Congratulations for Pope Emeritus Benedict are in order. It's not every day that someone receives two honorary doctorates.
However impressive this may be, the tenor of Benedict’s acceptance remarks at Castel Gandolfo, on receiving honours from the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow and the Krakow Academy of Music regarding which music is truly “pure” and “great”, ought to temper enthusiasm:
Present in the ambit of the different cultures and religions is great literature, great architecture, great painting and great sculptures. And everywhere there is also music. And yet in no other cultural ambit is there music of equal grandeur to that born in the ambit of the Christian faith: from Palestrina to Bach, to Handel, up to Mozart, Beethoven and Bruckner. Western music is something unique, which has no equal in other cultures. And this – it seems to me – should make us think."
Indeed. Benedict XVI's comments should make us think about, and reflect critically upon, the Eurocentric and anachronistic and nature of his proclamation. When Benedict states "Western music … has no equal in other cultures,” he is upholding the mantle of a nineteenth-century grounded Hegelian aesthetic in which geniuses (white, male geniuses, of course) are the sole recipients of divinely granted talents.
By celebrating Beethoven – whose Ninth Symphony has been critiqued by feminist musicologist Susan McClary as the sonic embodiment of violence and domination – and Bruckner – whose music was idealised by Hitler as embodying the zeitgeist of the German Volk – Benedict is recalling a worldview drenched in traditions of misogyny, intolerance and even racial purity.
Benedict XVI’s further assertion that only “the great and pure answer of Western music” is capable of truly communicating the divine simply adds to the divisive nature of his statements. After all is it not fair to say that Catholics from diverse cultural and societal backgrounds authentically experience God in diverse musical ways?
The discipline of ethnomusicology – the study of music and culture – provides evidence for this claim. Ethnomusicologists from around the globe have documented how Catholics from many backgrounds are, and have been for two millennia, expressing a sincere connection to the divine via music that’s far from Bach. Whether it’s the upbeat lilt of a Polka Mass in Cleveland, Ohio, the sophisticated compositional techniques at play in Ugandan Catholic music, the free jazz of San Francisco’s Church of John Coltrane, the growing phenomenon of holy hip hop, or even the nineteenth-century Bavarian practice of Swabian amateur music-making, who has the authority to say one person’s musical exaltation and communion with the Divine is more valid than another?
Saying Western classical music is the one true music through which devotion can be expressed is akin to saying that Latin is the only language through which a connection with God can be expressed. Yes, Latin and the great (again, white male) composers of the Western art music tradition should not be forgotten, nor uncritically lauded. I suggest turning towards St Augustine’s non-genre-specific thoughts about how music has to the capacity to make “our minds to be more holily and fervently raised unto a flame of devotion” (Confessions XXXIII).
John Bellarmine Vallier is an ethnomusicologist and archivist at the University of Washington in Seattle
From top: Benedict XVI receives the honorary doctorates; Mozart, Beethoven and Bruckner; holy hip hop
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User comments (32)
What Benedict et al need to realize that they are looking from a very narrow outdated Eurocentric perspective.
This church is universal and there are many musical traditions that serve the non-European Catholic church - to name but a few:
Misa Luba
Misa Criola
Misa Flamenca
US African-American hymnody
Latino/Hispanic music
Charismatic music in all countries.
Mozart is certainly fine but FAR from the primary/leader role in UNIVERSAL Catholic worship experiences.
Don't take on so, Bob.
Waspish and lacking in charity? No. Simply a light-hearted affirmation of the man's initial decision to dedicate his life to prayer and study behind the walls of a remodelled Vatican convent.
robinmolieres
Posted: 20/07/2015 16:44:46
'Such a lack of charity!
As for Benedict, to paraphrase Shakespeare, "Get thee back to the nunnery!"'
Such a lack of charity, indeed - as demonstrated by your waspish final comment Robin.
The previous comments deriding contemporary church music and lauding Bishop Razinger make me weep. Such arrogance! Such ignorance! Such a lack of charity!
As for Benedict, to paraphrase Shakespeare, "Get thee back to the nunnery!"
Hilarious! Absolutely hilarious! Out of 24 comments, only one praises the article! Enough with the Benedict bashing already, were are not interested.
B16's Eurocentric, misogynist, patriarchal male chauvinism is just becoming more apparent in his retirement...but it was the basis to his thinking all along...
In Dubuque St. Patrick's parish, we created a Dixieland music Mass.
In Bellevue, Iowa, and neighboring parishes, there is an annual polka Mass, primarily created by Mrs. Leonard Darlene Zahina Manders.
When Father Norm White died, I wanted to pay tribute to the fact that he was not only a good whistler, but one of the rare people who can whistle more than one note or melody or section of a piece of music at the same time. So we whistled a hymn at the Presentation of the Gifts at St. Patrick's Parish in Dubuque.
I have said that St. Philip Neri is in a sense the patron saint of rap music. That's because he ministered to Italian teen males in the streets by taking the music they sang and having it transformed into sacred music. His Oratorian order led to the creation of the Oratorio genre of music. Palestrina wrote some music for him and his order and his teen male parishioners. So did Handel. (And Handel took advantage of the fact that the performance of an Oratorio is less expensive than an opera is to make beautiful music and make more money from Oratorios--including perhaps the most beautiful music ever created: Handel's Messiah.) In a sense, St. Philip Neri had a hand with both the lowest and the highest forms of music, and both ultimately involved oratorios.)
All that said, the variety in forms of music and sacred music should not lead us to conclude that all music and all sacred music is equal.
On my occasional visits to the UK I usually go to the Sung Eucharist at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The alternation between fine congregational singing and choral works - from Palestrina to Holst, together with the fine English of the prayers, can indeed open up the heavens.
I live in Southeast Asia with the gamelan and the kolintang, and yes the sound is very different, and the music often goes with movement. But yes it too can transport one to the power and beauty of God. Different cultures, different contexts, each opening up the heart to the divine.
Benedict XVI is Eurocentric in both his theology (glane at his bibliographies) and his musical taste. No problem, as long as he does not use his personal appreciation of one cultural to judge the richness and beauty of other magnificent musical traditions outside his experience.
Thank you again, Benedicto XVI
Usual left wing bolshie rubbish. Time will show Ben XVI to be a great Pope . Not the shoot from the hip showman we now have!!
Thank God for yet more common-sense from Benedict XVI.
"Benedict XVI's comments should make us think about, and reflect critically upon, the Eurocentric and anachronistic and nature of his proclamation."
Mr. Vallier has a point: Only the West could produce the liturgical music atrocity that is Dan Schutte's.
The Pope is correct. Western classics, born of Christendom, are the finest music there ever was.
The real affront here is that it is possible for a goofball to make a living calling himself an "ethnic musicologist" and publish his liberal white hating drivel.
We are talking about the exquisite, beautiful, excellence, purity and holy sounds of the Western classical music that pulls on the strings of your mind, heart and soul and pulls you to heavenly realm..
The singing in Latin also has the ability to lift your minds, hearts and soul to the highest ability capable to man and puts him squarely in the middle of the heavenly body..
All other music played in a Church sounds banal (so lacking that it disturbs the senses and is out of place). Why, Because it is Earthly Music. It belongs in a school, on stage, play-grounds, home or dance hall.
Western Cowboy music does not belong in Church. It belongs on a cattle trail. (guitar)
Rhythm in Blues belongs in a beer and wine cafe.
Spanish Music belongs in a dance hall or outside dance.
Again, because it is Earthly Music and does not contribute to one's holiness. It is for dancing and can be called below the belt music.
Hip Hop is not music , but if you think it is , it is all music below the belt and is way below the Earthly Music. It is music from Hell just like Heavy Metal banging on something that does not help any of the senses. Confusing to the mind, body and soul and sounds like the notes are coming straight from hell.
There you have it folks. Benedict is absolutely correct. Why would anyone doubt him for his judgement of Holy Music. Only a woman that hates men and thinks she knows more than man, just like the femininazi's. In the West we call that no Class and Stupid.
Please could we have decent music in our parishes? I know of only a minuscule handful of parishes where the music isn't shockingly awful, unprepared, poorly-rehearsed and even-more-poorly-performed and inappropriate. I am a musician. I love music. However, I have to find a spoken Mass to go to because the amateur musician is allowed to ruin it for rest of us. Mediocrity reigns again in so much in contemporary culture and the Church.
God bless Pope Benedict. How I miss him. I will think of him today as I listen to some of his favorite composers. He has excellent taste and doesn't waste time with multi-culti rubbish.
Beethoven's 9th was composed for 96 instruments by a man who was almost totally deaf. Most 3 piece bands now can't even carry a tune. And it is arguably one of the greatest musical accomplishments in the world's history. I smell sour grapes.
What a joke. A mediocre leftist buffoon is badmouthing a great intellect praising one of at least the five greatest musicians in history!
People have been converted by Palestrina, Mozart and Bach. Many would truly consider such music as a foretaste of Heaven.Somehow I don't think they're playing reggae or bashing out hymns on guitar up there.
I love Pope Benedict. He has great taste in music. He knows what transports the soul and it isn't "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam"
Talk about a stretch of the imagination! All the author of this article succeeds at is showing his hate of Benedict XVI. I can't remember when I've read a more ridiculous piece.
This piece is meant for consumption by other elite media, not by human beings out here in the actual world. It springs from intellectual in-breeding. Christians are being slaughtered by the hundreds daily in the Middle East, yet you focus on a Popes love of the classics.
This is satire, right? If so, bravo, it made me laugh my butt off! On the other hand, if you are serious, wow, the daftness is as thick as I have ever seen.
What does Vallier know about liturgical music, anyway?
Benedict is correct. Mozart is the greatest composer that ever lived. That is not a "de gustibus" issue, or a matter of taste or culture. True beauty is not debatable, although many are too degraded to recognize it. Mozart's supremacy, regardless of his white skin or European origins, is a fact.
I agree that no music should be "Uncritically lauded" even some of the execrable nonsense of the last forty years, but this article has more to do with fashionable self loathing; "dead white males" than with critical appreciation.
Are you jealous? The few pieces of music you've done are, well, very primitive. Everyone is an artist in their own mind, but only a few artist have the gift? Are you jealous that Mozart, Beethoven and Bruckner had the gift?
One need not to be a musicologist to note how a dearth of true, good, and holy spirituality leads to a baseness in culture, music included.
Actually, it's true. They play Mozart in Heaven.
Pope emeritus has a long history of making sweeping generalizations about areas where his knowledge is really quite limited (Buddhism, Islam, and, now the Western musical canon). I appreciate Prof. Vallier’s reminder
about powerful non-Western forms of music that Benedict seems to know little about (reader comments about the “New Musicology” of Prof McClary and others are a separate issue, but they hardly invalidate Vallier’s main contention.)
It has not escaped my notice that this the second negative article you have run recently with regard to Pope Benedict XVI? Have you not thought that many, many others might hold a diferent view of BXVI. Please could you possibly now instigate a more adult and informed debate about the pros and cons of his time as Pope.This type of nonsense does no one any favours.
"By celebrating Beethoven – whose Ninth Symphony has been critiqued by feminist musicologist Susan McClary as the sonic embodiment of violence and domination – and Bruckner – whose music was idealised by Hitler as embodying the zeitgeist of the German Volk – Benedict is recalling a worldview drenched in traditions of misogyny, intolerance and even racial purity."
These comment embodies the ideological folly of US leftist academics. You judge music by listening to it, not by linking it to various bad people who used it for their own purposes.
What is even worse, you should not project you ideology on other people: BVXI never said that "classical music is the one true music through which devotion can be expressed." He said that, when it took roots in Europe, the Christian faith inspired stunningly beautiful music. It will do so on Africa, and in Asia and wherever it goes. I doubt it will do it anytime soon in Seattle, unfortunately.
Is this article a belated April Fool?
This is an embarrassing, anachronistic piece.
The sentiment and terminology in this article belong in the 70s.