by Fred Moleck
Pittsburgh Tribute
[Reader Alert—This is not a tribute to the Pittsburgh Steelers football team.]On Friday and Saturday, September 15 and 16 of this week, the Pittsburgh chapter of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary.
A gala event is planned. There will be festive dining, morning and evening prayer, plus a departure prayer, and out-of-town celebrities such as Dr. Michael McMahon, the president of the NPM, and NPM’s beloved founder, Fr. Virgil Funk.
There will be breakout sessions.
There seems to be a practice among Catholic musicians and liturgists that reasons if they are together more than three hours, breakout sessions are deemed necessary. Perhaps the leadership doesn’t want to miss a teaching moment.
Over a hundred people plan to attend.
The highlight of the event is the unveiling of a 109-page book entitled From Organist to Pastoral Musician: A History of Church Music in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, 1843–2006.
Compiled, edited, and written by Fr. James Chepponis, Dr. Fred Moleck, and Sr. Cynthia Serjak, RSM, the information contains fascinating biographical information on mid-nineteenth century musicians in Pittsburgh.
That came as a surprise to me. I didn’t think there were enough Catholics in 1843 in Pittsburgh to establish a diocese, let alone build a cathedral and secure musicians to staff it.
The history takes a new shape in 1903–04 when an already established diocesan music commission is elevated to official status by the bishop only a few months after Pius X’s motu proprio of 1903.
The overriding concern of the commission was to establish and maintain a high standard of sacred music and its performance. This concern took on unusual vigor from 1930 to 1950.
That’s the era of Father Carlo Rossini, who is still a legend in Pittsburgh even though he’s been dead now for thirty-one years.
Under his leadership, a full, frontal-attack campaign was waged that mandated every choir with its director and organist would appear in an evaluation performance for Fr. Rossini just to make sure they were following the rules.
If they performed repertory not on the list of approved music, they were given the command to get rid of it and perform music from the approved list.
If they did not comply, the church’s name was placed in a special column, a black list, in the diocesan newspaper the following week.
There were enormous issues surrounding the prohibition of women in the church choir. The book notes: “Women were excluded from choirs (but were allowed to sing as part of the congregation) based on the understanding that, like altar servers, choir members held a liturgical office.”
This approach reached an extreme in the directive that at a school Masses if it were necessary to have some students occupy the choir loft, the boys could sing, but the girls were forbidden!
The stories are all part of the lore of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. They stand as yet another example of the church of the United States quickly espousing official ecclesial legislation.
Not all dioceses were that faithful. There were dioceses in the Midwest who continued the choir of women and men and successfully sang the masses of Mozart and Haydn.
Then, in other dioceses, only men were choir singers, singing good and some not-so-good repertory composed for TTBB.
But, the overriding concern bordered on the “divine right” of music commissions to be faithful stewards of the Vatican’s rules and regulations on what was right and what was wrong in the singing of the liturgy.
Pittsburgh, like so many of the eastern United States churches, was stalwart in its crusade for the best music done well.
Not a bad principle, but its implementation frequently came off Nazi-like—all in the name of being faithful to church legislation.
This section in the book takes up twenty-five pages. The remaining eighty-four pages trace the developing of a church musician’s society and its progeny, the Pittsburgh chapter of the NPM.
One of the main reasons for constructing this book was the charge that the NPM story with its members and its movers and shakers should not be forgotten.
The book paints an exuberant portrait of musicians taking seriously Vatican II’s principles of liturgy—“full, conscious, and active participation.”
The efforts were heroic. Their meetings were educational and musical. Koinonia (“party time” is a loose translation of the Greek word) became a musical household word. They were making history and didn’t realize it.
While we are at working not to forget our pioneer friends, it was a quick move to expand the book and tell as much of the whole history of church music in Pittsburgh.
Thus, From Organist to Pastoral Musician, after about a 12-month gestation period, was born this month.
Baby and writers are both doing well.
Happy anniversary, Pittsburgh NPM!
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@earthlink.net