But history does not go back. God's communication is still a priority and the demands for evangelization do not allow us to take refuge in ivory towers, more or less detached from the reality that surrounds us. We must propose, we must express, we must sing to God with our brothers, in this world, by these means. Forgive me if I will go with you along a small route to reflect on some basic elements of music, and the sacred one in particular, to find a new and, at the same time, ancient way to express God through music.
The power to communicate
Music has a fundamental significance in the history of civilization and religious culture of each people. Art is able to summarize important messages and meanings of the civilization that produces it, giving such a deep and high voice to its humanity so as to make the works of art produced in a specific time and place universal heritage of the humanity of every place and time. Art allows every man to get to know the depths of the human heart in any time; the power of art is enormous especially that of music which, unlike the other arts, is the most ephemeral yet the more deeply rooted in the people's lives; the most "ethereal" and yet the most physical of the arts. Music is made of physical vibrations to which man mysteriously connects feelings, memories, messages that are often derived from its deepest unconscious and forgotten experiences. The "mystery" of music lies in the fact that, of all the arts, this is the least controllable, the most instinctive even if it has an extremely strong physical and mathematical structure. It seems that the world of sensations, feelings, memories, joins the world of harmonies, structures, symmetries and forms. The aesthetic pleasure of music comes, in fact, from the perfect and harmonious encounter of these two realities, the sensible and the intelligible ones, where one is made of sonority and rubber stamps and the other of sound, rhythm, texture, shape. Thus, Music becomes part of that harmonious whole made by symbolic and evocative realities, which, well organized, lead to a language capable of communicating and generating communication. As any other language, music is expressed through a code which, in order to be communicative, must be understood by the listener; it can be appreciated more or less depending on the language skills and education to this type of language of the listener. If the speech, that is the internal structure and consistency of the music, and the language, that is the entire set of symbols and allusions to be understood, are harmoniously combined, we have the musical communication and therefore the possibility that music will become the vehicle for values and thoughts, poetry and philosophy and, sometimes, even for politics and information. The power of music has never been ignored by the many different civilizations and its use has always been a top priority for the capacity it has to penetrate the human intimacy without too many problems of cultural and linguistic mediation. Music embodies a great variety of things which, in this case, are expressed in a convincing and direct way to the hearts of any men, without the need of translations and comments. Music has always found its expression through the vocal and musical instruments. The human voice is the primary and most immediate means of music, it is the instrument par-excellence because it is the symbol of the communication itself through which a man sings of himself to another man. Music has always been the first artistic expression appearing in all cultures since their beginning. Through singing man speaks in a very special way; through it he distinguishes from banal communication and poetical communication. Singing is often reserved for higher things, for prayer and ritual, for celebrations and joy, for love which, in singing and lyricism, finds its natural expression. Moreover, we must not forget all the social use of singing, from the cheering at the stadiums to the political choirs and the war songs and national anthems. Certainly in the ritual code the choir has a special place; the combination of different voices merged into a single musical event is a clear symbol of the union of the group and of the people before the event being celebrated. On the contrary, the personal or solo singing, assumes authority, a specific role,( today we could call it a "ministry") that the community accepts and to which it assigns a specific task.
Psalms and canticles in the Bible
In the Sacred Scripture, the use of music reflects the use of the ancient world with a new and essential interpretation for its meaning within the Christian liturgy. It’s God himself to raise the singing in the human heart and to raise man with his praise up toHim; it is God himself to suggest words and support man’s singing up to the point to join Himself, in Christ, the great hymn of the renewed creation. The songs of the Old Testament are always placed in a very precise way in the event narrated. For example, if we take the story of the miracle of the Sea in Exodus 14-15 we see that the story "in prose" describes the wonder and the actions of the protagonists and then comes to a sort of contemplative stasis giving to the singing the role of commentary of the event . Thus, the Song of the Sea of 15 Es becomes a comment and a song, a contemplation and a thanksgiving hymn to God: in a word it is the "Responsorial Psalm" following the proclamation of the preceding sacred readings making them present and universal and putting into the mouth of every man who is saved from the waters of sin as Israel, words like:"I will sing to the Lord because he has gloriously triumphed" The event of salvation becomes a song, the praise comes from deep in the history of salvation to enlarge itself to the entire world. It is the same for other songs such as Deborah GDC 5, war song and epic of Israel, Anne of 1 Sam 2, song of thanksgiving and joyful wonder for the saving power of God who "makes the barren woman to give birth",David’s psalms, both those contained in the books of Samuel and those extrapolated and migrated into the Psalter, all with their historical setting and the event they refer to as the Miserere (Psalm 51). The Psalter is in fact the collection of all those songs that can summarize the different feelings and reactions, the joys and sorrows, life and death that alternate in our lives. All this is placed before God, in dialogue with him, in prayer. Psalm 150, which closes the Psalter, lists all the musical instruments that join the praise of the believer. The different instruments are symbols of the creation itself; the skins of the drums, the strings of the psaltery and zither, the wood and the metal of the lutes and rattles, the ram's horn of shophar; all the creatures must symbolically praise God together with man and his singing. In the prophetic writings the oracles are composed in rhythmic poetry and possibly in singing. Thus books like the Song of Songs are unthinkable without a precise reference to their internal and external musical structures which become the key to their own understanding. The New Testament is fully embedded in this tradition, especially with Luke, who, imitating the greek style of LXX, shows us Maria singing her Magnificat as Anna, Deborah and Judith had previously done to joyfully comment Elizabeth’s prophetic words.. So do Zechariah's Benedictus prophetic in tone and old Simeon Nunc dimittis. The angels sing their hymn of praise in Bethlehem together with their Glory. Paul of Tarsus inserted hymn and canticles in his letters, songs certainly sung in the liturgies of the earliest Christian communities. Thus the HolyScripture teaches us not to remove the singing from the event of salvation and not to forget the importance of expressing the total human contribution to the singing of God and of the redeemed creation.
Sacred and liturgical
Liturgy is the renewal of the saving event in the human history, the open door that links us up directly with the redemption of Christ. To sing this redemption is the task of the liturgical music which, even if always sacred, must respond to specific charges imposed by the Church itself which chooses and governs the use of music in the celebration of the mysteries. Music, as it has already been said speaking about the biblical canticles, is the language that states, interprets and translates the lived theological event into an artistic as well as ritual way. At this point It is necessary to reflect on the distinction between sacred music and liturgical music, because in the last two centuries this distinction has not always been clear. If we performed the entire repertoire of 700-800 during the sacred liturgy, we would have been in trouble and even embarrassed, because the musical structures are not always compatible with the rhythms and characteristics of the Liturgy. The same freedom of expression of some scores does not fit the very meaning of the Liturgy. The problem is to properly focus on the use of liturgical music. To this concern the Gregorian chant can be of great help as it is still considered normative. Not that the Gregorian chant is the only music or that only copying its style and its language we can have a truly liturgical music, but, very seriouly and structurally speaking, the Gregorian chant is the living witness of centuries of liturgical chant in which the needs of prayer and music met together and were highlighted in various ways, eg.: - the text always derives from the Scripture and from the theology filtered through the liturgical use of the Church - the forms: such as the antiphon, the ' hymn, the psalm, the responsory, the litany etc, all set in the living liturgical practice - the distinction of roles: the congregation, the choir, the soloists, the psalmist, the President - the evolution and structure of music: the music following the text, the melodic arches, the expression varied depending on the text and the liturgical season. These and other characteristics make of the Gregorian music the rule of the music in the liturgy. It is not just a matter of using melodic forms to compose melodic harmonies of a thousand years ago, or, regarding the polyphony, pausing to consider the musical language only up to the '600 and then consecrating it as the only possible one, but to discover the meaning which unites the authentic liturgical music of the past in order to compose the new one. Today we face a new beginning; it is necessary, therefore, to create a new music in line with the teachings of Vatican II. We have a very similar situation to that the composers had soon after the Council of Trent. May be, and unfortunately, we are in a strong delay.
Some criteria
Before starting to work we need to rediscover the meaning of "strength" in the music and, consequently, the strong sense of the sacred music. Only then we can achieve a truly liturgical music. Not everything that is sacred is suitable for the liturgy, while all the music written for the liturgy must be sacred; that is, in the forms and inspiration, as well as in the text and in the internal emotions that it evokes, music for the liturgy must always be sacred. In my view the key criteria for this distinction are quite simple in that the purpose of sacred music is always the achievement of spiritual elevation and an inner relationship with God that music can guide and support . In the liturgical music all this becomes more objective, universal, simple, pure, not tied to the tastes of the moment, capable to convey and communicate within itself the two thousand years of Christian art and, at the same time, to be today's music. The sacred music written for the liturgy or that one which is a free result of the composer’s poetic meditation, must always meet certain criteria: - the text: it must always be sacred and, in any case, theological - the forms: a music not written specifically for the liturgy can have free forms although they must not lie outside of their purpose: to help the soul to reach God, to know him,to love him. – It may also reflect in a dramatic way the difficulties of believing through its free expression. In this case, however, they may not be considered liturgical composition even though, at times, it may as well be counted among the masterpieces; it is just a merely expression of a very strong religious feeling. What has been said, however, does not relieve the composer of liturgical music from respecting certain very strictly musical requirements: - quality: the music for the liturgy cannot be separated from the broader context of pure music, it must always be of high quality for its use: praising God at its best - simple: the quality of music is not in its complexity or in its difficulty. This is particularly true for the liturgy which must always be understandable and executable both by the chorus and, when it is involved, by the assembly. (On this issue we should open a specific forum ...) - Efficacy: a chant that does not move the heart to God does not grasp its purpose. If it even disturbes for its obscurity, its complexity or its very confusing style, it is to be avoided. Respect of the structure of the celebrations: music is meant for liturgy and not vice versa. The compositions which find no place in the liturgy must prepare and follow it.
Between culture and liturgy
The sacred music is so sacred to breath with two lungs: on one hand, as music that speaks of God and God becomes music, poetry, song of the man who lives his time; an art that flies beyond the usual horizons to discover and explore new frontiers and new languages, on the other hand, if it is used in the liturgy, it must meet the needs of the liturgical celebration, in its rhythm, its structures, its limits, because it is the Church that prays with music. The composer can not submit the Church's prayer to his musical expression but he must conform his musical art and talent to the liturgical use the Church makes of it. This does not mean that there is no room for sacred music or for quality music, or, as sometimes people say, there's no music in the Church anymore. In recent years all the abuses that have been perpetrated against the liturgical music came from some misunderstandings that have seen the musicians away from the liturgical composition simply because they did not recognize the usual structures of the "sacred music". The Church today is projected into a wide world and not simply into an European culture but into a world wide culture which makes it breath and live the culture of many different peoples in a totally new world in which there are no longer references to a past time. The communication of symbolic references of the musical language, the sense of the past and history, technology and economics, intrusive media communication form, make music no longer the language for an elite but the language for the mass that is for everybody with all the advantages and disadvantages this change may bring. In such cases we can not make "laudatores temporis acti," we can not take refuge in the barren regret of the past; we need to work today with the modern media, languages, forms in order to celebrate and share our faith and to remain in balance between the culture we live and the content of faith we want to communicate keeping in mind that in the liturgy we live a 4 very different situation quite different from that of the free composition. In the liturgical music, the celebration gains universal features and not merely subjective ones; the liturgy breathes the time of the Church that it is not just the contemporaneity time but it is the 'now' of the risen Christ, it is the'now' of a tradition still alive which witnesses the faith of our fathers. In my opinion the biggest problem is mainly the lack of authentic sacred music outside the liturgy. We do not want music just to have a try on the "sacred music" but music that truly expresses the faith of those who write it. The sincerity of the composer is a must here and, despite declarations of intent, these compositions do not always reflect a true faith or a true torment, a real, passionate and sincere research, or a deep praise and meditation. This is not the artist’s fault but it is an old anbiguous believe that used to place what was sacred more in the "sacristies" than in the human hearts, a belief which relegates the sacred music gender among the formal ones and not among the poetic inspiration alive in the contemporary world. The time we are living, despite all its many contradictions, is, in my opinion, the appropriate time to propose a strong musical art in which God is once again the center of the artistic communication, where people can hear the man of today and of everyday singing his being a human creature with all his strength and torment. The liturgical music would surely have a huge benefit if it could interpret all I have said purifying and simplifying it thus becoming an authentic synthesis of the faith of the world before God
