"Never has there been a degeneration like the present one."

That quotation concerns Catholic church music. The person stating the horrifyingly obvious is Valentino Miserachs Grau, 60, from Cataluna . . . for eight years the dean of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, the liturgical-musical “conservatory” of the Holy See, the body charged with forming Church musicians from all over the world.


This link provides an edited version of Fr. Grau's talk on the state of liturgical music. While it is gives some hope for the future, the fact remains, as Fr. Grau says himself, he has no authority to issue binding mandates on our local parishes. Still, it's worth a read.

A sample:


I don’t know whether the competent authorities truly appreciate the scope of the malignant musical praxis that has in some measure spread everywhere, and its negative repercussions on the ‘lex orandi,’ and thus also on the ‘lex credendi’. […]

An unequivocal sign of the current abasement of the incorrect understanding of the function of singing within the liturgy are the expressions unfortunately now in use, such as “the liturgical celebration was performed, accompanied, gladdened by the such-and-such choir of so-and-so.” It is in fact evident that those who express themselves in this way consider liturgical singing nothing other than a more or less pleasing pastime.

[Referred to me by Stefano Passalacqua on, yes, yet another mailing list. Mille grazie.]