«Hva har dere gjort med vestens musikk?»

Ei nonne i USA, Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J, skrev nylig en artikkel på Catholic News Agency om kirkemusikk. Den begynner slik:

I will never forget that moment! Flinging off his eyeglasses, he glared at me, “Sister, what have you done to our music!” I froze. It was my first year at NYU as a graduate student of musicology, and I was enrolled in Professor Gustave Reese’s course, Medieval and Renaissance Music. He was the world’s leading authority on these two musical periods. An American Jew, a Renaissance Man, he loved the sacred music of the pre-conciliar Church. In a sense, he was its custodian. …. How could we have banished its musical culture, the most consequential result of the post-conciliar Church?

Hun skriver videre om god musikks betydning for menenske, og hvordan kvaliteten på liturgisk musikk begynte å falle dramatisk:

From ancient times, people of every race and color have held that music, more than any other art form, is the most intimate expression of human feeling. According to the Ancients, music imitates the states of the soul and has the mysterious, even magical power, to influence a person’s behavior and to form moral character. We are affected by the kinds of music we experience. On the day of John F. Kennedy’s funeral in 1963, Beethoven’s second movement of the “Eroica” Symphony accompanied the cortege on its way to Washington’s St. Matthew’s Cathedral. Beethoven had dedicated the symphony “to the memory of a fallen hero.”

The Fathers of the Church agree with the Ancients. Sacred music proposes to lift up the the whole person to Christ likeness. Throughout the centuries, men and women have become converts through the beauty of liturgical music.

Common sense dictates that not all music qualifies as suitable for divine worship, for the chosen music sets the atmosphere for the liturgy. The music expresses, reflects, and mediates the saving mysteries of Jesus in symbolic ways. It is the locus where the human and sensory realities meet the divine and spiritual. According to Sing to the Lord, the musical judgment of sacred music requires musical competence, (and) only artistically sound music will be effective and endure over time. To admit to the Liturgy the cheap, trite, or the musical cliché often found in secular popular songs is to cheapen the Liturgy, to expose it to ridicule, and to invite failure (USCCB, Sing to the Lord, #135).

The deciding factor about sacred music is its quality. ….

Man ser atdet er mye elendighet innefor liturgisk musikk (om man leser hele artikkelen). Denne uka skal hun fortsette der hun slapp: «Next week’s essay continues with a second part: suitable music for worship.»

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