Gratuitous Sacred Musickal Posting (TM)

Llama reader Ron sends along this terrific article about Bennie XVI and liturgical musick:

With the Mass celebrated in the cathedral of Saint Stephen on Sunday, September 9, Benedict XVI revived a musical and liturgical tradition that had been interrupted for decades.

Within living memory, in fact, the last papal celebration accompanied by the complete performance – Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei – of a great polyphonic Mass dates back to 1985, with Mozart's "Krönungsmesse" conducted by Herbert von Karajan, in Saint Peter's. And the one before that goes all the way back to 1963. That Mass was also celebrated in Saint Peter's, and the composer selected was Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the dean of Roman polyphony in the sixteenth century.

This time, the Mass was celebrated in Vienna, and the composer was, rightly, Austria's Franz Joseph Haydn and his stupendous "Mariazeller Messe" of 1782, for chorus, soloists, and orchestra.

Gregorian chant also made an important return appearance in the papal Mass on September 9. During communion, the choir repeatedly sang the antiphon "Vovete," from the propers for that Sunday in the missal of the ancient rite, in alternation with verses from Psalm 76, also sung in Latin: "Make and keep vows to the Lord your God. May all present bring gifts to this awesome God, who checks the pride of princes, inspires awe among the kings of earth."

A musical critic would have given his highest praise to the splendid performance, conducted by Markus Landerer, the choirmaster at the cathedral of Vienna. But this was a Mass, and not a concert. And Benedict XVI imparted a clear lesson in this regard, on two successive occasions that Sunday.

At the Angelus, a few minutes after the end of the Mass, he began this way:

"It was a particularly beautiful experience this morning to celebrate the Lord’s Day with all of you in such a dignified and solemn manner, in the magnificent cathedral of Saint Stephen. The celebration of the Eucharist, carried out with due dignity, helps us to realize the immense grandeur of God’s gift to us in the Holy Mass, and fills us with deep joy. It is precisely in this way that we draw near to each other as well, and experience the joy of God. So I thank all those who, by their active contribution to the preparation of the liturgy or by their recollected participation in the sacred mysteries, created an atmosphere in which we truly felt God’s presence.

And that afternoon, in the monastery of Heiligenkreutz, where each day 80 Cistercian monks celebrate the divine office in pure Gregorian chant and entirely in Latin, he said:

"In the beauty of the liturgy, [...] wherever we join in singing, praising, exalting and worshipping God, a little bit of heaven will become present on earth. Truly it would not be presumptuous to say that, in a liturgy completely centred on God, we can see, in its rituals and chant, an image of eternity. [...] In all our efforts on behalf of the liturgy, the determining factor must always be our looking to God. We stand before God – he speaks to us and we speak to him. Whenever in our thinking we are only concerned about making the liturgy attractive, interesting and beautiful, the battle is already lost. Either it is Opus Dei, with God as its specific subject, or it is not. In the light of this, I ask you to celebrate the sacred liturgy with your gaze fixed on God within the communion of saints, the living Church of every time and place, so that it will truly be an expression of the sublime beauty of the God who has called men and women to be his friends."

Benedict XVI also told the monks of Heiligenkreutz: "A liturgy which no longer looks to God is already in its death throes." Haydn, a Catholic with a deep spirituality, was not far from this view of beauty in the Christian liturgy when he wrote at the end of each of his musical compositions, "Laus Deo," praise to God.

When in the Creed of the "Mariazeller Messe," the soloist intones "Et incarnatus est," and when the "Benedictus" is sung in the Sanctus, flashes of eternity truly break through. More than a thousand words, great liturgical music communicates the mystery of "He who comes in the name of the Lord," of the Word made flesh, of the bread that becomes the body of Jesus.

The liturgy that inspired Haydn – together with other great Christian composers – these sublime melodies, glimmering with theological joy, was the ancient, Tridentine liturgy: just the opposite of the "sense of staleness" that some associate with it. It is the liturgy that Benedict XVI wanted to preserve in its richness with the motu proprio "Summorum Pontificum," on July 7, 2007, together with the modern rite he observed in the Mass in Vienna.

There is an old story about Haydn coming in for some criticism in his own day because his sacred music was considered by some to be too light-hearted. Haydn is supposed to have replied to the effect that he couldn't help it - that when his thoughts turned to God, he was filled with such joy that it just naturally came out in his music. Far from being a piece of cynical flippery (as some people read it), I've always thought this to be a pretty genuine statement of Haydn's belief, as well as a perfect example of his good humor. Evidently, Benedict thinks so as well. Didn't one of the Church Fathers say something to the effect that a prayer made in song is a prayer made twice?

UPDATE: What I do for my readers! I just went and pulled out my trusty biog of Haydn by H.C. Robbins Landon and dug up what Haydn told his biographer A.C. Dies in 1806 about composing his masses:

I prayed to God not like a miserable sinner in despair but calmly, slowly. In this I felt that an infinite God would surely have mercy on his finite creature, pardoning dust for being dust. These thoughts cheered me up. I experienced a sure joy so confident that as I wished to express the words of the prayer, I could not suppress my joy, but gave vent to my happy spirits and wrote above the miserere, etc. "Allegro".

Good old Papa!

UPDATE DEUX: The more I think about it, the more surprised I am that JP2 let Herbert von Karajan into St. Peter's. The musickal question of whether HvK was the best choice to let loose on Mozart (I would argue surely not) aside, the fact of the matter is that he was a Nazi back in the day. And not the 17 year old "I didn't know what I was doing and only joined for the cool uniform and because Fritz would have beat me if I didn't" variety, either. Go figure.