One of the speakers at this conference was Dom Mark Daniel Kirby, OSB, and he has very kindly let us know that he posted his own address on his blog, The Propers of the Mass: Then and Now. (We will endeavour to see if we cannot find more from this conference as well, of which there was a great deal of interest expressed to me, particularly in private email correspondence.)
Here are some excerpts from the paper he delivered.
Until the approval of The New Roman Missal by Pope Paul VI on 3 April 1969, there had existed for four hundred years a substantial unity between the texts of the Proper of the Mass contained in the Graduale Romanum and those given in the Roman Missal. The Missal, in effect, reproduced the complete texts of those sung parts of the Mass that in the Graduale Romanum are fully notated.
The Missal takes the text of the Chants of the Proper of the Mass from the Graduale Romanum, and not the Graduale Romanum from the Missal. The Missal, in fact, contains the very same texts found in the Graduale, but in the Missal they are printed without the musical notation that allows them to be brought to life in song and, in a certain sense, interprets them in the context of the liturgy. The melodic vesture of the texts functions as a liturgical hermeneutic, allowing them to be sung, heard, and received in the light of the mysteries of Christ and of the Church.
Originally Mass was always sung. Not until the eighth or ninth century did the so called Low Mass or missa privata come to be celebrated at the lateral altars and private chapels of abbatial and collegiate churches. The Chants of the Proper of the Mass were not omitted at these Low Masses; they were recited by the priest alone. This fact, of itself, suggests that well before the eighth century, the Proper Chants were, in effect, considered to be constitutive elements of the Mass, deemed indispensable to the very shape of the liturgy.
[...]
The 1965 Missale Romanum
The 1965 revision of the Roman Missal maintained the Chants of the Proper in their integrity as found in the Graduale Romanum. Even as The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, was being implemented, the place of the Propers was not called into question. They remained constitutive elements of the Mass, having a structural and theological rather than a merely decorative or didactic function within the overall architecture of the Mass.
The Missal of 1969
Four years later however, the fate of the Chants of the Proper of the Mass appears signed and sealed. Concerning the Proper Chants, the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Paul VI, Missale Romanum (3 April 1969) is curiously misleading. It says;
"The text of the Graduale Romanum has not been changed as far as the music is concerned. In the interest of their being more readily understood, however, the responsorial psalm (which St Augustine and St Leo the Great often mention) as well as the entrance and communion antiphons have been revised for use in Masses that are not sung."
With all due respect to Pope Paul VI, what the Apostolic Constitution neglects to say is:
1. that the very form of the Introit has been changed to correspond to the Opening Sentence common in Protestant orders of worship;
2. that the text itself of the revised Entrance Antiphon will no longer correspond to the text of the Graduale Romanum and, in some instances, will be an entirely new text susceptible of being integrated into the didactic opening remarks that, in the new Ordo Missae, may follow the salutation.
3. That even the vestigial psalmody of the traditional Introit will disappear entirely from the reformed Missale Romanum;
3. that the traditional texts of the Gradual, Tract, and Alleluiatic verses will be found henceforth only in the Graduale Romanum and will not appar alongside of the Responsorial Psalm as a legitimate option in the reformed Lectionary;
4. that the Offertory Antiphon will disappear entirely from the new Roman Missal entirely, and will be found henceforth only in the Graduale Romanum;
5. that the Communion Antiphon will, like the Entrance Antiphon, become something akin to a Communion Sentence, and often will no longer correspond to the text of the Graduale Romanum.
Thus began the radical deconstruction of the Mass of the Roman Rite. If one posits that the Chants of the Proper of the Mass are not merely decorative, but constitutive of its architecture, then one must admit that by tinkering with them, or removing them altogether, one is weakening or removing supporting beams of the entire edifice, and risking its collapse.
[...]
To my mind, one of the most urgent tasks of what has been called The Reform of the Reform is the suppression of the provision for an alius cantus aptus, and the restoration of the traditional texts of the Proper of the Mass, taking care, at the same time, that the texts given in the Missale Romanum correspond to those in the Graduale Romanum. (I would also argue for the restoration of the text of the Offertorium [Offertory Antiphon] to the editio typica of the reformed Missale Romanum.) The replacement, in the current Missale Romanum of the venerable sung texts of the Graduale Romanum with texts destined to be read, was an innovation without precedent, and a mistake with far reaching and deleterious consequences for the Roman Rite.
In conclusion, I would further argue that a wider use of the Missal of 1962, and a careful examination of the so-called interim Missals published prior to 1969, in whole or in part, would be among the most effective means to the rehabilitation and reappropriation of the Proper Chants as indispensable theological and structural elements of the Mass of the Roman Rite.
Read the entire paper at Vultus Christi.
