled or substituted for these vocal parts that were functionally musically as independent voices. Similarly, 16th-century church organists would both improvise on and compose settings of Gregorian melodies, to replace some regularly-sung parts of the liturgy. For example, instead of having two half-choirs alternate singing verses of Gregorian hymns, one half-choir would sing a verse, with the organ “singing” the next verse by playing a paraphrase or cantus-firmus setting (in which the chant melody was drawn out, with other musical lines being played around it). This cantus-firmus style helped pave the way for the continuo style that would develop later on.
In the 17th-century, the importance of the treble (top) and bass (bottom) line came to the forefront, with written-out or improvised middle voices filling in the harmony (this is essentially the practice of continuo). In this way, 16th-century (and earlier) instrumental doubling and independence of voices also set the stage for the 17th-century treble-and-bass framework that facilitated and even required the practice of continuo. The Baroque period saw a rise in 1) the use of monody (one vocal line sung over accompaniment), which did exist previously, and 2) other vertically-based musical textures that were increasingly different from the earlier complex and horizontally-based polyphony and homophony.
The 17th century also saw the development of the idea that different musical styles were appropriate for different purposes. However, an understanding also developed that musical styles could be used outside of their original contexts for expressive purposes. For this reason, theatrical secular styles were used in church music.
The 18th-century orchestras that moved from the concert hall into the church grew authentically out of these 16th, and even more so, 17th-century instrumental ensembles. With 18th-century orchestras came the use of the tympani (a large drum), the only percussion historically used in the Western Catholic high art music tradition. In the 19th century (when the organ was “rediscovered” after a century of attention devoted almost exclusively to the innovation of the orchestra as an instrumental ensemble), organ stops and pipes developed to imitate 18th-century orchestral instruments. This shows the synergetic connection between organ and orchestral instruments, which mirrors the original connection between organ and the human voice.
If one accepts the Western Church’s embrace of the organ, it seems that one should also accept the use of these 16th-18th century winds and strings. Let us remember that the modern piano as we know it only dates to the 19th century (approximately 1840), having been preceded by the Classical, 18th-century fortepiano, which developed organically out of the Renaissance/Baroque harpsichord. If historical performance practice is not possible in regard to the use of the harpsichord as a continuo instrument for the playing and singing of 16th-17th century liturgical music, a fortepiano may do, although an organ would be better than a fortepiano (and certainly better than a piano!), as the organ does date to this 16th-17th century time period, and its timbre is more compatible with the style of this music than the fortepiano or piano.
Although the fortepiano and certainly the piano (or even harpsichord) do not have the pride of place that the organ, winds and strings have in the history of Western Catholic sacred music history, perhaps there is room for especially the fortepiano in the playing of keyboard reductions of Mozart Masses when an orchestra is not possible, although it is likely better to play these reductions on an organ that can imitate orchestral sounds (which, of course, the fortepiano and piano cannot do). Indeed, perhaps the theatrical operatic pieces that dominated Italian churches in 1900 (which did grow authentically out of the Western sacred art music tradition) - or at least, the higher-quality pieces of this repertoire - would have been more successful if they had been played and sung more frequently on the organ, instead of the modern piano (or even the fortepiano), when orchestras were unavailable.
In conclusion, one can and should point to timbral similarities between the human voice, organ, winds and strings. One can also point to the timbral compatibility of the harpsichord and its string-based, plucking sound with winds, strings and voice when used in 16th-17th century liturgical repertoire. One can argue that the timbre of the percussive fortepiano and modern piano begin to break with this unified timbral trajectory. This discussion of the harpsichord, fortepiano and piano may call to mind the discussion of, for example, the lute when played under the singing of Renaissance polyphony and 17th-century liturgical repertoire. If a lute is unavailable, perhaps the softness and gentleness of the classical guitar can imitate the lute. However, the percussive metal of the modern acoustic guitar is likely too much of a stretch, and the electric guitar is almost certainly a step too far.
(Regarding the use of the electric guitar in the liturgy, see my article critiquing “praise and worship” music here. Regarding this topic, we can recall Pius XII’s statue that no “clamorous” instruments [like contemporary drum sets] be played in the liturgy.)
SOURCES
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Collins, Paul (2010). Renewal and Resistance: Catholic Church Music from the 1850s to Vatican II. Peter Lang. p. 10.
Holmes, William C. “A capella [alla capella] (It.: ‘in the style of the church [chapel]’). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2nd ed. 2001. Oxford Music Online.
Kreitner, Kenneth. “Minstrels in Spanish Churches, 1400-1600.” Early Music, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1992, pp. 532-546.
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