oktober 2011

(Jeg fikk i dag et spørsmål om denne informasjonen – fra november 2009. Jeg hadde selv glemt dette nettstedet og denne informasjonen, men syns det er nyttig og interessant, og poster det på nytt igjen.)

På bildet under ser man startsida for Saint Antoine Daniel Gregorian Chant Ordinaries, der man kan finne – og høre på – på alle (så langt jeg kan se) de gregorianske/latinske melodiene for messens faste ledd.

Her står det også at Vatikanet foreslår følgende messer for kirkeåret:

Søndager i advent: Missa XVII • Credo IV
Søndager i juletida: Missa IX • Credo IV
Søndager i fasten: Missa XVII • Credo IV
Søndager i påsketida: Missa I • Credo III
Søndager i det alminnelige kirkeåret: Missa XI • Credo I
Fester i det alminnelige kirkeåret: Missa VIII • Credo III
Fester for Den hellige Jomfru Maria: Missa IX • Credo IV
Fester for apostlene: Missa IV • Credo III

Jeg er nå (her i St Hallvard) blitt vant med å synge messe 11 på grønne søndaer. Det var nytt for meg for to år siden (og den er kanskje fortsatt ukjent for mange), men det er den foreslåtte messen for grønne søndager (og her kan man høre på den, og lære den bedre). Og i advent skal vi synge messe XVII, noe jeg tror en del menigheter i Norge gjør.

Besøk gjerne disse sidene.

I National Catholic Register leser jeg i dag et intervju med biskop Edward Slattery, i Tulsa, Oklahoma, der han har vært biskop siden 1994.

…(the bishop) is noted for his orthodoxy and piety and has publicly advocated a reform of the liturgy. …. You’ve made public statements about problems with the liturgy. What changes would you like to see?

I would like to see the liturgy become what Vatican II intended it to be. That’s not something that can happen overnight. The bishops who were the fathers of the council from the United States came home and made changes too quickly. They shouldn’t have viewed the old liturgy, what we call the Tridentine Mass or Missal of Pope John XXIII, as something that needed to be fixed. Nothing was broken. There was an attitude that we had to implement Vatican II in a way that radically affects the liturgy.

What we lost in a short period of time was continuity. The new liturgy should be clearly identifiable as the liturgy of the pre-Vatican II Church. Changes, like turning the altar around, were too sudden and too radical. There is nothing in the Vatican II documents that justifies such changes. We’ve always had Mass facing the people as well as Mass ad orientem [“to the east,” with priest and people facing the same direction]. However, Mass ad orientem was the norm. These changes did not come from Vatican II.

Also, it was not a wise decision to do away with Latin in the Mass. How that happened, I don’t know; but the fathers of the Council never intended us to drop Latin. They wanted us to hold on to it and, at the same time, to make room for the vernacular, primarily so that the people could understand the Scriptures.

You yourself have begun celebrating Mass ad orientem.
Yes, in our cathedral and a few parishes where the priests ask me to. Most of the time, I say Mass facing the people when I travel around the diocese or when I have a large number of priests concelebrating, because it works better that way.

A few priests have followed my example and celebrate ad orientem as well. I have not requested they change. I prefer to lead by example and let the priests think about it, pray about it, study it, and then look at their churches and see if it’s feasible to do.

And it’s positive when people are thinking about and talking about the liturgy.
When people make the liturgy part of their conversation, it is a good thing. As priests and laypeople discuss the liturgy, they’ll see how important it is and how it is a work of God and not our own.

But we must approach the liturgy on bended knee with tremendous humility, recognizing that it doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to God. It is a gift. We worship God not by creating our own liturgies, but by receiving the liturgy as it comes to us from the Church. The liturgy should be formed and shaped by the Church itself to help people pray better. And we all pray better when we are disposed to receive what God has offered, rather than creating something of our own. …

Lenger nede i intervjuet snakker han om den nye engelske oversettelsen av messen, om den tradisjonelle latinske messen (som han i fjor feiret i Washington DC), om kall og presteordinasjoner, og om ordenslivet i vår tid – les gjerne videre her.

Dette blir siste oppsummerende innlegg om tekster jeg tidligere har lest. Det er konklusjonen i Sara Brødsjøs mastergradsoppgave: LITURGISK VOKALMUSIKK I DEN KATOLSKE KIRKE I NORGE 1843-2011. Jeg presenterte innholdsfortegnelsen i oppgaven her, og oppgaven finner man i sin helhet her (i pdf-format).

KONKLUSJON

Analysen av den liturgiske vokalmusikk i Den katolske kirke i Norge har handlet om flere problemstillinger i tilknytning til det egentlige temaet. Slik som i innledningen blir det hensiktsmessig å redegjøre for hver av disse problemstillingene, for å vise sammenhengen mellom dem og betydningen av dette for analysens resultat.

I Den katolske kirke er den liturgiske musikken knyttet direkte til den katolske messeliturgien. Ut fra definisjonen av Den hellige messe har Kirken definert hva som kjennetegner egnet liturgisk musikk gjennom mange offisielle dokumenter og utsagn. Noen endring i kriteriene for liturgisk musikk har ikke blitt dokumentert siden 1903.

Den liturgiske musikk må i hovedsak kjennetegnes av disse egenskapene: den kan ikke inneholde sjangertrekk som er karakteristiske for verdslig musikk, den må oppleves sakral på tvers av ulike musikkulturer, og den må ha objektiv estetisk kvalitet (som man mener er mulig å definere til en tilstrekkelig grad). Som kirkemusikalsk ideal fremheves spesielt den gregorianske sang, og orgelet regnes for å være det best egnede liturgiske instrumentet – selv om andre sjangre og instrumenter ikke utelukkes så lenge de også oppfyller de overnevnte kriteriene. …

Oppsummering av oppgave – 2Les mer »

Jeg fikk boka: The Banished Heart: Origins of Heteropraxis in the Catholic Church (T&T Clark Studies in Fundamental Liturgy), author Geoffrey Hull – fra amazon.co.uk (direkte lenke) for en ukes tid siden, og har så vidt begynt å lese i den. På Amazon presenteres den slik:

This is a critical assessment of the Liturgical Reform after the second Vatican Council that seeks the origins of failure in pre-conciliar developments. If the suppression of the traditional Roman liturgy against the wishes of the Second Vatican Council was, in the words of Silvio Cardinal Oddi, ‘a crime for which history will never forgive the Church’, why, at the end of the 1960s, did the vast majority of Latin Catholics abandon, with little or no regret, their time-hallowed forms of worship? «The Banished Heart» seeks to account for this cultural and spiritual catastrophe by demonstrating what will surprise many: how the present mainstream Catholic Church, with its modernistic and secular aura, grew directly from the official conservatism of the Church as it was before the Council. T Clark Studies in «Fundamental Liturgy» offer cutting edge scholarship from all disciplines related to liturgical study. The books in the series seek to reintegrate biblical, patristic, historical, dogmatic and philosophical questions with liturgical study in ways faithful and sympathetic to classical liturgical enquiry. Volumes in the series include monographs, translations of recent texts and edited collections around very specific themes.

Som lesere av denne bloggen vet, er jeg interessert i liturgiske spørsmål, spesielt om hvordan messen best kan feires og hvordan de troende best kan delta i messen. Denne boka (håper jeg) vil hjelpe meg å forstå begge disse spørsmålene bedre. Den sier nok en hel del om hvordan reformene etter Vatikankonsilet ikke var særlig vellykkede, men også en hel del (og det er jeg aller mest interessert i) om hvorfor reformen etter konsilet ble så fryktelig radikal. Jeg har tenkt på et par problematiske ting ang. den tradisjonelle messen allerede; at det var noen steder en tendens til å «lagdele» den, at presten gjorde en ting, mens lekfolket samtidig gjorde noe ganske forskjellig, både mht bønner og sang/musikk. (Jeg har ingen problemer med at de troende mediterte over temaer som fulgte messens gang (og det var mange forslag til hvordan det kunne gjøres), men jeg syns det var mindre passende om man ba bønner som ikke hadde noe med messen å gjøre.)

Jeg viser under to illustrasjoner fra Walter William Whitehouse’s doktogradsoppgave: THE MUSICAL PRELUDE TO VATICAN II: PLAINCHANT, PARTICIPATION, AND PIUS X.

Det første viser en «Chant mass» for 300 000, i Chicago i 1926. Det andre en «Chant mass» fra 1953, der 1400 gutter og 100 menn sammen synger messen. Begge bildene er illustrasjoner på hvor alvorlig man i flere bispedømmer arbeidet med å gi gregoriansk sang en større plass i Kirken liv.

Jeg nevnte i august at jeg leste en doktorgradsoppgave fra USA om teologiske og liturgiske spørsmål, skrevet av Walter William Whitehouse: THE MUSICAL PRELUDE TO VATICAN II: PLAINCHANT, PARTICIPATION, AND PIUS X. Oppgaven kan lastes ned her: DEL 1 – 338 sider og DEL 2 – 145 sider. Jeg leste ferdig oppgaven for noen uker siden, og før jeg går videre til andre liturgibøker, vil jeg si noen siste ord om denne.

Oppgaven, som legger stor vekt på begge mål i pave Pius X’s motu proprio fra 1903 – både at menigheten skulle delta (og synge) i messen, og at den gregorianske sangen skulle gjenopplives – skriver etter hvert mest om forsøkene på å lære de amerikanske katolikkene å synge gregorianikk. Det tok en hel del år før arbeidet kom skikkelig i gang, men utover 50-tallet gikk det stadig bedre – spesielt på de katolske skolene, noen ganger samlet mange flere tusen barn som sammen sang messens ordinarium. Men etter konsilet falt dette arbeidet sammen, og i Amerika erstattet man det gregorianske ikke med noenlunde høyverdige salmer (som i Norge), men med ganske banal, moderne musikk. Slik kan vi lese i oppgavens oppsummering:

POSTSCRIPT – “Ce délicat probléme”

Of the two critical aims of Tra le sollecitudini – active participation of the people, and the singing of Gregorian chant – one saw its apotheosis and the other its demise in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, a liturgical watershed unparalleled in the history of the Roman Catholic Church (both for those who supported its aims, and those who did not). The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy paid due homage to the “pride of place” of Gregorian chant, to the “treasury of inestimable value” represented by the musical tradition, as well as to that generative idea of Pius X, so potent in the twentieth century, that “the true Christian spirit is found in the active participation of the faithful in the Liturgy.”

Because this latter impulse “carried the day,” the reforms of the Council occasioned a musical upheaval in the American church similarly without historical parallel. Released suddenly into the open pastures of a once-forbidden vernacular, Catholic church music found itself urgently in need of a new musical clothing, and turned whole-heartedly (and under the ready influence of a handful of publishers) to highly-derivative secular musical idioms which not only had been formerly forbidden, but would have been unimaginable in the Church only a few years earlier. Such a turn to secular influences, while motivated in large part on behalf of congregational participation, nevertheless occasioned the demise of Gregorian chant (especially as dreamed by Pius X) in the church’s worship, and flew in the face of centuries of official strictures, not the least of which are found in Tra le sollecitudini. This new “enculturated” musical idiom has by now become the lingua franca of worship music in the American Catholic church, and an identifying feature of the post-Vatican II era. It has in turn exercised a surprising influence and been adopted (both in style and in actual repertoire) to a great extent in American Protestantism. …

Oppsummering av liturgioppgave – 1Les mer »

Liturgibloggen jeg nevnte for et par dager siden (av ukjent forfatter, og med ganske få innlegg og kommentarer) har enda et innlegg som jeg syns er ganske oppklarende. Det handler om hvordan man skal klare å rydde bort forstyrrende overbygninger over messen (det kan være musikk, arkitektur, fromhetsformer) som holder oss borte fram kjernen.

Jeg har i det siste tenkte en hel del på Pius X’s reform av messen i 1903, der han ønsket to ting; 1) å gjenopplive den gregorianske sangen og 2) å få lekfolket til å delta mer aktivt i messen – først og fremst gjennom å synge sine deler av messen. Dette var også den kanskje aller viktigste (og positive) deler av den liturgiske bevegelsen, helt fram til 1960. Jeg må innrømme at jeg ikke helt forstår at parallelle bønner (som ikke følger messens gang) noen gang kan ha vært ideelt – samtidig som jeg syns at reformatorne på slutten av 1960-tallet ikke klarte å fornye messen på en særlig god måte. Slik leser vi i bloggen – som starter med idealene og ønskene til biskopen i Trent:

… the Council (of Trent) considered banning all music that was not plainchant from the Liturgy (for the Liturgy is indeed larger than the Mass), and this highlights something very important and often overlooked about the Missal of 1570: that the Council sought to restrain artistic excess and bring in a more solemn manner of celebration.

This is, indeed, entirely in keeping with the aesthetic of the age: the new realism brought into the visual arts … This was not the exuberant mysticism of the high Middle Ages, but an attempt to return to the (perceived) simple dignity of the pre-medieval liturgy, and to couple with it the new realism. Gone are the icons, showing the saints in Glory; now we see the Saints as historical persons. I am convinced this is the reason for the ‘Roman-cut’ type of chasuble: a deliberate paring-down of the liturgical aesthetic from the ‘excesses’ of the highest gothic.

And yet, even by the close of the 16th Century, this trend is changing, both in liturgy and in art (which) marks a transition toward the baroque. There are many things which can be said of the baroque, but it is neither restrained nor is it solemn. The word which must be used, if a single word can be chosen to encompass such a movement, is exuberance. The baroque overflows with joy, with verve, with motion and ornamentation. This aesthetic, over the 17th and 18th centuries, sweeps Europe, and the Church is swept up with it.

… Ornamentation, filligree, little gold swirls and curlicues: these become the artistic order of the day. Music becomes grand and ornamented, to fill the new, grand and ornamented spaces around it. This will culminate in Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi, each expressing a variation upon this sense of cornucopia. …..

There is something interesting going on here. The aesthetic that the Tridentine Era began with – realistic, classicising, solemn – has been transfigured. Baroque architecture, beginning from the classical orders, does the most peculiar and distorting things; the musical order which was to be solemn and dignified becomes exotic and exuberant; the art which began as realistic and earthy becomes as surreal as it is sentimental.

And yet the rubrics of the Mass remain rooted in 16th Century rigorism; precise, exacting, ground exceeding small. Yet on top of this, we have an outpouring which is, while undoubtedly adhering to a structure, beyond the wildest dreams of the most riotous medieval liturgist!

In the 19th Century, the Church, failing to truly re-embrace the Greek and later Gothic styles that became the fashion in Northern Europe, instead adapts the overriding aesthetic ethos of the day to its own aesthetic. That is, to summarise very briefly, that over the top of the exuberance of the baroque is layered the overwhelming sentimentalism of Romanticism. ….

…. The most bizarre thing here is that this is, to many, Tradition with a big ‘T’. The very thing which the Council of Trent reviled is become the keystone of archaism! The idea that the Church should be a space for collective solemnity, encounter with the numinous, and terror before the Lord, to «stand in fear and trembling», has become obtenebrated (though neither destroyed nor totally obscured) in a miasma of emotionally-charged, personal devotion; a…. ‘papering-over’ of the liturgy with personal devotions.

It was in this situation, then, that the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council sought a reformation of the Liturgy, and in this context that restrictions were lifted and the aesthetic changed. And the Church, for the first time in 400 years, attempted to catch up with modern art.

The essential point here is this: First, that Tradition is not always where it seems to be; second, that the state of the Church today is as much the result of the final collapse of Tridentinism as it is the result of errors or misconceptions in the new Church; and third that history does indeed repeat itself, though not always identically.

Bloggen «A Fourfold Vision» fortsetter der jeg slapp i går kveld med å si om Ratzinger syn på liturgien før og etter 1965:

Note, however, that the then-Fr. Ratzinger’s criticisms of the pre-1970 liturgy related chiefly to the ars celebrandi; and, indeed, that his criticisms of the post-1970 liturgy appear to relate to much the same. If the one was excessively rubricalised, often rushed through and disconnected from the masse of the Faithful, the other is often… well, banal, made up on the spot, and in the worst cases, mundane in every sense.

Deretter fortsetter bloggen med å skrive om hvordan den nye liturgien (som han egentlig er for) bør forandres (så mye at det blir svært lite igjen av den):

… I propose a further revision of the Roman Missal of 1970/2002. This, I believe, would be entirely constructive and possible, since it changes little directly for the Faithful, but a great deal for the priest celebrating the Mass. This revision would have the following effects:

1. That apart from side altars, there is to be but one main altar in the church, situated in the apse, and that this is to face East, … a priest facing the apse; that is, in the same direction as the body of the Faithful, which is to be considered the normative arrangement.

2. That liturgical vestments hitherto omitted from the Missal would be restored; that actions and details pertaining to the priest – the manner of his joining his hands, of holding them following the Offertory, etc., are to be taken from the 1962 Missal, and reinstated where appropriate in the new Missal. That these details be considered to be used at the discretion of the celebrant.

3. That the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, Last Gospel, etc., be reinstated as optional elements of the Mass; that these may be recited either in an audible or an inaudible voice. That the Asperges be similarly restored.

4. That the number of options in the 1970 Missal be reduced; the ability of the priest to alter or replace musical elements is to be removed. That the ability of the priest to substitute alternate Penitential Rites be deleted from the Missal. That all Eucharistic Prayers apart from the First, known also as the Roman Canon, and the Third, are to be deleted. That the First Eucharistic Prayer, or Roman Canon, is to be given precedence over the Third, which is now to be the Second or Alternate Canon.

5. That the Offertory prayers of 1970 are to be deleted, and replaced with those found in the 1962 Missal (Suscipe, sancte Pater; Deus qui humanae; Offerimus tibi; In spiritu humilitatis; Veni sanctificator, and all others up until the Orate fratres).

6. That music in the liturgy is to be an appropriate plainchant setting, or some suitable, polyphonic Mass setting, requiring no instrumental accompaniment, and written in the style of the Renaissance polyphonists (cf: Tra le sollecitudini, Pope St Pius X).

7. That those elements proper to the deacon and sub-deacon omitted from the 1970 Missal are to be restored, such that a «High Mass» according to the new Missal may be celebrated.

8. That the Calendar of 1570 be updated where appropriate with new feasts, providing they are given an appropriate class, relative to those feasts already celebrated on those days. That the propers appropriate to these feasts be similarly restored.