The glorious return of the boy choir

(Photo credit: Mitchell Mark)

 In 2014, I visited Mater Dei Parish in the Diocese of Dallas (the FSSP's largest apostolate in the US) for a Sunday Mass on my way to attend a concert by the world-famous Choir of Westminster Abbey, over at Incarnation Episcopal Church. I even took the occasion to write about the importance of men & boys' choirs on my blog afterward. Well, as Providence would have it, my focus returns to Dallas once again. I'm pleased to share with you--nay, shout "alleluia" across the rooftops--that the very same Mater Dei Church recently debuted its own choir of men and boys! This is, as far as I know, the only boys' choir dedicated to the traditional Latin Mass in the entire United States. The FSSP's efforts in Dallas here are an unqualified triumph for traditional liturgy and a beacon of inspiration for the rest of us around the world. 

To celebrate this advancement and share the news with my readers, I casually spoke on the phone with Mater Dei's associate music director and founder of the Men & Boys Choir program, Mr. Chase Fowler. Mr. Fowler (incidentally a longtime reader of this blog) began at Mater Dei in 2016. He has a highly liturgical spirit and knew very well that the perennial tradition of the Church, when it comes to sacred music, as constantly expounded upon by Saint Pius X and other popes and leaders of the liturgical movement, valued the schola cantorum of men and boys singing together as the ideal. While Mater Dei is blessed to have many parishioners--five fully packed Masses back to back on Sunday, as many old-timers remember before Vatican II--they still have all the other obstacles against establishing a boys' choir that most of us do. The parish has no school at all, much less one that could focus specially on a music curriculum. Most parishioners live outside the usual territorial parish boundaries (some as far away as the state of Oklahoma, I hear), so commuting on another day of the week for even just one rehearsal after school hours is a pain. 

And yet, undaunted by any of these challenges, Mr. Fowler pressed on. The fruits of their labor blossomed this Passion Sunday, March 18, when the Men & Boys' Choir, clad in the traditional cassock and surplice of an ecclesiastical choir, sang in liturgy for the first time at the 9am missa cantata. The men naturally handled the minor Propers in their full melodies from the Liber Usualis, while the boys assisted with the Ordinary of the Mass. Not to be treated with kid gloves, the boys still capably handle serious choral works of the Catholic tradition by composers like Palestrina and Victoria: a feat most professional directors might scoff at as impossible for boys not enrolled in a full-time choir school and, therefore, not even worth trying. So far, the boys' choir is still going strong. They'll continue to sing at Mater Dei, in rotation with the other choirs of the parish, until the end of this term (the Fifth Sunday after Easter).

Why all the fuss, though? Why not just rely on capable female singers, like virtually every other church does? Mr. Fowler and I chatted about this, and he outlined a few reasons: 

The spirit of the liturgy: the choir of Levites

Illustration of the old cursus honorum. The first four degrees after tonsure are the minor orders.

First, the all-male choir is most in keeping with the spirit of the liturgy. Basically all Catholic communities dedicated to traditional liturgy in some form or another (whether the traditional Latin Mass, the "Anglican" Ordinariate, or the Eastern rites) accept that altar servers should all be male. Lay altar servers fill roles which were, in times long past, exercised only by men or boys who were tonsured and "ordained" to the minor orders. These minor orders eventually came to be restricted to men in formation for the priesthood, despite the canons of the Council of Trent ordering them to be restored to normal parish use. The canons were ignored, but it was universally understood that lay substitutes should at least potentially be able to be ordained acolytes... therefore, male.

What even most traditional Catholics today have lost is the understanding that singing in an ecclesiastical choir is, in itself, a form of altar service; perhaps better described as the foundation of all other altar service. This is obvious if you observe the daily worship at a traditional seminary or monastery chapel. A few seminarians assist the ministers at the altar as acolytes, but the rest sit in the choir stalls in cassock and surplice (fittingly called "choir dress") and assist primarily by singing the Mass or Divine Hours. The sheer amount of singing done at a traditional seminary is probably mind-numbing to diocesan students, but this is simply how the clergy lived for the first seventeen or so centuries of Christian history. In medieval times, an inability to sing on-key was considered an impediment to priestly ordination. This is why medieval literature usually describes priests not as "saying", but as "singing Mass".

The ideal of the seminary choir is shown beautifully in the FSSP's promotional video above for their Requiem album.

One of the biggest favors any parent can do for a son who might have a vocation to Holy Orders, therefore, is to develop his singing talent at a young age. This is where a boys' choir comes in. By learning liturgical music, especially how to read and sing Gregorian chant, and by becoming intimately familiar with many settings of the Ordinary of the Mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei), a boy is formed in liturgy just as he would by serving the altar. Indeed, a boy's time is better spent in learning music because the ceremonies of altar service are easier learned as a teenager or adult, while the skills for singing are better formed from youth. But whether the boys sing well or poorly, they nonetheless fulfill a clerical role in liturgy which can't be said for mixed or women's choirs. Pius X felt strongly enough about this that, in his 1903 motu proprio on sacred music, Tra le sollecitudini, he banned women from church choirs entirely (with varying levels of success):

"With the exception of the melodies proper to the celebrant at the altar and to the ministers, which must be always sung in Gregorian Chant, and without accompaniment of the organ, all the rest of the liturgical chant belongs to the choir of levites, and, therefore, singers in the church, even when they are laymen, are really taking the place of the ecclesiastical choir. Hence the music rendered by them must, at least for the greater part, retain the character of choral music."

And:

"On the same principle it follows that singers in church have a real liturgical office, and that therefore women, being incapable of exercising such office, cannot be admitted to form part of the choir. Whenever, then, it is desired to employ the acute voices of sopranos and contraltos, these parts must be taken by boys, according to the most ancient usage of the Church."

Feminization of sacred music and decline into performance art

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, established by King Henry VI in 1441, is considered by many to be the greatest men/boys choir in the world.

Second, an all-male choir helps counteract the feminization of sacred music. Here, I don't mean to denigrate the countless women who devote so much time and talent towards the betterment of worship (nor do I have any foolhardy plan to abolish women from church choirs overnight). Indeed, it's because of women's tendency to more freely devote their time that church choirs everywhere have more women than men unless they enforce an all-male schola. Traddy parents often, subconsciously, send their boys to serve, and their girls to sing in choir. The end result is that singing becomes perceived to be a feminine activity, or perhaps a consolation for not being able to serve the altar. The greater consequence is that the choir becomes divorced from its traditional understanding as a liturgical office, and then becomes focused more as performance art--pretty background music while the real work is done around the altar.

Some of the strongest evidence for this mentality is from a screed I found in the April 1917 issue of The Musical Quarterly, titled "The Boy Choir Fad", which you can read in full here. N. Lindsay Norden wrote this diatribe as a response to the revival in the later 1800's of boys' choirs, starting in the Anglican churches with the Oxford Movement, then expanding to Rome by the efforts of the Cecilians and others we might call "plainchant fundamentalists". Here are some of the more pungent excerpts:

"The boy choir fad has grown so alarmingly that the choral ideals of the American church will degenerate unless a decisive check is firmly put upon this disastrous evil in church music."

"Who would dare compare any boy choir with some of the splendid mixed choirs in New York City? Only an individual with no musical conceptions upon which to base judgment, or perhaps one imbued with the idea that a 'real' church choir should look in real life as some painters have elected to picture it."

"The principal elements which have made for the development of the boy choir are: sentimentality, a certain amount of ignorance about the 'angelic' qualities of a boy's voice, hollow imitation of the English church, and the unusual belief that it is not proper to have women in the chancel."

"If church music standards in this country are to equal those in the secular field, the boy choir must go. Rational, refined, musical considerations must overcome sentimentality, and uncultured, unworthy motives, which make for lower standards and insufficient results."

And perhaps worst of all:

"Church music in this country is mainly a mechanical echo of the ideals of the English church, which some of us consider the stupidest and dullest the world has ever known."

For the Modern Medievalist, at least, all these protests simply betray a mind more geared to sacred music as performance art rather than an act of liturgical worship. In any case, I would say Mater Dei's success over one hundred years after the publication of Norden's screed, long after the "fad" of boys' choirs collapsed everywhere outside of the most famous English cathedral and collegiate institutions, shows that with faith, the impossible can be made possible.

The chancel: uniting altar and choir

The chancel of Bristol Cathedral, with choir stalls

Mater Dei doesn't have a chancel and so this isn't an option for them, but this aspect of the choral tradition deserves some commenting on as well. A much more edifying article was posted in response to the above piece, in The Musical Quarterly's July issue of the same year, titled "Why We Have Male Choirs in Churches". This piece, which explains how all-male choirs were inherited even from the ancient Temple of Solomon under the Old Covenant, can be read here. It goes on through medieval history up to the Anglican movement to restore proper chancels with choir stalls, now seen in so many Anglican churches built from the mid-1800's and after. Ironic that so many Catholics perceive the choir loft in the back of the church as the more traditional style when it was really a later innovation to accommodate the introduction of women singers. The article has a fascinating quotation from the Bishop of Covington (presumably Ferdinand Brossart):

"We have succeeded in the past in removing the choir as far as possible from the altar, and have been spending money in the wrong way. Therefore we need not be surprised that we have succeeded in banishing also the music of the altar, the music of the Holy Service, from the church, and have substituted in its stead something more in keeping with exterior worldliness and profanity, and, with all, we have driven in a measure from the hearts of our men and boys that love for things most sacred, which the closer communication between altar and choir fostered so extensively in the Ages of Faith. Let us learn to spend more and more wisely, and restore the chancel choirs to the churches, and bring our men, old and young, back into the Sanctuary of God, that they may take a more active part in our magnificent Liturgical Service. Let us return to the old Catholic way of building our churches with a long chancel, and, if possible, an organ chamber, and vestries not only for the priests but also for the choristers. Let us bring altar and choir nearer each other."

A powerful call to action, to be sure! When I bring my chant schola out to some church for Mass, there are many times when we have to sing in the choir loft as a practical necessity because of the architecture of the place. However, whenever possible, I try to situate us within or near the sanctuary to emphasize our role as a true liturgical choir. 

It's also worth revisiting one of my favorite quotations from Augustus Welby Pugin, in his Earnest Appeal for the Revival of the Ancient Plainsong, which I transcribed for my blog long ago (see here). In addition to his many skills as architect and designer, the father of the Gothic Revival also sensed the importance of recovering the Church's traditional Gregorian chant. He had this to say about the state of choir lofts in his day:

"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."

The next step: the parochial school

The Atonement Academy, San Antonio

Mater Dei has shown us that it's possible to establish a boys' choir even without the benefit of a school. Still, for the perfection of the art, a school is the logical next step. In my chat with Mr. Fowler, he said one of his inspirations was the parochial school attached to my hometown parish, Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, where I was received into the Church. The Atonement Academy is a full K-12 school (for both boys and girls) in the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter which, in addition to its overall mission in providing an orthodox Catholic education in the classical liberal arts tradition, requires every student, in every grade, to be in a choir. For this, Atonement has the outstanding honor to have one of the only Catholic parish churches in the whole world to have a daily choral Mass during the school year. 

The Atonement Academy represents a rare example of the fulfillment of an ideal espoused long before, during the original Liturgical Movement of the early 20th century. I recently picked up a book from 1963: really, a collection of essays titled Liturgy for the People. Most of the authors are Jesuit priests of a heavily progressive stripe, typical for the era. But one essay stands far above the rest: it's titled "The Schola Cantorum and the Parish School", by Theodore N. Marier. Marier was one of the leading advocates of Gregorian chant in the American Church, and was the second president of the Church Music Association of America. Shortly after writing this essay, he went on to found the St. Paul's Choir School in Cambridge, Massachusetts: the only Catholic boys' choir school in the United States. It still exists today (see website here) and is working hard to reclaim its identity as a liturgical choir, even singing Vespers every Thursday.

But what about the essay? In it, Marier says that the difficulties in fully participating in the liturgy are not Latin or Gregorian chant, but a lack of education. It's important to observe that Marier wrote this essay at the height of the Catholic parochial school's glory days in the US. Indeed, Marier himself seems to know it at the time of his writing: "our vast and complex network of parochial schools serving the cause of Catholic education from the kindergarten through graduate schools is vigorously operative in these times."

And yet, he laments that almost nowhere is any of this energy being directed toward the cause of sacred music. Where they are thought of at all, the choirs are "lunchtime choirs", with rehearsals made only during recess while other kids are at play. Drawing on the many statements from the popes of that era on the need for a schola cantorum to be established in every parish, Marier outlines a plan in his essay for every parish school:

First, of course, is the hiring of a full-time music director. The director would be responsible for developing a special curriculum for choir boys within the larger school, with the assistance of two other teachers, from fifth to eighth grade.

Second, one of the parish priests would be assigned to the schola's spiritual direction. He would teach the boys Latin, the liturgy, and how to serve Mass (all choirboys would also be expected to serve the altar).

Third, as the schola develops, it would take on more and more liturgical duties, enhancing the overall life of the parish. The schola would become the principal choir for Sunday high Mass and major feasts, and hopefully take up one or more of the Divine Hours (such as Vespers or Compline). Teams of boys in rotation would handle the cycle of Requiems, weddings, and other votive Masses as they come.

Marier ends this essay with an imperative, which is as relevant for 2018 as it was for 1963. I'll use it to end this column as well. Marier writes:

"The training of leaders must begin early in their formative years and continue over a long period of time. The Palestrina, Josquin Des Pres, Guido D'Arezzo or even St. Gregory of tomorrow is perhaps today in a parochial school third grade, waiting to be led, encouraged, and motivated by the Church to a life of fruitful creativity in her service. If the opportunity of training him is not seized now, the Church will sit by and watch him spill out his musical talents in the service of the theater or a television network, instead of in the fully dedicated service of her liturgical music."

My personal favorite men/boys choir is that of Westminster Cathedral (the chief church of the Catholic Church in England, often confused with the also-excellent Westminster Abbey Choir)

A weekend in Dallas: why we need traditional men & boys' choirs

Since I haven't made an update in a few months now, I'll preface this article with a brief recap of my doings and musings over the past two days. Indeed, this was a good weekend for medievalists, worthy of reflecting. Saturday was the feast of saints Crispin and Crispinian, two ancient Roman martyrs whose following became quite popular in later medieval England. The patron saints of cobblers, this feast was a major public holiday for everyone involved in the tanning and leathermaking industry. On the fateful morning of October 25, 1415, the hopelessly outnumbered and exhausted state of King Henry V of England's invading army prompted the Earl of Westmoreland to exclaim, "O, that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work today!" And the rest is "history", of course.

As per tradition every year, I dutifully watch the Kenneth Branagh adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V and cry "God for Harry, England, and Saint George!" Every year, a French historian or two objects to the celebrating of war crimes or grossly exaggerated kill counts across the Channel, and then an English historian says nay, 'twas not so, we really did slay over nine thousand Frenchies with ten archers and a cheese knife. Saints Crispin and Crispinian themselves invariably get lost in the festivities, so this time, I share with you the following link, proposing the two martyrs as patron saints of catechists.

A good friend of many years, Theodore of the Royalty & Monarchy Site, invited me to travel up to Dallas to attend a concert given by the Choir of Westminster Abbey on Sunday the 26th, which happened to be passing through the Episcopal church where he sings during their tour of the United States. Yes, the same choir that sings at the burial place and coronation site of the kings of England since 1065. The same choir that millions of folks otherwise oblivious to all this stuff heard while watching the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. And the same choir that my fiancée and I heard when we visited the Abbey for choral Evensong on Christmas Day of 2011 (we were checking up on stolen property). Theodore probably didn't expect me so willing to attend as to bring the entire family for the ride, but I did, and though it was quite a hectic trip to and fro (six hours each way) with very little time to stop and relax, it was certainly worth it.

Sunday morning began with a visit to the church of Mater Dei, Irving. Though I have numerous friends who are or were seminarians of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, and have attended Masses celebrated by FSSP priests before, this was the first time I ever actually visited one of their churches. Sung Mass began at 9 in the morning, which despite being the most traditional time to celebrate it (following the divine hour of Terce), is always a maddening proposition for us not-morning folk. It was the feast of Christ the King, which is always on the last Sunday of October in the 1962 calendar and, despite the feast's recent coinage, gave heightened significance to Saturday's royal victory and that afternoon's equally royal entourage. There was a rather lengthy homily on the recent synod on the family in Rome given by Father Wolfe, who I briefly met during a visit to the ill-fated Fisher-More College in Fort Worth a couple years ago. If some homilies are like cotton candy and others are like meat and potatoes, this one was rather like eating a brick that chipped my tooth. Father Hunwicke this, Pope Honorius that, but it seemed to give solace to my fiancée who was entertaining thoughts of converting to Eastern Orthodoxy after the fiasco of the midterm report. After Mass, there was a Eucharistic procession in honor of Christ the King around the parking lot, Benediction, and multiplication of the doughnuts and muffins. The people were friendly, and a few even conversed with me and Lauren. An unfortunate ad for Rick Santorum on a bulletin board in the narthex, and an even more unfortunate painting of the Sacred Heart, detracted from an otherwise edifying experience.

Folks filing back in to Mater Dei after the procession. They did the best they could with this old Korean Presbyterian church building.

After Mater Dei, it was lunch with Theodore, where he, Lauren, and I talked at length about choral music and other matters of import, and then on to the purpose of the trip: to listen to the Westminster Abbey Choir in concert. One thing can be said for the people who built the Episcopal Church in America: they were not stingy in giving. The Church of the Incarnation, from nave to parish hall, was a lot nicer than what I'm used to in an ordinary parish church. Now, I must concur with Lauren, who remarked that the surroundings felt devoid of the presence of God that we feel when inside a Catholic church, but that's another story for another time. Yesterday, I was a guest, supporting an institution I'm quite fond of: the traditional choir of men and boys.

The place was packed to the brim. We were forced to sit in an awkward place in the north transept, unable to really see anything. Interestingly, we were also stuck in the north transept when we heard them at Evensong on Christmas Day at the abbey itself, in 2011.

The repertory was mostly of large texts by 19th and 20th century composers that I didn't know much about, but it began with "Hosanna to the Son of David" by Orlando Gibbons, then two responsories by Thomas Tallis (Videte miraculum from Candlemas, and Loquebantur from First Vespers of Pentecost). There was a huge choral work set to three prayers by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister who earned death in a concentration camp for his opposition to the Nazi Party. My favorite of all the texts that I had not heard of before was this bit called "The Twelve" by Wystan Hugh Auden, set to music by William Walton (this sample courtesy of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge):

 I

 Without arms or charm of culture,

 Persons of no importance

 From an unimportant Province,

 They did as the Spirit bid,

 Went forth into a joyless world

 Of swords and rhetoric

 To bring it joy.

When they heard the Word, some demurred, some mocked, some were shocked: but many were stirred and the Word spread. Lives long dead were quickened to life; the sick were healed by the Truth revealed; released into peace from the gin of old sin, men forgot themselves in the glory of the story told by the Twelve.

Then the Dark Lord, adored by this world, perceived the threat of the Light to his might. From his throne he spoke to his own. The loud crowd, the sedate engines of State, were moved by his will to kill. It was done. One by one, they were caught, tortured, and slain.

II

 O Lord, my God,

 Though I forsake thee

 Forsake me not,

 But guide me as I walk

 Through the valley of mistrust,

 And let the cry of my disbelieving absence

 Come unto thee,

 Thou who declared unto Moses:

 "I shall be there."

III

Children play about the ancestral graves, for the dead no longer walk.

Excellent still in their splendour are the antique statues: but can do neither good nor evil.

Beautiful still are the starry heavens: but our fate is not written there.

Holy still is speech, but there is no sacred tongue: the Truth may be told in all.

Twelve as the winds and the months are those who taught us these things: envisaging each in an oval glory, let us praise them all with a merry noise.

(Quite metal, when you think about it.)

The choir stalls at the (Episcopal) church of the Incarnation in Dallas, where the concert was held. Unlike in American Catholic-dom, choir stalls seem omnipresent in Episcopal-land.

The concert ended with an impromptu piece by the Catholic recusant, William Byrd, and as they left, I was more convinced than ever of the need to restore or establish this choral tradition in the Catholic Church, the United States, and the rest of the world. I became smug when I learned that the Abbey Choir's Master of Music, Mr. James O'Donnell, is not only Catholic; he is a papal knight (Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great) and the first Catholic to direct the Abbey Choir since the Protestant Reformation. When the previous Organist and Master of Music was sacked in 1998, all the top musicians and choir directors in the Church of England had been passed over in favor of Mr. O'Donnell, choirmaster at Westminster Cathedral (the chief church of the Catholic Church of England and Wales, oft confused with the Abbey). What an honor, indeed. But let's now get to the heart of the matter: why are these men and boys' choirs so important?

First, they fulfill a function in the Catholic tradition that women simply cannot. Before you jump up and say, "hey, I/my wife/sister/daughter/mother is in church choir" and send me a hatemail, let me be clear: yes, the Church has allowed female altar servers for decades in the modern form of the Mass, and women in lay choirs for over a century; and it's true, there's nothing inherently wrong with women in lay choirs (in civilian dress, typically singing from a loft or otherwise hidden from the public gaze). I'd be happy for all my daughters to join a lay choir when they come of age. A lay choir is nothing more than a specialized subset of the faithful at large, and if the faithful are encouraged to sing the Ordinary of the Mass, as they did in ancient times, there can't be anything wrong with a specialized subset (naturally including women) doing the same thing. There are women in lay choirs in every church I sing at, so if I had a problem with them outright, I guess I'd be shown the door sooner or later.

But as choirs go, the traditional Latin Mass's rubrics only concern themselves with one: the liturgical or ecclesiastical choir*, assumed (just as with altar servers) to all be clerics in cassock and surplice, seated in choir stalls in the sanctuary (or quire, or chancel), the gospel and epistle sides facing one another. And naturally, as women cannot be clerics in the Catholic Church, those who populated the choir were all male. These men and boys alone were expected to sing the five proper chants; Introit, Gradual, Alleuia (or Tract in Lent), Offertory, and Communion; which change every day. For years, our men's schola had to juggle learning five all-new, melismatic chants virtually every Sunday, only to put them away for the entire year until that Sunday occurred again, while also maintaining jobs, children, schooling, or some combination of the above. Sung Masses aren't quite as frequent at the diocesan 1962 Mass here this year, but even so, if our schola wasn't there, there wouldn't be any chant at all.

In the medieval world, on the other hand, this task was generally left to boys and men who dedicated their entire lives to the sacred art of chant: clerks ordained to the minor orders at the parish level (perhaps permanently), monks in their monasteries, students in their college chapels, and canons in their cathedrals. No priest was exempt from the duty to sing. Today we have the expression, "I asked my priest to say Mass for my sick cat yesterday", but in the Middle Ages, you were more like to say that a priest sang Mass for such-and-such an intention, such as not dying from plague or shipwreck. Hence, in Shakespeare's play, on the eve of Saint Crispin's, Henry V gets on his knees and prays for pardon for his father having usurped the crown from Richard II:

O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;

Possess them not with fear; take from them now

The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers

Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,

O, not to-day, think not upon the fault

My father made in compassing the crown!

I Richard's body have interred anew;

And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears

Than from it issued forced drops of blood:

Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,

Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up

Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;

Though all that I can do is nothing worth,

Since that my penitence comes after all,

Imploring pardon.

But why boys, you ask? For American Catholics, the answer is easy. "Start 'em young." We Americans have long been used to the idea of the "altar boy", encouraging them from the time they can take directions to serve the altar in the hope of fostering another vocation to the priesthood. Unfortunately, we also have historically tended to throw them right into low Mass where the server assumes many of the duties of the deacon and subdeacon, but the average boy can only learn so many directions and Latin phrases at a time, so we have also gotten accustomed to the fatal double-whammy of 1.) sloppy serving, and 2.) thinking older teenagers and adult men are too old to serve, thus forbidding the problem from ever being solved.

Medieval Christendom had another model: yes, boys served Mass (and even played at being bishop from time to time), but they started with minor positions at solemn Masses such as torchbearing before tackling low Mass, in the unlikely event that they did so at all. But even before boys carried torches, they had to learn how to simply sit in choir and sing the Mass. In those days, singing the entire liturgy from cover to cover was still the norm, and it remains true today that singing is a skill best cultivated from an early age. At the turn of the second millennium, the western Church's bases of influence gradually shifted from the monasteries (those fortresses and repositories of knowledge in a more brutish era) to the bishops and their cathedrals. Everywhere, bishops raced to raise up the tallest tower, the largest nave, the grandest stained-glass windows. But what was the point of developing Gothic architecture, spending millions, and putting thousands of laborers to work on a building that would be empty most of the time? No; the cathedrals of the Gothic age would have the divine hours sung round the clock by the bishop's canons. And who would assist and eventually replace them in their holy duties? The boys of the cathedral school.

Here stood the predecessor of the Tridentine seminary system. Before there were seminaries, Charlemagne ruled that cathedrals in his empire establish schools so that boys may learn to read, write, sing, and go on to serve as the next generation of clergy. The boys sang the daily Masses and Office, and the better they sang, the further the bishop grew in prestige, and the more likely the great nobles of the realm would send their sons to the schools. From these early foundations sprung the first colleges, and the universities of Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge. It was also these boys who, together with the men, developed the additional voices to the plainchant which led to polyphony. By the 15th century, polyphonic settings of the Mass were everywhere, and as there were still neither women nor castrati in church choirs of any sort, the treble voices for all these compositions necessarily had to be sung by boys.

The Catholic Church in America has never had a strong tradition of choral music, but now there's a crisis of bad music throughout the entire Catholic world. This was readily apparent when the Westminster Abbey Choir visited Pope Benedict a few years ago and sang Palestrina with the Sistine Chapel Choir, making the Italians look like amateurs and prima donnas at their own game, in their own house. What's worse: the art of singing itself has been resigned, in many Catholics' eyes, to a feminine activity. "My boys serve, my girls sing;" as though there were a great distinction between the two! Thus, if I were to ask someone if they were interested in joining our schola, the answer 90% of the time will be, "I can't sing". Perhaps if they had started learning when they were eight years old, it would be another story. And now we have a problem of many generations of churchmen in America and elsewhere who can't sing, never grew up in a singing environment, and therefore, sing very little or none of the liturgy during their entire priestly careers. All of a sudden, a great tradition of sung liturgy is as dead as the public Divine Office, save for the Eastern rites and a few pockets of sanity here and there. Imagine how different our musical culture would be if every cathedral, if every parish, had a dedicated program for training boys to sing daily services, assisted by a sizable contingent of adult male scholars.

The (Catholic) church of Saint George, Sudbury (London), in the early 20th century. During a nuptial Mass, it appears two cantors, or rulers of the choir, are leading the Gradual with a full, surpliced choir of men and boys before the altar.

It's my general experience that when it comes to Church matters, women tend to be much more willing to volunteer, even if they're juggling multiple young children. They'll do whatever they're asked, behind the scenes, without reward or recognition. Men need to be led by example, to be seen and recognized for their service. Certainly less noble, and yet, there's the paradox that no matter how intensely religious a mother is, if a father is inactive in his faith, their beliefs are unlikely to be passed on to the children when they come of age.

Therefore, I propose an experiment for all churchmen and altar guild leaders who recognize the problems in our musical culture:

1.) Let traditional choir stalls, or at least a few movable seats, be placed within the sanctuary of every parish (for those with rails and claustrophobic sanctuary spaces, this may necessitate moving them forward).

2.) Since altar guilds usually have many more servers on the roster than can actually serve on any given Sunday, let all those who are not scheduled to serve a specific position be assigned to sit in choir. This way, new servers can witness the ceremonies of the liturgy up close before taking them up themselves, and so that they can also lead the laity in the proper sitting, standing, or kneeling postures, rather than the confusion that abounds in so many places I've attended (true that in the traditional Latin Mass, there are no rubrics for the laity, but I've seen people awkwardly split between standing and kneeling after the Canon, for example, for lack of direction rather than strict personal preference).

3.) Let all the male singers of the choir also don the cassock and surplice, properly called "choir dress", and take places in the sanctuary, leading all the other servers in choir to sing the Mass; at least the Ordinary chants (Kyrie, Gloria, etc.) whenever they are sung in plainchant. If you place boys in altar service with the hope of raising vocations, they'll need to know how to read square notation as much as the prayers at the foot of the altar.

4.) By starting to train boys to sing at a young age, hopefully as they grow into adults, the community will always have trained chanters ready to step in and lead the chants of the Mass, rather than work the same three or four dedicated chanters one Sunday after the other!

I'm just pontificating from my proverbial armchair here, but it seems like this model, as it was practiced in the great cathedrals of the medieval world, would go a ways toward restoring liturgy worldwide to its ideal, normatively sung form.


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*The liturgical or ecclesiastical choir was defined as such by Pope Pius X in his 1903 motu proprio on sacred music, Tra le sollecitudini:

"With the exception of the melodies proper to the celebrant at the altar and to the ministers, which must be always sung in Gregorian Chant, and without accompaniment of the organ, all the rest of the liturgical chant belongs to the choir of levites, and, therefore, singers in the church, even when they are laymen, are really taking the place of the ecclesiastical choir. Hence the music rendered by them must, at least for the greater part, retain the character of choral music." And, "On the same principle it follows that singers in church have a real liturgical office, and that therefore women, being incapable of exercising such office, cannot be admitted to form part of the choir. Whenever, then, it is desired to employ the acute voices of sopranos and contraltos, these parts must be taken by boys, according to the most ancient usage of the Church."

The facial expression here has a certain semblance to Lady Mary Crawley's.

The front door, the great threshold for the unchurched seeker: an important but oft-overlooked place to for a church to put in its finest craftsmanship.



During the reception. Thanks again, Theodore.