Mixed choirs

[Julian]

Well it seems I may be getting the cold shoulder even amongst fellow traditional Catholics. What was considered liturgically excellent in 1900 is something that seems to be mocked today, even amongst traditional Catholics.

Posting activity goes up and down.  You can see such in the stats feature of this forum.  That people don't instantly post to your thread shouldn't be taken as a personal affront (or as a lack of interest by the forum). 

Who is mocking an all-male choir?  I'm just mocking your terrible reasoning and some of your conclusions.

You have, in my opinion, been very sarcastic and mocking thus far, accusing me of "a sexual problem" and all sorts. St Francis de Sales tells us in his Introduction to the Devout Life: "To become a scoffer is one of the worst states in which a mind can be. God detests this vice and has in past times inflicted strange punishments on it. Nothing is so opposed to charity, and much more to devotion, as despising and contemning our neighbour. Derision and mockery are never without scoffing. Therefore it is an exceedingly great sin, so that divines consider it is one of the worst offences of which a man can be guilty against his neighbour by means of words."

We must avoid this at all costs. I will go to sleep now but again God bless.

[Maximilian]

A "temporary tolerance" entails that the WHOLE congregation of parishioners knows that what is being done is TEMPORARY and that everyone should be working to stop it and get it RIGHT... as soon as possible!

This is a good point and a necessary distinction. You can know that a practice has slipped from "temporary necessity" to "liturgical abuse" when people have forgotten that it ever was only a temporary concession -- like using "extraordinary ministers of the eucharist."

[BumphreyHogart]

Suffice is to say, that there NEEDS to be a general URGENCY in every traditional parish, to have all-male choirs...or else have no choir. That is the mind of the Church!

[aquinas138]

I can't help but approach this question from a more "ecumenical" standpoint, and I'm sure my opinion is a minority one. Setting aside for a moment the particular legislation of the Roman Church on this point, examination of the whole Catholic Church, not just the Roman rite, reveals that women have been part of choirs for centuries.

In most places, there was historically a division of the sexes, women and children on one side, men on the other; thus, a mixed choir in the modern sense did not exist. But there were certainly women's choirs that sang certain hymns during liturgies. St. Ephrem the Syrian, no Modernist he, was known to compose hymns specifically for women for use during the services; a particular form of Middle Eastern hymn is in the form of a dialogue, and often the men and women's choirs would alternate. The Eastern Churches today, Catholic as well as Orthodox, pretty much across the board allow women to sing, even at the kliros (the place for the liturgical choir); Armenian women at kliros even wear a stikharion. Even Old Believer Russian Orthodox have women singing at the kliros (though this is not universal).

But they all allow women in the choir if the alternative is not having a choir, and I think this is the situation many TLM communities find themselves in. My only point is that the liturgical function of the choir is not "liturgical" in the same sense as those in orders, obviously, and not even the same as those who serve at the altar (I agree that female altar servers are inappropriate at any time). Choirs developed, after all, to lead the people in making the responses once the music became formalized and more complex; they only replaced congregational responses over time, and they did not totally take over everywhere.

Would it be preferable to have all-male choirs in the TLM? Sure; the music of the Roman Church for centuries presupposed male voices, so that makes sense. But that requires TLM communities to be larger and more men to participate. That said, it is not of the divine law that women cannot sing in the choir, and I think the reality of the modern world requires women in the choir. St. Pius X's legislation was written in very different circumstances, when every Roman rite parish in the world celebrated the (real) TLM. A "no choir is better than a mixed choir, Low Mass all the time" mentality is a perfect recipe for making sure TLM communities remain ghettoized in the larger Church.

[BumphreyHogart]

I can't help but approach this question from a more "ecumenical" standpoint, and I'm sure my opinion is a minority one. Setting aside for a moment the particular legislation of the Roman Church on this point, examination of the whole Catholic Church, not just the Roman rite, reveals that women have been part of choirs for centuries.

In most places, there was historically a division of the sexes, women and children on one side, men on the other; thus, a mixed choir in the modern sense did not exist. But there were certainly women's choirs that sang certain hymns during liturgies. St. Ephrem the Syrian, no Modernist he, was known to compose hymns specifically for women for use during the services; a particular form of Middle Eastern hymn is in the form of a dialogue, and often the men and women's choirs would alternate. The Eastern Churches today, Catholic as well as Orthodox, pretty much across the board allow women to sing, even at the kliros (the place for the liturgical choir); Armenian women at kliros even wear a stikharion. Even Old Believer Russian Orthodox have women singing at the kliros (though this is not universal).

But they all allow women in the choir if the alternative is not having a choir, and I think this is the situation many TLM communities find themselves in. My only point is that the liturgical function of the choir is not "liturgical" in the same sense as those in orders, obviously, and not even the same as those who serve at the altar (I agree that female altar servers are inappropriate at any time). Choirs developed, after all, to lead the people in making the responses once the music became formalized and more complex; they only replaced congregational responses over time, and they did not totally take over everywhere.

Would it be preferable to have all-male choirs in the TLM? Sure; the music of the Roman Church for centuries presupposed male voices, so that makes sense. But that requires TLM communities to be larger and more men to participate. That said, it is not of the divine law that women cannot sing in the choir, and I think the reality of the modern world requires women in the choir. St. Pius X's legislation was written in very different circumstances, when every Roman rite parish in the world celebrated the (real) TLM. A "no choir is better than a mixed choir, Low Mass all the time" mentality is a perfect recipe for making sure TLM communities remain ghettoized in the larger Church.

You overlooked that there can be divine law that females in the choir should be only tolerated temporarily in view of removing them as soon as possible.

[Kaesekopf]

The choir is a "liturgical" function, and should be all males, particularly boys.

[Citation Needed]

Read the document by St. Pius X, and you will see what I am saying.

I mean, it shouldn't be that hard to provide a citation saying that choirs should be particularly boys....

[BumphreyHogart]

The choir is a "liturgical" function, and should be all males, particularly boys.

[Citation Needed]

Read the document by St. Pius X, and you will see what I am saying.

I mean, it shouldn't be that hard to provide a citation saying that choirs should be particularly boys....

As I said, read what St. Pius X wrote, and the spirit of it is to exclude females.

[Kaesekopf]

I mean, it shouldn't be that hard to provide a citation saying that choirs should be particularly boys....

As I said, read what St. Pius X wrote, and the spirit of it is to exclude females.

I guess it is that hard....

[BumphreyHogart]

I mean, it shouldn't be that hard to provide a citation saying that choirs should be particularly boys....

As I said, read what St. Pius X wrote, and the spirit of it is to exclude females.

I guess it is that hard....

??? Please explain.

[The Harlequin King]

Hello, Julian. Some posters here know that I manage a traveling all-male schola of chanters, and that I've advocated for the return of all-male choirs for many, many years now. I wrote about it in a blog post from 2014 after attending a concert by the Westminster Abbey Choir: http://modernmedievalism.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-weekend-in-dallas-why-we-need.html


The principles at hand are these:

1.) Choir and altar service are both, as you say, related. The Roman Rite presupposes that both are made up of clerics or at least men who could potentially be clerics. Indeed, altar servers for the TLM typically wear "choir dress", which is cassock and surplice.

2.) The proper placement of the choir is really not in the loft (this was a development to accommodate female singers by putting them "out of sight"), but in the chancel, or the space between the high altar and the nave. The spirit of the traditional liturgy naturally suggests that those sitting in choir here are only clerics, religious, or lay dignitaries.... in the case of actual singers, only surpliced men and boys.

3.) Again, as you say, choir can be a wellspring for vocations; in fact, an inability to sing was considered an impediment to major orders in the medieval Church; but once women begin to participate, boys and most men shy away from it. In my experience, a lot of men in traditional communities subconsciously consider choir to be a feminine activity, or something their daughters can do as a concession for not being able to serve the altar as acolytes.


What can be done?

First of all, any man who is seriously concerned about this but hasn't taken the time to learn chant himself, how to read square notation, etc. is making a mistake. One of the great obstacles to restoring all-male choirs is getting over the common assumption that "it's too hard to get by without women". More difficult, yes, but not impossible by any means. Plainchant is much easier for men without any musical experience to learn than modern church music. So, in other words, the change must begin with yourself.

After that, I recommend joining or helping to form an all-male, surpliced schola which operates alongside the usual mixed choir, but the schola would be dedicated to one thing only: the singing of the Mass Propers (Introit, Gradual, Alleluia/Tract, Offertory, Communion). The other choir would be responsible for the Ordinary of the Mass and extra-liturgical motets or hymns. After several years of this, the possibility can be explored of asking the schola to be solely responsible for leading all the sacred music.

At our nuptial Mass, we used the dual choir arrangement: a mixed lay choir in the organ loft tasked only with singing a polyphonic composition of the Mass Ordinary (the Missa Pange Lingua by Josquin de Prez), and an all-male schola vested in cassock and surplice, seated in makeshift choir stalls in the front of the church between the bride/groom and the congregation to sing the Mass Propers and other Gregorian chants. Some images below.








This photo below of the schola of Our Lady of Guadalupe FSSP Seminary during their most recent diaconal ordinations is worth seeing as another expression of the liturgical ideal:




And, so Institute of Christ the King fans don't feel left out:




I would finally refer everyone to Augustus Welby Pugin's tract, An Earnest Appeal for the Revival of the Ancient Plainsong, which was originally published in 1850, many years before Pius X's motu proprio and which I transcribed for my blog. He's very polemical, but funny. Here's a relevant excerpt on the difference between singing from the chancel and singing from a loft (emphases toward the end mine).

Formerly such persons as now constitute the choir were unknown. The service was sung in Parochial Churches, between the clerks and devout laymen (ministri), who assisted them in the chancel, and the people in the body of the church, who responded in unison. This grand and overpowering effect of the people answering the priest is yet to be heard in parts of Germany. At Minden the Habemus ad Dominum rose from more than two thousand voices of faithful worshippers. What a difference from the vicarious reply of three or four professionals, thrusting their heads from out of their curtained gallery in the intervals of their private conversation, and whose hearts, instead of being raised up, were probably groveling in the contemplation of a pull at a wine bottle between the acts of the performance, for it must be distinctly understood that all persons who sing in galleries are performers by position. Nutshells, orange peel, and biscuit bags, abound in organ lofts and singing galleries, and those who are acquainted with the practical working of these places must be aware, that they are a constant source of scandal and irreverence.

            Now, when we contrast the Catholic arrangement in a chancel to their miserable expedient of a gallery, we shall at once perceive the infinite wisdom and beauty of the former. All are habited in vestments, whose colour reminds them of the purity of heart and intention, with which they should celebrate the praises of Almighty God. They stand within the sacred enclosure set apart for sacrifice; the very place tends to preserve a recollection of the Divine presence, and to keep the singers in a devout posture. The distinct and graduated Chaunt offers no impediment to the perfect union of the heart and mind with the words as they are sung; and in lieu of a more empty and vain display of vocal eccentricities, we have a solemn, heartfelt, and, we may trust, an acceptable service to the honour of Almighty God.

            Now, it cannot be too earnestly impressed on the minds of all, that these arrangements for the Church service were universal throughout Christendom. It is no new scheme or system, proposed for trial; it is simply carrying out the practices of the Church for certainly more than fourteen centuries. Not only were the cathedral and collegiate churches provided with stalls and seats, and ample space for the ceremonies of the choir, but every parish church, and even chapel, had its due proportion of chancel, where the divine praises were always sung; and from the Basilica of St. Clement's, down to the humblest church of the 17th century, we shall find the same traditional arrangement. Singing galleries are modern abominations, and no good will ever be effected in Church music, until they are utterly destroyed, and the service sung in its legitimate and ancient position—the choir or chancel. While these galleries are suffered to remain, the erection of pointed churches is a mere sham. In vain the long succession of clustered pillars; in vain the carved screen and gilded rood; the soul of the whole thing is wanting; it is the system of a modern chapel worked in the shell of an old church. Who, then, will be asked, are those who sit robed in surplices in the stalled seats? Only privileged persons, perhaps subscribers, who go in for a show, like supernumeraries on the stage; lay figures as the "Ecclesiologist," most wittily termed them, and but dumb dogs into the bargain.

            A greater sham than this cannot be seen. And was it for this that the long chancel was stalled and screened? That the cunning work was carved and the gold laid on—merely for the accommodation of some good easy men, who take no part in the solemnity, nor contribute one note to the divine praise! Surely not; it is the greatest possible perversion of a chancel; a scandal, and a shame. What could be more painful than to read the account of the new church recently consecrated at Sheffield, where the architect had really produced an edifice quite in the old spirit; and instead of the solemn Chaunt of the dedication rising from its chancel we are sickened by a long eulogy on the quaverings of female singers. St. John's, Salford, is even a more melancholy example; a great cruciform church, with an ample choir, and yet fitted up as if for the followers of John Knox; a most disheartening spectacle.

Here's the whole thing: http://modernmedievalism.blogspot.com/2012/10/pugin-earnest-appeal-for-revival-of.html

[Prayerful]

Altar girls did not annihilate vocations.  You're better off avoiding dumb rhetoric.

Next, it's mostly a practical thing, in my experience.  Men have avoided doing the heavy lifting in the churches for quite some time now.  Women will fill in the gaps.  Not surprising.


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

It plays a role. A boy sees an unmasculine, powerless man surrounded by girl altar servers and pushed around by some bullish middle aged parish council woman or sacristan. The Faith (in its banal Conciliar format) becomes something for girls.

I notice that HK said it well.

Now some chapels or churches simply don't have a reserve of boys who voices can be trained. The policy seems to be opt for a mixed choir or even mainly female rather than have Low Mass every Sunday. Yet it serves to discourage boys. Catch 22 maybe.

Perhaps, possibly, there can be a policy of choosing settings that don't need big choirs. William Byrd's Mass For Three Voices was composed in a time where big choirs were an impossibility for Recusants, whether in the chapel of a gentleman and his household or hidden rooms in private houses. Doing something with three men can perhaps give time to train sufficent numbers of boys. Plainchant is the other HK example, and on occasion, the Dominicans at some of the Holy Week ceremonies idd well. Even if a choir at TLM can involve men and women, I think something is lost where is almost never choirs of only men or boys. It means you never get to here a lot of Mass settings the way the composer intended.

[Jayne]

Hello, Julian. Some posters here know that I manage a traveling all-male schola of chanters, and that I've advocated for the return of all-male choirs for many, many years now.

I have found HK persuasive on this topic and I imagine that most of us who have seen his thoughts on the subject over the years agree that there ought to be all-male choirs.  My sense is that this is the position of the majority of posters on this forum.  At least, it is the position most frequently expressed here.

There seems to be something about Julian's posting that is eliciting a negative reaction from people who basically agree with him.  Perhaps there is something in his tone.  Or perhaps he needed to get acquainted with this forum and its posters better before jumping into his cause.

[Daniel]

.

[BumphreyHogart]

It plays a role. A boy sees an unmasculine, powerless man surrounded by girl altar servers and pushed around by some bullish middle aged parish council woman or sacristan. The Faith (in its banal Conciliar format) becomes something for girls.

Well put!

The liturgy must be overtly, decidedly and manifestly masculine, otherwise vocations are lost.

It is natural for pious women to gravitate towards the masculine, BUT for pious men to shun the feminine.

Traditional Mass centers that do not make it clear that the choir SHOULD BE all men/boys, are only ultimately hurting vocations...particularly vocations to the brotherhood, which are almost extinct.

[Julian]

Hello, Julian. Some posters here know that I manage a traveling all-male schola of chanters, and that I've advocated for the return of all-male choirs for many, many years now. I wrote about it in a blog post from 2014 after attending a concert by the Westminster Abbey Choir: http://modernmedievalism.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-weekend-in-dallas-why-we-need.html


The principles at hand are these:

1.) Choir and altar service are both, as you say, related. The Roman Rite presupposes that both are made up of clerics or at least men who could potentially be clerics. Indeed, altar servers for the TLM typically wear "choir dress", which is cassock and surplice.

2.) The proper placement of the choir is really not in the loft (this was a development to accommodate female singers by putting them "out of sight"), but in the chancel, or the space between the high altar and the nave. The spirit of the traditional liturgy naturally suggests that those sitting in choir here are only clerics, religious, or lay dignitaries.... in the case of actual singers, only surpliced men and boys.

3.) Again, as you say, choir can be a wellspring for vocations; in fact, an inability to sing was considered an impediment to major orders in the medieval Church; but once women begin to participate, boys and most men shy away from it. In my experience, a lot of men in traditional communities subconsciously consider choir to be a feminine activity, or something their daughters can do as a concession for not being able to serve the altar as acolytes.


What can be done?

First of all, any man who is seriously concerned about this but hasn't taken the time to learn chant himself, how to read square notation, etc. is making a mistake. One of the great obstacles to restoring all-male choirs is getting over the common assumption that "it's too hard to get by without women". More difficult, yes, but not impossible by any means. Plainchant is much easier for men without any musical experience to learn than modern church music. So, in other words, the change must begin with yourself.

After that, I recommend joining or helping to form an all-male, surpliced schola which operates alongside the usual mixed choir, but the schola would be dedicated to one thing only: the singing of the Mass Propers (Introit, Gradual, Alleluia/Tract, Offertory, Communion). The other choir would be responsible for the Ordinary of the Mass and extra-liturgical motets or hymns. After several years of this, the possibility can be explored of asking the schola to be solely responsible for leading all the sacred music.

At our nuptial Mass, we used the dual choir arrangement: a mixed lay choir in the organ loft tasked only with singing a polyphonic composition of the Mass Ordinary (the Missa Pange Lingua by Josquin de Prez), and an all-male schola vested in cassock and surplice, seated in makeshift choir stalls in the front of the church between the bride/groom and the congregation to sing the Mass Propers and other Gregorian chants. Some images below.








This photo below of the schola of Our Lady of Guadalupe FSSP Seminary during their most recent diaconal ordinations is worth seeing as another expression of the liturgical ideal:




And, so Institute of Christ the King fans don't feel left out:




I would finally refer everyone to Augustus Welby Pugin's tract, An Earnest Appeal for the Revival of the Ancient Plainsong, which was originally published in 1850, many years before Pius X's motu proprio and which I transcribed for my blog. He's very polemical, but funny. Here's a relevant excerpt on the difference between singing from the chancel and singing from a loft (emphases toward the end mine).

Formerly such persons as now constitute the choir were unknown. The service was sung in Parochial Churches, between the clerks and devout laymen (ministri), who assisted them in the chancel, and the people in the body of the church, who responded in unison. This grand and overpowering effect of the people answering the priest is yet to be heard in parts of Germany. At Minden the Habemus ad Dominum rose from more than two thousand voices of faithful worshippers. What a difference from the vicarious reply of three or four professionals, thrusting their heads from out of their curtained gallery in the intervals of their private conversation, and whose hearts, instead of being raised up, were probably groveling in the contemplation of a pull at a wine bottle between the acts of the performance, for it must be distinctly understood that all persons who sing in galleries are performers by position. Nutshells, orange peel, and biscuit bags, abound in organ lofts and singing galleries, and those who are acquainted with the practical working of these places must be aware, that they are a constant source of scandal and irreverence.

            Now, when we contrast the Catholic arrangement in a chancel to their miserable expedient of a gallery, we shall at once perceive the infinite wisdom and beauty of the former. All are habited in vestments, whose colour reminds them of the purity of heart and intention, with which they should celebrate the praises of Almighty God. They stand within the sacred enclosure set apart for sacrifice; the very place tends to preserve a recollection of the Divine presence, and to keep the singers in a devout posture. The distinct and graduated Chaunt offers no impediment to the perfect union of the heart and mind with the words as they are sung; and in lieu of a more empty and vain display of vocal eccentricities, we have a solemn, heartfelt, and, we may trust, an acceptable service to the honour of Almighty God.

            Now, it cannot be too earnestly impressed on the minds of all, that these arrangements for the Church service were universal throughout Christendom. It is no new scheme or system, proposed for trial; it is simply carrying out the practices of the Church for certainly more than fourteen centuries. Not only were the cathedral and collegiate churches provided with stalls and seats, and ample space for the ceremonies of the choir, but every parish church, and even chapel, had its due proportion of chancel, where the divine praises were always sung; and from the Basilica of St. Clement's, down to the humblest church of the 17th century, we shall find the same traditional arrangement. Singing galleries are modern abominations, and no good will ever be effected in Church music, until they are utterly destroyed, and the service sung in its legitimate and ancient position—the choir or chancel. While these galleries are suffered to remain, the erection of pointed churches is a mere sham. In vain the long succession of clustered pillars; in vain the carved screen and gilded rood; the soul of the whole thing is wanting; it is the system of a modern chapel worked in the shell of an old church. Who, then, will be asked, are those who sit robed in surplices in the stalled seats? Only privileged persons, perhaps subscribers, who go in for a show, like supernumeraries on the stage; lay figures as the "Ecclesiologist," most wittily termed them, and but dumb dogs into the bargain.

            A greater sham than this cannot be seen. And was it for this that the long chancel was stalled and screened? That the cunning work was carved and the gold laid on—merely for the accommodation of some good easy men, who take no part in the solemnity, nor contribute one note to the divine praise! Surely not; it is the greatest possible perversion of a chancel; a scandal, and a shame. What could be more painful than to read the account of the new church recently consecrated at Sheffield, where the architect had really produced an edifice quite in the old spirit; and instead of the solemn Chaunt of the dedication rising from its chancel we are sickened by a long eulogy on the quaverings of female singers. St. John's, Salford, is even a more melancholy example; a great cruciform church, with an ample choir, and yet fitted up as if for the followers of John Knox; a most disheartening spectacle.

Here's the whole thing: http://modernmedievalism.blogspot.com/2012/10/pugin-earnest-appeal-for-revival-of.html

Thank you for your post. I did learn how to chant and bought a Liber Brevior (cheaper and fits in my pocket) only because I became increasingly concerned by all the mixed choirs I kept seeing, whether diocesan or SSPX. If you want to learn how to chant, you can. It does seem difficult though if you haven't started, or have barely started.

Thinking about it, I think Pope St Pius X probably expressly reiterated mixed choirs to be forbidden in 1903 because a few churches were permitting mixed choirs, and he was responding to an abuse that was beginning to crop up. This would corroborate with the quote of Pugin that you have given. They didn't mince words then.

You are right that the assumption of many is that they feel it's too hard have choirs without women. On a different but related note, others, who attend the NO, might similarly say it's too hard for them to understand the Latin for the TLM. But millennia of the greatest Saints coped with both, in far harder and less well-off conditions than our own. It's never been easier to learn chant and it's never been easier to learn Latin, yet people still say these things. I think it is a spiritual laziness that exists in some people where they want as few restrictions on things as possible. They would rather desire restrictions to be broken down rather than make a genuine effort, like the saints did, to accord themselves with the traditions.

I think even the suggestion that there should be an all-male choir operating side-by-side with whoever, will be met with raised eyebrows by some. What's the point of having two choirs, they will say? What's the need? You will then have to explain to them that mixed choirs were forbidden by Pius X and were continually forbidden throughout the Church's history, then someone will say, well they are "allowed" by Pius XII and that's that. And the entirety of the Roman Catholic Tradition on this important issue since the Early Church even, gets silenced and people pretend it doesn't exist. Isn't that what some priests do about the TLM in general? Pretend it doesn't exist?

I believe this to be of the utmost seriousness. Through neglect, to even prevent one vocation is very serious, whether in times of prosperity for the Church, or times of adversity like our own. That vocation could be a St Francis Xavier or a St John Bosco. Indeed St Dominic Savio (+1857), taught by Don Bosco, is the patron saint of choirboys. Choir girls were considered an abuse. I think the widespread permission of mixed choirs in the TLM is serious neglect, even amongst SSPX priests sadly, even though on their website they are still formally against it.

http://archives.sspx.org/Catholic_FAQs/catholic_faqs__liturgical.htm

To me, this is very serious, because it just seems to make a mockery of tradition, especially because very few who call themselves traditional Catholics seem to genuinely care about this issue. Tradition is fine until things "get serious" and "difficult to organise", then you have to compromise. For some, that means girls in the choir are fine. For others, girls on the altar are fine. I could carry on with worse travesties that I do not want to mention, that people "want", because otherwise things are difficult to organise.

If we had a strong Pope guiding us, these issues would be better sorted out. But even when there was, like Pius X, there were still some abuses and problems. It, by itself, clearly is not the greatest issue the Church faces at the moment. But for all the reasons mentioned, it just propagates the same mediocrity and cannot be allowed to continue. It is difficult to expect laymen like ourselves to sort everything out by ourselves. Ultimately the change has to come from the traditional priests themselves. They must want this in their churches but they can be persuaded to by laymen. God bless you for your efforts, and for the efforts for the faith of the others here too.