Music at Mass is theological warfare by other means

How many battles have been fought over sacred music throughout history? The noise you make when you worship is a big deal: those who control it can shape everything from clerical hierarchy to intimate spirituality. And there are patterns. Deep suspicion of music is the mark of the puritan. Fundamentalist Sunni Muslims teach that all music except for chanted Koranic passages is forbidden; instruments in particular encourage lust. Strict Calvinists take a similar line.

Even the Catholic Church considered banning original compositions during services after the Council of Trent. Legend has it that polyphony was saved only by Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli of 1567, which demonstrated that rich harmony could also highlight the words of the text. (A fanciful version of this story is the subject of Hans Pfitzner’s 1915 opera Palestrina, whose more ponderous moments
make Parsifal sound like an advertising jingle.)

Conversely, lovers of opulent worship, and the hierarchical theology it implies, use music to achieve their ends. In the Church of England, High Church clergy who don’t want to describe their Sunday Eucharist as a ‘Mass’ will gently push proceedings ‘up the candle’, as they say, with a Mass setting by Byrd or Mozart. In today’s Roman Catholic Church, too, musical style is loaded with significance. But matters are complicated by the fact that Catholic priests aren’t supposed to be High or Low, or impose their theological preferences on a parish. Music at Mass therefore becomes the continuation of theological warfare by other means — a nasty state of affairs that I’ve witnessed at first hand.

When I was a teenager, I was organist of Christ the King, Reading, a red-brick barn of a church run by a tyrannical but warm-hearted Irish priest, Fr Nugent. His taste in hymns didn’t extend much beyond pre-conciliar favourites such as ‘Soul of My Saviour’ and ‘Sweet Sacrament Divine’ — sentimental numbers often incorporating octave swoops that made the tiny choir sound like ancient Valkyries.