Colleagues at All Saints Parish expand work of company to accomodate liturgical music needs
The music we hear at Mass serves a specific purpose. It’s an expression of prayer, it helps elevate the liturgy — and ultimately it should glorify God.
As a liturgical musician, TJ Mesler understands the intricacies of composing music for Mass. There are plenty of options when it comes to liturgical music, but there are also detailed guidelines that must be followed.
Liturgical musician TJ Mesler composed music for a responsorial psalm June 17 at All Saints Church in St. Peters.
“There’s a lot of rules and regulations and all these different kinds of things that go into it, so we’ve always jokingly said that liturgical music is probably the most difficult kind of music to write, because there’s so many boundaries,” Mesler said.
Several years ago, Mesler, director of faith formation at All Saints Parish in St. Peters, and his colleague Emily Banks, director of music and liturgy, became co-owners of Simply Liturgical, a digital library of liturgical music and other resources for those involved in planning music for liturgies.
Kelly James Barth and his wife, Carly, of Omaha, Nebraska, initially launched Simply Liturgical about 10 years ago as a way to self-publish Kelly’s compositions. Several years ago, Mesler and Banks bought into the company as it set to expand its work with liturgical musicians all over the world.
They found a niche interest in publishing music for the responsorial psalms used at daily Masses. With upwards of 1,200 different setting options available for the daily psalms, Mesler said most traditional liturgical music publishing companies won’t take on such work.
“Every time they bring on a client or a composer, it’s upwards of $1,000 they have to pay out for the review process, the editorial process, shipping out and marketing, all those kind of things,” he said. Being fully digital, “what we’re able to do is share daily psalms from composers all over the world so that people can actually sing the psalms during daily Mass.”
When composing a piece to be used within the Mass, the author has to use exact language, following the guidelines of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), which holds the copyright on liturgical texts, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which owns the rights to the New American Bible (NAB) translation. Other modern Bible translations are copyrighted by other entities and include restrictions on the extent in which passages may be used.
“So for instance, if the psalm is ‘the Lord is my light and my salvation,’ that’s what the psalm has to be,” Mesler said. “You can’t add words, you can’t change words, you can’t move words around.”
Music must be written beautifully and simply, because if it’s not, it takes away from the meaning of the words, Mesler said. A musician also uses what’s called “textural painting,” which includes elements such as the key that the music is written in, the melody and even the emphasis on particular words.
“The way we look at this is like, if the psalm is ‘my soul is thirsting,’ you’re not gonna want really happy music,” he said. “A psalm like, ‘the Lord is my light and my salvation,’ … you want something joyful. If you were to put something somber on that, it would take away from the meaning.”
“For the glory of God”
Prior to the Second Vatican Council, any singing at Mass was typically left to the priest, the cantor or the schola, which would sing chant or polyphony with the prescribed music for the liturgy. That all changed when the council made way for the Mass to be said in modern vernacular tongues.
“Sacrosanctum concilium,” the council’s constitution on the liturgy, describes sacred music as “a treasure of inestimable value” for the Church and for “the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful.”
The document notes that Gregorian chant, a style of music that sets Latin texts to a monophonic melody, is “specially suited to the Roman liturgy” and “should be given pride of place in liturgical services.” But it also states that “other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action.”
Several years later, “Musicam sacram” was released to further implement what “Sacrosanctum concilium” had taught about sacred music. It describes the importance of Gregorian chant and polyphony, but also says other forms of “sacred popular music” can be included. The document offers guidelines on the use of liturgical music — noting some general preferences — but also allows flexibility in the music that is chosen.
“When Vatican II happened, first there was a chasm of nothing,” Mesler said. “I’ve heard horror stories of people playing ‘Let it Be’ (by the Beatles) because it had ‘Mother Mary,’ and they thought it was a song about Mary. They just didn’t know, because there was nothing else.”
Liturgical fidelity, movement of the Spirit
While there’s much debate on different styles of liturgical music, Mesler and Banks said it’s important to strive for liturgical fidelity while also fostering the prayer of the congregation at Mass. There’s a whole repertoire of liturgical music from chant to praise and worship, and when used in the right setting, it can move people in the way they participate at Mass.
“There’s some of those moments where the Holy Spirit is very thick in the church, and it’s like, we’re singing, they’re singing,” Banks said. “I know several stories where people will have been going through something and they’re in church, and then they hear a certain song, and the way the melody has worked through the text, it just strikes them a certain way and causes them to make a certain decision or changes their perspective on something.”
“One of my favorite things about having music is that it offers you the words you don’t quite have to say sometimes,” Mesler said. “It’s like I don’t know how to express my gratitude or my pain or the things I’m struggling with. But then this song came up, and it just said the right thing at the right time. And it has nothing to do with myself or Emily or any of the preparation we did, because all that did is allow the Holy Spirit to move in that moment. And so we made that happen, and then that goodness comes from it.”
