feel for these words in the right way, he won't produce good news. It is the most important thing of all. Recently, in London, somebody was talking about the problem of language, and he said something which I think expresses a fundamental point. Languages codify immemorial reflexes and twists of feelings. Remembrances of action that transcends individual recall. Contours of communal experience as subtly decisive as the contours of sky and land in which a civilization rises. An outsider can master a language as a rider masters his mind. He rarely becomes as one with his undefined subterranean motion. Now, it is that undefined, subterranean motion that a composer is, first of all, concerned with.

[01:08]

Latin for a long time has lacked for the ordinary man, but a composer lacked subterranean motion. A mother no longer entrusts me to speak to her child in Latin. Lovers no longer address one another in Latin. And this is a very serious point. because it means that the language is nowadays deprived of all those overtones and undertones which come from being used in the most intimate actions of the human race. It is still an interlingua in certain parts of the world, among certain people and communities. But it is no longer a language in the sense that it is a living language, renewed, altered and developed by the experience of humanity. That's the first thing to remember. Therefore the rhythms of Latin, the phrase length, the syntax, all this is something which every year, month and day is skipping further and further into the past, as far as the experience of contemporary man is concerned.

[02:14]

And therefore a composer can never really set Latin in the same way and with the same feeling as he does his own native language. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that the two things, setting English in American and setting Latin, are now fundamentally very different. Before we go further, I think, too, I want to point out that there are certain myths and legends which may get in the way when we are thinking about music for the vernacular literature. You, as Benedictine, of course, particular heritage in the guardianship of Gregorian chant. And I do not think that Gregorian chant need be uprooted from the liturgy. I think it can be adapted in many ways, and I think it can also serve as a basis for many future experiments.

[03:18]

But the first thing we've got to realise about Gregorian chant, and it's something I think that even Benedictine sent us against, is that in the form we have it now, it is primarily a monastic creation. The big extent of the proper chance, the elaborate malismalance of the graduals, the tax and hallelujahs, are, as we have them now, a creation, not of the Roman Church at all, but of the French and West German Monastery of the 8th to 10th century. We do not know And we cannot know, except by surmise and inference, what the simple basis of Roman chant was in the 6th century. You can say definitely that it comes from a Jewish original, that the methods of plain song are not normal methods of composition used in Western Europe at all. They are submitted methods. They consist of assembling together little tiny units of melody, of two, three, four, and five notes.

[04:21]

which are all built according to stereotype patterns, and this mosaic method of putting these together is a fundamentally Semitic way of composition. Therefore, Gregorian charm is, in its oldest origin, Semitic. But there is no certainty now that we can get back to anything like the primitive form of the Jewish charm, which was adapted first to the Greek language, and then altered again to be readapted to the Latin language in the 4th and 5th centuries. and which then, in the Dark Ages, became the provinces of the monastic communities of the West, and chiefly of the monastic communities of France and Western Germany, and was further developed, added to, elaborated, expanded. Therefore, if you are going to use a Gorgorian chant, you would always bear in mind that its present form is that of a chant created for a liturgist. And one of the things, I'm sure I need to remind you of this, that St. Benedict laid down his rule is, the monk must have plenty to do.

[05:23]

That's the implication behind the great many of the commandments of Britain to forgive them, aren't they? And one of the reasons why the later medieval development of the liturgy, such as the liturgy at Cluney, for example, where you had the longest monastic liturgy of Western Christians, was simply to fill out what Cassiodorus called the vast leisure of the condom. Now this development was French and German, particularly French, and therefore it had many French characteristics in its love of decoration and in its love of elaboration. And you know, too, that when polyphony started, it started as a decoration of the already decorated portions of chants. Instead of performing the decorations at the end of the existing chant, you performed them simultaneously. And so you got classified.

[06:23]

And then the idea came up of singing different texts simultaneously, the so-called Gothic motet of the 13th century. Then in the 14th century comes the polyphony, which is not created by church musicians, not created by the Nazi community, is created by the new capelle, the musical institution first of all of the papacy, and then of the bishop, and then of kings and princes, in imitation of the papacy, where each potentate had his own group of musicians, singers, and instrumentalists, who wrote music which was not designed so much to give honour to Almighty God, to show what a big guy the chap was whose chapel it was. This is a very important point. And the growing secularization of music throughout the 14th, 15th and early 15th centuries can be traced directly to the ostentation and the love of the play of the ruler of Europe. Now when the Count of the Saints laid down the lines on which it supposed the form of the church music would take place,

[07:28]

It emphasized something which, for the first time in music, has become important, that the music should, as far as possible, make the words easily heard. They should underline the meaning and the mood of the words set, so that the people listening might thereby be moved to devotion and contemplation. Now, this is another frequent myth about Gregorian chant, that Gregorian chant very often illustrates the meaning of the word and brings out their moods. And this is largely illusory. The idea, since ancient Greece, of bringing out the meaning and mood of your words by the music has been lost. It is something you find no reference to in any medieval treatise on chance. You find no composer talking about it at all until you get to the middle of the 16th century. And there are certain passages that may seem to bear without you in chance. For example, there's one famous Antiphon Ashendo and Pastor Mael, which is often quoted in the book, because they have all these lovely rising gale figures.

[08:37]

You see, and everybody says, ah, what a perfect illustration. But this chance also exists to detect Shendi in Wharton Mael. And there are many other examples of that. Now, the 16th century does see this concern for the word. I won't go into all the ramifications of this now, why and how, it just happened at this time. It's linked up with the beginning of the idea that the word is not only a thing you hear, and for minority of being a thing that they read, but it now become, for a very great number of people, something they could see in the printed book. The word of God is no longer something they just heard from the priesthood, it was something they could actually see for themselves in a book. And with the growth of cheaper printing, more and more people came to think of the word not only as a heard thing, but as a seen thing, and therefore they wanted more and more to represent both visibly and audibly in music this word which they now heard and saw.

[09:42]

Well now, in bringing up the meaning of the word, music became more and more dramatic, and it led, in secular music, to the opera. And the history of church music, from the late 16th century onwards, is the incorporation of more and more dramatic traits in the music, until about the middle of the 17th century, it is entirely operatic. Now, the attempt at reform, which came in the 19th century, set up what was in many ways a false ideal. One of the books that still remains to be written is an examination of papal musicology. I think one of those books would also be published posthumously. Because there are certainly ways, ready for oversimplifications in the picture of the church music, which we get in paper and picture calls, which you do probably know, and nearly all written by people like the Hayley-Depunt, a typical institute, and that sort of thing.

[10:48]

we get a false picture, we also get a false historicism. The idea that a certain style of music can be held up as an invariable model. It doesn't work because people feel differently about music in different ages. Gregorian chant seems to be every man today to be rather a slow, solid affair, but a great deal of it seems to him that he doesn't know it much to be a rather sad affair rather gloomy. In other words, our whole musical aesthetic has changed with one thousand years of musical history. And therefore, if we are devising new music, we have to take into account the greatly increased experience of humanity in music. The fact that the average educated man today can and often does know a good deal of musical major experience. All hours of the day, if he lived in an American city, for example, he'd like to be surrounded with music, whether he liked it or not.

[11:50]

And therefore, his reactions to music are going to be very, very different indeed. You have two great periods of Gregorian chant. The period is represented by our proper chant, which are the more ancient, probably. And then you have the period represented by our Kyriale, nearly all the melodies of which go from the 10th to the 14th century. which are based on various and beautiful principles, which are much more obviously true. Why should there not, therefore, now be a new, third body of music? It is. The beauty of the Church is ancient, but it is also new. And if the Church cannot produce a new body of music in response to the demand now being made, I think there would be something radically wrong. There is no reason why the old should not be preserved. But equally there is no reason why the old rules should be preserved to the exclusion of the new. This is something which has never happened before. We don't perform the music of the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries in church now.

[12:51]

It would be quite unsuitable liturically. It is kept alive by many devoted bodies, choir, groups of musicians to perform it. It's recorded. It's still there. It's still alive. But it is no longer suitable for our liturgy. And therefore a great deal of our 16th, 17th and 18th century music will become something which is no longer suitable for the literature. It will still survive and have value as music. But it cannot now serve our needs. And as you really think about the situation in the church of the world today, in a real sense, the Middle Ages are, although a very important part, of course, in the history of the church, almost an interlude. The real church and the surroundings in which the church lived, is much more typically the cosmopolitan society of our time. Remember, right up to the end of the 4th century, that was the milieu in which the church worked. St.

[13:52]

Augustine worked in the cosmopolitan society. We've got to work in the cosmopolitan society today, in a worldwide civilisation far larger than St. Augustine could ever have dreamed of. Whereas the Middle Ages is a comparatively restrictive period. It is, contrasted with the Roman period, and with our own theories, a narrow-minded period by virtue of circumstance and situation, inadequate knowledge, inadequate communication. And it was a time, from the end of the 12th century onwards, when you had a radical hardening, you may say, of men for outro. When the church became more and more codified, you had the canon law, you had the strict codification of theology. The whole thing tended to become more and more codified. more and more systematized. And the Reformation, as can be seen today, did in one sense begin a breaking of the artificial barriers which the Church had tended to arrest around the doctrine and message that it was built to broadcast to the world.

[14:57]

And now we're starting to do it again. We're beginning to relax. We're beginning to take in the fruits of our secular civilization and realizing that the Church doesn't necessarily Yes. Yes. Yes. and whether we are prepared, really, to go right back to the root of our tradition, the root of our worship and music, in producing the right source of art for these passages. Now we come down to the question of words again. As I mentioned at the beginning, because it is important, and because all these ways of looking at music have primarily been musical ways of treating words which have not necessarily...

[16:06]

address the meaning of the word. For example, so many of those cheerful Kyrielles in the Kyrielle, they weren't really accepted the word Kyrielle at all. They start off with Kyrielle and then the rest of the text is probably fount of goodness, unbegotten father, radiant with splendor at the end you get their liaison. They are full of interpolated text, which is why so many of the chants in the Kyrielle seems to us today to be unsuited to their words. There's hardly a mournful Kyrie in the Kyriale, apart from Mass No. 18, which is one of the few really for the future. Have you ever stopped to think, why is it that we always sing Lord of Mercy Christ and Mercy's up joyful music? If the music really is the very particular word. Now, to get back to the problem of words, first of all, I think it would be highly disastrous if any attempt to make a permanent fixed text imposed on us today is for music. There has to be a great deal of expeditence, and in the next 25 or 30 years, it is important, if we are to produce a really great body of music, that there should be as much experiment as possible.

[17:18]

There should be no attempt to make anything too definitive. It can only be temporary, as far as the man is concerned, because the final shape of the man's ordinary has not been fixed. It's still under discussion in Rome. I have been told that it has been discussed, and almost settled, that it has been largely pigeonholed, and that it may be produced at a later date. You know how slowly these things go. But, until that is happening, we cannot really proceed with any certainty about the final shape of our literature, which is obviously going to influence the thought of literature we want, the way we use it. We can always start thinking of sentiments, based on principles. Everything spoken aloud or sung must be intelligible to those who are listening. not Salone's reading. And it must be not only easy for the congregation to take part in those places where they should take part, but it must be made desirable. If only we can write the right sort of music, congregations aren't really going to do the singing itself.

[18:20]

It's a point which often isn't made, but I think it's very important. A good composer should be able to write music that will make people want to sing it. If we can do that, a great fit of the opposition to singing in the vernacular is still me, from the more die-hard sections of the Church, will disappear. Now, in England, and I think in America, though I don't know very much about it, we have a very bad tradition of what I might call liturgical English. We have it in our manual to prayer, sanctioned by our bishops and archbishops. We have it in the constant Latinization of our Catholic English. We still talk about the visitation and the enunciations. We still even sometimes talk about the invention of the Holy Cross, with all the regrettable misunderstandings. We also talk about extreme function. And we tend, when they are translating a Latin prayer, to substitute a lot of Latinised words instead of putting the simple and like that equivalent.

[19:26]

And then there are a few peculiarities of English to consider in writing words for music. The way English continually alters the pitch of the voice, something that other languages do not necessarily do, are a mixture of vowel sounds with a nearly almost this song. Then that strange sound which phonetic is called a neutral e. A word like the, a sort of strange half-vowel sound you get an unstead syllable. Something which isn't nearly so noticeable in American pronunciations of English as it is in England, because you people do preserve a lot of the older pronunciation of English. You also tend to give far more attention to syllables, which in English would be so unexpected as to be hardly vocalised. Therefore, I think there may be a difference between English and American settings of the literature. So it's very exciting to a composer to come over, And here the language still being used, which one knows from what I've studied in the history of language, in ways which are those, or shall we say, 17th and 18th centuries in many ways, where you pronounce certain syllables, where you stress certain syllables, all can be traced back to the 17th century when your ancestors came over here.

[20:46]

And therefore, I think in many ways, you do preserve a path healthier in this language than we do in England. We are tempted to get more and more critical. I have been listening to American singing in church, and again, it is noticeable how it alters the whole setting of words. For example, take a word like sanctuary, which I had to set some years ago in the word. Now, in English, if we're going to make a complete season in English, it's only just sanctuary. You can't do sanctuary, whereas the American languages tend, I can't imitate it myself, to bring out those three syllables without stressing them. In other words, you do tend to give a little more weight and time when you have a many-syllable word to the syllables which follow on the accent is passed, and therefore make it much easier to test them in. We have many variations of stress and of weight.

[21:46]

The variety in our monotillable, the word like length, takes much longer to say and therefore to put to music properly than a word like sit. Here are some examples of translations which I am discussing entirely from the beautiful point of view. It's a translation of the exotic, which is surely a piece of literature we could want to keep in any of an actual literature. I'll just read the Latin to remind you of the rhythm You notice the wonderful strong rhythm. It is in three verse, isn't it? Exultetiam angelica, turba celorum. Now here is the worst translation I could find, deliberately chosen as an example of things which are not quite so bad, but which you can find over and over again in translations made in the literature.

[23:06]

It's taken from a booklet published in India. Why the Indians should be that afflicted, I don't know. Here it is. Rejoice now, you angelic choir. Notice the sort of chatty tone. Rejoice, you ministers of God, and let the trumpet of victory blare for the great triumph of our king. Rejoice, O earth, flooded with such great light. Illumined by the splendors of the eternal king, may it know that the darkness of the entire universe has been dispelled. Wherefore, beloved brethren, who stand here in the marvellous splendour of this holy life, I beseech you, add your voices to mine, invoking the mercy of Almighty God. Well, it is an accurate sentence. But it has no rhythm. To take such a thing well-de-nude is impossible. Also, notice. What I can only describe, it would be described in England as Form 3B Latin.

[24:08]

May it know that's the darkness of the entire universe. It's like a small child who's just discovered a subjunctive mood. Illuminated by the splendor of the eternal king. You see, a Latin word where an English word would do. Now here is Montignan Knox, which of course is much better. is not very suitable for musical settings. He didn't design it for that. And he always found great difficulties in writing texts for music. He once said to me in a letter, I haven't a note. And his hymns, which are beautiful pieces of poetry and beautiful translations, are often very difficult to sing in our congregation, because he always lets the sense run over from one line to another. whereas the Agnus Conjugation looks upon the end of the line as a place for taking breath to the next. And therefore you find yourself in a not-sentation breaking off at awkward moments. Here is his sensation of the Assultant. Now let the angelic heavenly choirs exult.

[25:10]

Let joy pervade the unknown beings who surround God's throne. And let the trumpet of salvation sound the triumph of our mighty King. Let her, too, be joyful in the radiance of this great splendor. Enlightened by the glory of her eternal king, let her feel that from the whole round world the darkness has been lifted. Well, of course, it is very, very about that. And yet, for putting the music, it lacks direction. Why the subjunctive voice all around? Now let the angelic heavenly cry as exult. Why exult? Why not rejoice? Let joy pervade the unknown being. I'm not quite clear why that is a translation of exultant divina mysteria. Let joy pervade the unknown beings that surround God's presence. And let the trumpet of salvation sound the time. Let earth too be joyful. And then, I think that is really deplorable, let her feel from the whole round globe. Surely all of this is unnecessarily elaborate.

[26:10]

Why can't you use the imperative mood rather than the injunctive? Well, four years ago I was writing an oratorio about Easter, And I wanted to use a large section of this. And so I was looking for text. And after looking through many texts, the evening produce, I decided to prepare my own, but using a basis of Knott where he provided a happy praise. Now this is my selection. Rejoice, O choir of angels in the heavens. Rejoice, ye mysteries, around the throne of God. Sound the trumpet of salvation for the triumph of our mighty King. You notice it's direct all the time. You've got a rhythm there. Rejoice, O choir of angels in the heavens. Rejoice, ye mysteries, around the throne of God. Sound the trumpet of salvation by the triumph of our mighty King. Rejoice, O earth, in the radiance of this great splendour. Know that from all thy globes the dust has been gathered. Not let our people. Know that from all thy globes the dust has been gathered.

[27:13]

O dear brethren who are here with me at this wondrous lighting of the holy flame, join me and proclaim the mercy of our God. Now we come to the problem of music in the mass. What sort of music? Or what portion to the mass? The mass ordinary, I think it will be agreed by everybody, is the right portion of the mass. of the congregation. Originally it was her son or child. And therefore we must restore the man's ordinary, first and foremost, to the congregation. Some simple Gregorian child, I think a very simple one could be a death dream to the child. Now these adaptations would have probably to follow the lines of those made by the Lutheran composers in the 15th century, who took many Gaborian children and adapted them for the German words.

[28:19]

There are people who, in England and in America, the Andesians and the Episcopalians, take the chart and fit the English to it without altering a note of the chart. Consequently, you'll find what I've often put as elaborate melisma on the words learned. Dutch adaptations do not take into account that music should be made to fit words, not word music. You can't get a really artistic result if you fit words to exist in music. If you want to do that, you must radically alter your music. Now, our Gregorian chant is in a highly decorated form. It contains lots of what the harmony teachers would call unessential notes, notes that are not fundamental to the real shape of the melody. And it would be easy to drift away some of those repetitions, little decorations, in making a tune which would fit English words.

[29:22]

This is what the Lutherans did when they adapted the TPM, for example. I had bought a sheet of examples today, but we haven't got a piano yet. That is what they did in adjusting some of the melodies to materiality. And this, I think, could still be done. You would have, of course, to analyze your chart, find out the radical shape behind it. That, again, would demand from scholarship and some musical knowledge, but not a great deal. And then you would have to make a shape which would fit your already designed text, which, of course, must be designed to give you plenty of rhythm, plenty of good cadences, and to give you an easy flow of syllables. I was up at St. John, Minnesota, last weekend, and several of the pastors there had been working on this problem. They hadn't been sticking to any six translations. They had been choosing from several translations, and trying to make a set of words for each chant, but to flow naturally with music. But I pointed out to them that a lot of their chant was still too elaborate.

[30:25]

They had one or two melismas, and and and there. They didn't think of getting rid of these, because they had the mistaken notion that every note from the Gregorian chimes that now exists, must be preserved if you are putting English to it. And this you can't do and produce a musical result. On the other hand, you can take the fundamental skeleton, as it were, of the melody and use that. That's us, which is a bit of piano anywhere. I could show you some examples. I'm not good at singing, so I don't understand the sound of this. This will also apply to who to the clock Of course, the proper chance will not be maintained in that particular form. As you know, in any restorative days, we could have the full introit psalm, we could probably have a full operatory psalm, we may even have a full gradual psalm, and we could probably have some kind of psalm chance for the communion. Now, not all of these are necessarily the prerogative of the people, and there are two particular chance that I think should not be the prerogative of the people.

[31:33]

The first when the collection is made. The second is the gradual, which from time immemorial has been the province of the professional singer in the church. The whole shape of the gradual, its organization, the style, the complexity of the music are those of professional musical performance. And we should maintain that. There should always be a place in our new liturgy for the professional musicians consider complete to his own. All these elaborate chants, I am sure, can be adjusted if we want. There is no reason why I should always have a part by a Gregorian gradual. The gradual could be the place, and the opportunity could be the place, where polyphonic settings of the proper text were allowed and encouraged, thus giving a place for the maintenance of the listeners in our settings. we should abandon the practice of having a motet after the Gregorian offertory.

[32:36]

Instead, the offertory text itself, probably enlarged to a psalm text, shouldn't be made the basis of any polyphonic music at this point. We shouldn't import devotional literature into the mass after the offertory. In setting these texts, we must always be aware of the different type of text we are setting and therefore of the necessary function of the text in the mass. The Kyrie, the Sanctus, the Anuschei are simple tips. The Kyrie and Anuschei are repeated tips. And therefore, they are tips which are destined to easily to musical repetition or some kind of rondo structure where you have two tunes which alternate with one another. Also, such chants easily adapt them to synabic tipping. It's not good, I think, if we're going to have some simple tips, to set them to be inevitable. If we want them ready to strike home to conservation, then we should set them as simply as possible.

[33:38]

On the other hand, the Gloria and the Creed will require a more elaborate organisation. I'm sure you know the so-called Embrillian Gloria in the Curiale, which is really a kind of psalm, isn't it? You have a so-called tone which is repeated over and over again for each phrase or sentence of the Gloria. That will be one way of handling the vernacular Gloria. It could also be the way of handling of an angular crease. But something would have to be done with the text of both those prayers, in order to make them really easily sound, finding the conjugate, because so many of our present translations are not With the creed, of course, you would have the difficulty. There's an English firm which says, the moral is, it is indeed you mustn't monkey with the creed. Devising a new translation for the creed that would really be musically suitable and doctrinally correct is one, I think, that would take a good deal of time and trouble. But I'm pretty sure that it could be done if we wanted.

[34:40]

Now, the people should properly, I think, They should share in the introit and they should share in the communion. You know the many uses that have been made of responsorial singing. Other people sing an antiphon, a short antiphon, which is interspersed between the verses of the psalm of infants sung by the choir or soul. This is an eminently practical problem. And it would be possible to build up a repository of short antiphons that the congregation could learn, It might even be possible, as has been suggested out here, I told it to St. John, that it should only be a few, in choice psalms, for a whole year, perhaps four, for the main literate procedure, which could be used over and over again, and thus the congregation would come to know the psalm, and in time, the congregation might therefore be brought to singing the psalm, instead of being confined to singing of Antichrist. Because, although the responsorial method of psalm singing is helpful, and is easy, and is effective,

[35:48]

I think these days we should not rest content with that. We want the Christian people to be able to know the psalms once again as their normal prayer, and therefore we must provide ways of singing them which will make it as easy as possible for us. I think the Jeleno method of psalm singing is good. I think the Jeleno method of kick, which preserves something of the original rhythm of the Hebrew, is good, because it gives an easily sung rhythm and one that people can pick up very quickly. On the other hand, while I admire Jelena's psalms in the original language, I do not think that the translations which haven't been made many of these psalms in the original attuned are good. For example, take the 23rd psalm, which begins, The shepherd is my lord. I didn't exactly the same as saying the lord is my shepherd, did it? And then you come to the end of that verse, where you have to revive my drooping spirit. Well, that is regrettable in itself. But you get a word like spirit.

[36:51]

Now spirit is one of those words where you do not in any way stretch the final syllable. There are only two ways of setting the word spirit adequately. One in which the second note is lower than the first, or in which the second note is the same as the first, but unexplented. But of course, at the end of the time, you get spirit. Which, of course, means that if any conjugated sings that tune, you are going to have a great deal of emphasis based on the last syllable of that word. That's what I mean by bad musical sentiment. It's the sort of thing that always happens when you try to fit new words to a tune which is not originally destined for them. Again, adaptations could undoubtedly be made in the Dirling of a sound tune. But they're not all that wonderful. There are some very beautiful ones. But, in my opinion, there are a lot which are very dull. And also, some of them are infected with a particularly French type of sentimentality, which I do not see any reason why it should be imitated either in England or in America. In fact, I think we ought to be especially careful in view of our past, of him, to avoid anything that is mawkish or sentimental.

[38:00]

We want a much more robust relationship in every way. And while, of course, it must be truly devotional, I think we ought to realize that a lot of our devotions, our devotional practices, are still surrounded by an almost 19th century romanticism, which has very, very little to do with our present-century personal and life and men. Also, too, there is no need for imitation modalism. There are many people who think that a piece becomes immediately religious in tone if you just have a few platinum leading notes from the Dorian mode. There is no need for this at all. I am convinced that there are many new ways of writing music, which would suggest religious feelings and devotion, without feeling that you've got to go back to an archaic class. We've got to produce music which sounds really contemporary, and I don't mean like that it's got to have full of jazz, idioms, but it's got to be popular in style. It should be popular in the real meaning of that word.

[39:00]

It should be a music that people will want to be, and then it will become a people's music. And a good deal of propaganda is going to be necessary. You know how the Lutheran chorale was played in Germany. They were itinerant singers who went around from town to town. And they get into a marketplace and start singing these new songs to these tunes. And gradually the people would gather around and they would teach them the new Lutheran doctrine with the new chorale. And thus the tunes played throughout Germany. Now these tunes were not in the form you know them today. take something like a sacred head surrounding which is really in four beats to the bar we know it now but originally it was in a mixture of triple time and duple time and nearly all of them were in a free mixture of triple and duple rhythm and it was only through the 17th century that the differences in deep rhythm were gradually ironed out until you got

[40:01]

our 4-4 time and our 3-4 time, which is in the Coral. We should also, I think, look at Anglican and Episcopalian settings of the English Book of Common Prayer, because, of course, these will contain settings of what we should call the ordinary of the man. All the texts that we use in the ordinary are to be found in the Anglican Chameleon Church. And remember that these texts have been texts for 400 years now, and there's a great deal of accumulated traditions and experience there. We can learn an enormous amount of studies. In fact, if you want to preserve your 16th century Lutheran churches for a while, while the congregation is still learning some of the new newsies, why not sing some of the Anglican churches? Why not sing a bird setting that the Lord have mercy on us, a bird gloria, a Purcell TVS, Why not sing these things?

[41:02]

Because you would be introducing the English words to the conjugations. You would be making them accept high musical standards. And you would also be preserving that heritage of musical tradition, which, of course, the church must always preserve. There can be no radical breaks of the past. Anything that is new must be grafted on. And we must realize that it would take time because there are people's feelings to be considered. There are also the fact that even the ordinary common man doesn't like changes normally to take place too violently. And it will be a most persuasive argument for the new music and the new text if we can show how much this good in them comes from the past. I don't think we need emphasise the newness. What we are doing is so new. If we can link it up with what has been new in the past and which we now think of as being old, then we will have a very good argument to recommend it. Also, many of the so-called anthems of the Anglican Episcopalian literature are translations of the proper sections of the mass.

[42:08]

It will therefore be used as choral introits, gradual, operatory, and communion. We have a great deal of vernacular liturgical music for the choir ready-made there if we want to use. A lot of choral music will be used at the beginning, when the list becomes almost wholly vernacular, because we won't have enough good news at written. Also, conjugation would take time to learn therefore share in the text. Now, I want to promise you about that. The reading of prayer, lesson, and gospel. I am not sure this should be observed always. The reason, of course, for the chanting of prayer as a lesson in the old days was simply that a monotone voice carried much further in a large building than a spoken voice.

[43:09]

But now that all modern churches have a built-in loudspeaker system, is it really necessary to have monotone lessons in prayer? It will mean that the clergy will have to be trained more than they are the moment in voice production. an elocution, but that should be a desirable thing anyway. But, if monetary is wanted, and why should it not be kept for certain occasions, solemn occasions, as on typical masses, then it will be a very easy thing indeed to adapt to the Gregorian system of intonation, end tone and the special tones that are used for questions to the English language. All we have to make sure is that the little turns of melody at the end of sections and sentences are adapted to fit the new stresses of the words in those places. That should present no difficulty. I expect you've heard Desmond Fitzpatrick's English man.

[44:13]

I thought his charming of the lessons worked very well indeed. I thought the rest of the music was very, very dull. In fact, I think that's the thought of music to put people off not encourage them to finish. There is no need for religion to be quite so dull. And there is no need either to insult your congregation by telling them in so many words, this is all you can do, poor dear. I think myself that if a congregation would like to be credited with intelligence, and if you could provide the stimulating unity that people will want to see, I anticipate no real difficulty. I'm basing this on the experience that I've had here, I brought over a vernacular complex, made the text newly translated from the Hebrew, in the rhythm of the original Hebrew, and I've been taking it to a lot of places, as an illustration of what I've been saying in this talk, as I've found that people have picked it up at sight, and have sung it loudly and joyfully, simply because they find, I think, that it is saying something which is interesting and enjoyable to think.

[45:18]

But to get back to the reading and the challenge, Here again, new text can help very much indeed. You do not have to prepare a new text of a lesson that is going to be read or chant it or monotone. On the other hand, many of the existing translations are awkward and ugly in many places. They lack a sense of cadence. And one of the things about 20th century prose is that it seems to have void the cadences of the 18th, 19th and 17th centuries. And while it may be undesirable in... contemporary writing, novels and newspaper articles. If you want language to sound effectively in a large building, when it is addressed to a great many people, then a cadence first is necessary. You must have language that has a very strong rhythm. I don't mean meter, poetic meter, but I do mean a language that is organized with an ear or rhythmic cadence. Here again, the Anglican model can help someone. The Book of Common Fair

[46:19]

containing a great many wonderful pieces that are in this place. I'm sure you know that. These, again, could serve as our bodies. We might follow them slavishly, because the syntax, the grammar, and the cadence of the language, of course, have altered very profoundly since then. But at least we can use them to inspire us in the way we should go. Last of all, simple music does not mean dull. It does mean, though, that you've got to have good composers, because to compose truly first-class simple music is perhaps the most difficult task a composer can set himself. We'll have to arrive at what Eliot in another context calls a condition of utter simplicity, costing not less than everything. And it may seem that sometimes we are paying a very high cost. For a composer, I think it may be very difficult. A composer may, in many cases,

[47:19]

appear to have to abandon all that he should learn. And I think only if he puts himself at the service of the liturgy, if he doesn't think of any personal style, if he tries always to produce something which is really going to make people want to think, which will be an effective vehicle for the liturgical church, then he will produce something really worthwhile. But there is bound at this time to be a great deal of experimentation. And we've all of us got to realize that many of our experiments are necessarily going to disappear. All we're going to hope is that we can start now to make a basis which, in the next hundred years, can be purged, sifted, and, let us remember, adapted and developed just as the Gregorian chant was in its own day and the Lutheran chorales were in their day, to make something which becomes a really share the body of musical time. Something that can be shared by the clergy and the people alike.

[48:21]

Something that can become a real tradition of music and thus preserve all the best in our experiments, just as Gregorian chants in its present form and the Lutheran chorales in their present form preserve the best among their experiences. We're only at the beginning of it all. We can't go too quickly. And I do not think that we should try and adapt any very radical measure at all at once. We should continue to experiment as much as possible. And here it seems to me places like this are ideal sentences of experimentations. The point made to me of St. John, Minnesota, when I was there last weekend. How much they could do, just by being an independent abbey, largely independent of the bishop, who although he could advise, could not command them in manner of liturgical. And by having this liturgical independence, they were therefore able to make all sorts of experiments, which would not necessarily have been tolerated elsewhere. and also, stated like this, have, as I'm sure you feel, a duty always to be in the forefront of focus, to make sure that experimentation is used and that propaganda is factored so that people come to know what can be done, that the prescriptions of the Vatican Council are exploited to the fore.

[49:36]

In this period, then, the composer and the church musicians have what must be, in contrast to their almost dictatorial position this past century, a very humble task. It may sometimes seem a very unrewarding one. And I like to think that we have a model, remember, in Christ himself, who ensued himself taking the form of a saint. If we can look at our expediments and check with it that way, we can find it much easier, we can find an inspiration, and it will still produce something which shall be truly worthy of the worship. Thank you. I bought some coffee, but I didn't know if there would be any time, because I have a fairly tight schedule here, don't you?

[50:52]

Do you have a little recording of it? I have a recording, yes, and you have a grammar pen. Yes. Couldn't we all move now up to St. Joseph? No. No, unfortunately. Why can't it quite all fit in there? I mean, there's so much trouble on. We have the small machine to bring that. Well, that's such a bad machine. That's such a bad machine. Can it be played into the refectory? No. No. It's only 15 minutes long. Do you have copies of them? I do. I think I've got a copy at least for every pair of you, if not one each. Well, it would take a long time without a piano to accompany and whatnot. I think you'll find it much easier if you listen to a bit of it first in those times as it is. why don't we go and listen to it

[51:57]

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