Lately, I've been reading voraciously about ancient liturgy and its corresponding music. There is such a rich history of virtue, humility, and beauty in the Gregorian chant, and yet, many Christians today have hardened their hearts to the majesty of this transcendental spirituality found in the chant. This is the best book I've encountered so far. Reflections on the Spirituality of Gregorian Chant is an expanded compilation and translation of Dom Jacques Hourlier's notes from lectures that he gave from Solesmes about the importance of the chant. The Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes is a benedictine monastery in Sarthe, France, now dedicated to the timeless preservation of the Gregorian chant. Seriously, after listening to the prayers of these monks and seeing the beautiful environment in which they pray [see video below], how can one not believe that the beauty of the chant and the rhythms of monastic life point to anything other than timeless truth which is God?
Dom Hourlier argues that, "Unlike many of today's compositions, the chant does not permit mediocrity. It is impossible to pray using mediocre means. Instead, as Saint Pius X said, the people of God feel the need to pray through beautiful music….The prayer of Gregorian chant is the public prayer of the Church; it leads to union with God" (10).
The chant also "helps you to become a more authentic person" (11) insofar as one must embrace a spirit of humility to the text and the ancient notations without adding improvisational artifice or theatrical ornamentation so as to make your voice or talent stand out above others. Rather, the chant is meant to bring the entire Christian community into prayer in a unison voice. As Dom Hourlier posits, "It totally refuses to play upon our gregarious instincts and never elicits a purely human fellowship. That is, although it establishes a profound sense of unity among cantors and listeners, this unity is not its primary function or effect. For the union it establishes among the faithful seems to flow from the communion it has already established between each individual and the Creator" (40).
These monks assume that there are necessary conditions or moral dispositions for Gregorian chant to be executed. "Singing, as you know, implies the willingness to listen: in choir, we need to listen to our neighbors, and we must pay constant and careful attention to the melody itself. Here you stress the need to practice discretion, which presupposes humility" (15).
In our world today, however, Gregorian chant has too often been marginalized as a useless relic of the past. "We live in a world that respects absolutely nothing" (23), and yet, the profanations of the Gregorian chant (i.e., background music in movies or radio, university survey classes, caricatures of the monastic life) end up doing only good. These snippets of Gregorian chant often lead people "to an authentic interest in the liturgy---and eventually to conversion" (ibid.). How can this be a bad thing? A profanation is something that is "outside the Church," and yet it always stands in contradistinction to the Holy of Holies that is the Eucharist. To bring a little taste of the Eucharist, through the chant, into the secular world is a blessing that the chant can provide.
I love Simone Weil's quote that Dom Hourlier often invoked: "It is quite conceivable that someone who is a passionate music lover might at the same time be evil or corrupt as a person. But I would find it hard to believe that such a thing could be true of anyone who has a thirst for Gregorian chant" (24).
Dom Hourlier continues, "All sacred languages tend to create a certain holy or 'hieratic' atmosphere. They build a wall between the sacred and the secular, between the words of prayer and the common speech of everyday life. A sacred language is not meant to be immediately intelligible to just anyone" (26). This is not to say that only scholars of ancient languages have access to the divine; rather, the encounter with the divine is a mystical interaction that defies our human languages wrought as they are with imperfections, divisions, and transitoriness. The hieratic atmosphere that the chant creates thereby leads a person to prayerful union with the divine insofar as it evacuates the profane from our midst and leads us into total consecration to God (53).
The chant seems to be "sui generous" (41) in its simplicity and in its evocation of the truth through beauty. As prayer, it captures the following attributes: purity, simplicity, dignity, discretion, humility, calm, gravitas, serenity, balance, gentleness, strength, and peace (46).
Finally, Dom Hourlier argues that "We are given the music we deserve. We hear music and are enriched by it according to our receptive capacities…we must make a sincere effort to better ourselves. A person of good will can only grasp the spiritual message of music when he begins to deepen himself and to attain inner peace. Only in this way can he open himself up to the infinite, and rediscover the source from which all music flows" (63-64).
Very insightful!
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