The music director of the diocese of Buffalo praises traditional chant and blurts out the truth about modern architecture:
“It’s very bright on the inside and it doesn’t really look very Catholic, so to do chant in a building like that is sort of taking art forms that don’t work together and trying to force them to work together. Chant was always done in monasteries that were made out of stone, most probably, and that had marvelous, marvelous acoustics. To try and do Gregorian chant in a modern church building that’s carpeted is not going to work, so there are a lot of factors. As beautiful as it is, it just doesn’t work everywhere.”
Now if we could get people to connect the dots that chant is to have “pride of place” in the Mass and realize that every modern eyesore church building has a date with the wrecking ball, we could get somewhere.
Hat tip to Patricia at the Musica Sacra forums for spotting it.
Here Here!!! Huzzah!!!
God, I wish my parish had the chant, all we have is that lame pseudo 70′s pop music junk, and a choir full of people who can’t even sing. : (
Why isn’t there more emphasis placed on the music of the Mass? To me it seems like most are just winging it.
“A date with the wrecking ball.” I wish I could believe that. A tremendous amount of money has been invested in these kitschy beasts. And a tremendous amount of pseudo-spiritual and hyperpolitical self-identify has been invested in them as well. Until and unless Rome issues formal guidelines on how churches *ought* to look, expect round, wooden churches with carpets and no saints in the stained glass to be the norm, as it is here in Texas.
“And a tremendous amount of pseudo-spiritual and hyperpolitical self-identify has been invested in them as well”
lex architecturae lex credendi?