Pope Saint Pius X on Music in the Liturgy

Tra le Sollecitudini

Instruction on Sacred Music

Pope Pius X

Motu Proprio promulgated on November 22, 1903

5. The Church has always recognized and favoured the progress of the arts, admitting to the service of religion everything good and beautiful discovered by genius in the course of ages always, however, with due regard to the liturgical laws. Consequently modern music is also admitted to the Church, since it, too, furnishes compositions of such excellence, sobriety and gravity, that they are in no way unworthy of the liturgical functions. Still, since modern music has risen mainly to serve profane uses, greater care must be taken with regard to it, in order that the musical compositions of modern style which are admitted in the Church may contain nothing profane, be free from reminiscences of motifs adopted in the theatres, and be not fashioned even in their external forms after the manner of profane pieces. Among the different kinds of modern music, that which appears less suitable for accompanying the functions of public worship is the theatrical style, which was in the greatest vogue, especially in Italy, during the last century. This of its very nature is diametrically opposed to Gregorian Chant and classic polyphony, and therefore to the most important law of all good sacred music. Besides the intrinsic structure, the rhythm and what is known as the conventionalism of this style adapt themselves but badly to the requirements of true liturgical music.

Commentary

Too often people subject the judgement of music and music making to a crude sense of taste, as if there is nothing objective (in music) to measure. Uninformed taste is too often imposed as a law upon conversations about music (and visual art and architecture and...), and thus people become entrenched in their misoriented convictions. The Church has suffered much due to inauthentic evaluation and the ascendency of musical profanity in the Sacred Liturgy.

Skill can be required to produced a superior mind altering drug, but the drug still remains a drug, a poison with serious negative effects attached to its use. Crude constructions that ape sacred music are poison and pornography. Art, on the other hand, elevates in a manner that expands consciousness without creating a negative dependency that erodes perception and robs people of the capacity to cooperate with grace. Given truth, goodness and beauty discerned by the intellect, the will then conforms to good food that is communicated by God through worthy musical vessels.