"Contemporary"* music and divine liturgy

I've been thinking much lately on the current cultural trend toward so-called "contemporary" music in liturgy, and the more that I think on it, the more discomfited I become.

A frequent argument cited by proponents of "contemporary" music is relevancy. "We need to be more relevant if we're going to reach people effectively" is the philosophy which translates in practice to the adoption of Top Forty-esque music in liturgy. This argument is frequently cited in discussions involving youth and liturgy.

The premise seems flawed to me on two levels: one, a misunderstanding of the proper function of liturgical music; and two, a reversal of the attitude with which liturgy should be approached.

As for the first, the function of music in the liturgy is to be an organic part of the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Raucous instrumentation, whooping and hollering, hand-clapping and motions are all at odds with the formal, elegant, highly structured rituals of Mass in the Catholic church. Not that there is not a time and a place where all of those things are not inappropriate, and not that those things are intrinsically bad; they're just the liturgical equivalent of redecorating the entire White House with Pucci prints and Ikea furniture. Whenever something jars my focus away from the celebration of the Mass, it becomes liturgically problematic. If the congregation feels unsure whether or not it should applaud after a piece of music, it is liturgically problematic. The focus has shifted from the communal celebration of Mass to a performance, which reduces the congregation to the role of audience.

"But the people can't sing Gregorian chant!" is another frequent complaint, to which I reply "Nonsense!" I've taught a group of teenagers who can't read music how to sing the chant "Ave Maria" in under fifteen minutes. I find that the structure and tessitura of chant is easy to understand even for non-musicians -- people who can't read music can still see on the page whether a line rises or falls and feel naturally where a line resolves. Chant is simpler to sing than 95% of "contemporary" music, which generally has irregular rhythms, uses odd harmonic structure, and has a broad or uneven tessitura. Much of it is sung in a range that's very uncomfortable for women's voices, as it's too low to be sung comfortably in the range where it's written but high enough that singing it up the octave isn't pleasant, either. The lower male voice suffers, too, as the music as written is too high but down the octave is too low. In the services I've attended where I have not had a hymnal in front of me, I've found it easier and faster to catch on in a chanted service than I have in "contemporary" services where the words to the songs are flashed up on a large screen.

To the second, the idea of relevancy, when explored by its proponents, seems to entail an injection of God into the modern culture. I believe this raises two questions: one, is God not already present in our culture, at least liturgically speaking; and two, since God is timeless, why the necessity to make His worship "timely"? I submit that the driving force in the relevancy argument is actually the reverse: an attempt to inject secular culture into sacred liturgy.

As Paul instructed us, we are not to be conformed to this world. Using the musical language of secular culture conforms our worship immutably to worldly standards. Liturgy should be sacred -- set apart -- in all its components so that we understand just what it is that we do.

One of the theological concepts I so love in the Eastern Catholic Church is the knowledge that the liturgy is where Heaven and Earth meet, and the liturgical space and music and prayers all acknowledge that reality. The Western rite could certainly use a dose of that uniformity of purpose and intention. The Divine Liturgy in the Melkite church I regularly attend feeds my soul in its embrace of the mystery and sanctity of God in a way that pop-culture Masses are simply incapable of doing.


*I chose to put the word contemporary in quotation marks because as it is a term of art as applied to liturgical music. Contemporary comes from the Latin con tempore, meaning with the time. Arguably, the work of living composers is contemporary by definition, but I have yet to hear someone calling for Arvo Part's "O Antiphons" in the name of contemporary music! Contemporary, in the current discussions of liturgy, is applied solely to music which shares the lyrical style, structure, and setting of pop/rock/Top Twenty hits.