Composer

Richard Rice

Program Notes

I have been more fortunate than many Catholic composers in finding opportunities to exercise my compositional urges within the context of the traditional Latin Mass. The importance of this confluence cannot be overstated, for nothing plunges a composer into the roots of Western polyphony like the Masses of Palestrina, Lassus, and Victoria, and nothing is quite so fulfilling as adding to “the great treasure of sacred music”, as the Second Vatican Council described it. That treasure is inexorably linked with the Latin liturgical texts, the schola cantorum which sang them, and the liturgical spirituality which it was designed to clothe and nurture. The Catholic Church has not always appreciated her music, nor her musicians, but it was the dark, confused period following that same Vatican Council which proved nearly fatal to the sacred treasure, liturgically speaking. (Ironically, that same period saw a sharp increase in awareness of, and appreciation for, Renaissance polyphony, due to the recorded work of groups like the Tallis Scholars and Hilliard Ensemble.) Whatever one makes of the changes wrought by, and in the name of, the Council, one must admit this fact: a modern composer, inspired by the giants of Renaissance polyphony and compelled to add his voice to that great tradition, has for several decades met rebuke and rebuff at nearly every level of the Church. The old model was out; the old sacral language discarded; the venerable liturgy modernized. Traditional composers need not apply.

One should probably avoid denigrating the efforts of some artists within the new parameters, for many notable works have been created to serve the new liturgy. Composers have even found a few defenders within the Church, willing to stand up for true art in an increasingly functional, disposable market. But then came the ascension of a great theologian, a tireless refuter of the progressive status quo, and (most amazingly) a classically trained musician, to the Chair of St. Peter. Both by mandate (his seminal motu proprio on the traditional Latin Mass) and by example (his quiet but thorough reordering of papal liturgical life), Pope Benedict XVI has sought to restore a sense of continuity with the Church’s liturgical past, to ground the conciliar reforms in sound catholic principle, and (not incidentally) to renew the vocation of liturgical artists long alienated from service to the Church. Whatever the reality at the parish level, the Church has once again made herself a home to the sacred arts.

Within this encouraging new environment, the liturgical composer still finds himself playing a balancing act. Church choirs are only as good as the singers they may or may not employ, pastors and people still indulgent of both modern music and ancient Latin only up to a point, and the liturgy still governed by its own set of aesthetic, practical, and (yes, indeed) functional imperatives. Thus it has always been, as composers of every period have discovered when those imperatives have clashed with their own creative impulses. It is even more true in our day, in which art music has been betrayed by a bloodlessly cerebral academia and all but ignored by an increasingly skeptical public. Lacking true and artful leadership, composers fall into a more or less well-schooled eclecticism. To the extent it dares to be raised, the composer’s distinctive individual voice usually betrays a note of desperation, an echo of our modern artistic nihil ex nihilo. It will take years for Catholics to readjust to their traditional sacral language; it may take even longer for composers to rediscover what it means to write integral sacred music.

While I have found utter joy in setting the same Latin texts for the same Mass as the Renaissance giants, I have not always managed to strike the balance between making it interesting and making it work. My Missa in Tempus Adventus is a good example. For each of its three movements I borrowed a popular seasonal chant melody: for the Kyrie, Veni Emmanuel; for the Sanctus and Benedictus, Rorate cæli desuper; and for the Agnus Dei, Creator alme siderum. The Agnus proved especially difficult for even an exceptional church choir, and I resorted to the soprano sung by the choir in unison while the organ played the other parts. The harmonic language, though mostly triadic, is certainly rich, and prone to modulate every couple of measures. I enjoy the shape of the piece, which builds to dramatic heights in the final Agnus. Upon reflection, I probably conceived the music more instrumentally than chorally, and I’d be curious to hear it performed by a string quartet.

More liturgically successful is my Mass in G, which is vaguely reminiscent of that other, more famous Mass in G, but with only half the voices, and much fewer notes. Here, I kept myself grounded in traditional polyphony, never venturing far beyond the tonal center. All four movements are built of the same material, all stemming from the opening motive of a step-wise rising fourth followed by a descending skip of a fourth. For the high point of each movement, the motive expands to a fifth, with the harmony moving beneath in similar parallel motion. The soprano tessitura is somewhat low for mixed choir, and might better lend itself to a well-trained boys choir.