Dominicus Card. Bartolucci
vii Maii MCMXVII - xi Nov. MMXIII
Cardinal Bartolucci on the Traditional Latin Mass, August 12, 2009 (from The Remnant)
A bombshell of an interview. Mons. Domenico Bartolucci on the liturgical reforms and the reform of the reform.
An interview with Mons. Domenico Bartolucci, Maestro Perpetuo of the Sistine Chapel under five Popes. The original Italian can be found here.
From the remarkable Italian Catholic blog, Disputationes Theologicae:
The
liturgical reform of the 1970-ies is today taking up much space in the
theological discussions, because liturgy and theology are mixed up in a –
may we venture to say so – “transcendental relation”. It is not
possible to discuss the one without taking up the other, if one does not
want to fall into that theology of watertight compartments that was in
use in the 1950-ies. Today it is necessary – in the wake of a more vast
debate in which we engage ourselves – to formulate an open and
straightforward analysis of what has happened and take an appropriate
attitude towards the practical remedies and above all remedies that are
“realizable” (realizzabili) as Saint Pius X used to repeat. Upon the
request of so many of our readers, our Editorial Office also would like
to occupy itself with the argument, if possible avoiding the repetition
of the methodological errors of the past. Therefore it is our wish to
initiate the true transmittance of the authentic Tradition.– basing
ourselves on the testimony of those who have known the past, because of
their age and their prestige, and not only because of their authority.
As liturgy is also practical science, we have not wished to start off
with pontificating “liturgists” who say they have read so and so many
books and codices, but rather take the matter up with someone who has
lived and touched the liturgy as nobody else has, because he has
prepared, repeated, coordinated and known the religious ceremonies in
his Tuscan countryside, ceremonies which concluded with the “Messa in
terza” (a mass celebrated by three i.e. Solemn Mass -- CAP)
and the unfailing processions with a musical band, as well as the
splendors of the “Cappella Papale” in the Sistine chapel. We have the
honor of introducing to you Monsignor Domenico Bartolucci, in an
interview done by us lately. He was born in 1917 in Borgo San Lorenzo
(Florence)., Tuscan by birth, Roman by pontifical summons, in 1952 he
became substitute next to Perosi in the Sistine Chapel and from 1956 he
became its Maestro Perpetuo. On the 24th of June, 2006 the reigning
pontiff organized a special ceremony in honor of the musician (see the
picture above), in order to consecrate “ad perpetuam rei memoriam” his
closeness to the great master. During the occasion the Pope said: “
sacred polyphony, especially the one belonging to the Roman school, is a
legacy which we must preserve with care (..); a genuine updating of the
sacred music can only take place within the great tradition of the past
of the Gregorian chant and of the sacred polyphony”. S.C.
INTERVIEW WITH MONSIGNOR. DOMENICO BARTOLUCCI
by Pucci Cipriani and Stefano Carusi
A
meeting with Monsignor Domenico Bartolucci, the distinguished Mugellan
musician, Maestro Emeritus of the Sistine Chapel, admirer, friend and
collaborator of Benedict XVI.
It
is a sunny afternoon on the green hills of the Mugellan landscape, when
we arrive on the Roman church of Montefloscoli, in the antique rectory
full of memories the Maestro Perpetuo of the Sistine Chapel is enjoying
the fresh air, behind him a framed photo of the hug the reigning pontiff
is giving Monsignor Domenico Bartolucci, the successor of Lorenzo
Perosi in the Sacred Palace. On his writing-desk the now-famous book of
Monsignor Brunero Gherardini: “Il Concilio Vaticano II- un discorso da
fare” (“The Second Vatican Council – a debate to be started”), edited by
Edizioni Casa Mariana.
It
is on the subject of the liturgical reform that we start our
conversation with the Maestro, with Domenico Bartolucci, who in
liturgical and musical matters has been at ease working and giving
counsel to five popes and who is a friend and collaborator of Benedict
XVI, whose work he says is “an immense gift to the Church, if only they
would let it work”.
Maestro,
the recent publication of the Motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum” has
brought a gust of fresh air into the desolate liturgical panorama which
surrounds it. Even you may now celebrate the Mass of all time (“messa di sempre”.)
To tell the truth, I have always and without interruption celebrated it since my ordination … on the contrary, I sometimes found it difficult to celebrate according to the modern rite, even if I never said so.
The Mass which never was abolished, is it not?
Those
are the words of the Holy Father even if some people pretend not to
understand and even if many in the past have argued that the opposite is
true.
Maestro, you have to admit to those who are denigrating the old Mass that it is not a Mass open to participation.
So
that you won't think that I'm just saying anything, I know how
participation in old times was like, both in Rome, in the (St. Peter's)
Basilica and outside it, for instance down here in Mugello, in this
parish, in this beautiful countryside, which was then populated by
people strong in faith and full of piety. During Sunday Vespers
the priest could just start singing “Deus in adiutorium meum intende”
and thereafter fall asleep on his seat to wake up only at the “chapter”,
the peasants would have continued alone and the heads of the family
would have intoned the antiphon!
Do we see a veiled polemic, Maestro, in your confrontation with the current liturgical style?
I
do not know, if you have ever been at a funeral and witnessed those
“hallelujahs”, hand-clapping, giggly phrases, etc. One really asks
oneself if these people have ever read the Gospel. Our Lord himself
cried over Lazarus and his death. Here now, with this oily sentimentalism, nothing is respected, not even the suffering of a mother.
I would like to show you how the people in old times participated in a
Funeral Mass and how in the midst of that compunction and devotion, the
magnificent and tremendous “Dies Irae” was intoned.
Was
the reform not done by people who were conscious of what they were
doing and well educated in the teachings of the Roman Church?
I beg your pardon, but the reform was done by arid people, arid, arid, I repeat it. And I knew them. As for the doctrine, Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli himself, once said, I remember it well: “What are we to make of liturgists who know nothing about theology?”
We agree with you, Monsignore, but is it not true that the people did not understand….
Dearest
friends, have you never read Saint Paul: “It is not important to know
anything but what is necessary”, “it is necessary to love knowledge ad sobrietatem”.
At this rate, after a few years people will pretend to understand
“transubstantiation” in the same way as they explain a mathematical
theorem. But just think of it that not even the priest may quite
understand this mystery!
But how could it have come to this twisting of the liturgy?
It became a kind of fashion. Everybody talked about it, everybody “was renewing”, everybody was trying to be like popes (tutti pontificavano) in the wake of sentimentalism, of eagerness to reform. And the voices that raised themselves to defend the two thousand year old Tradition of the Church, were cleverly hushed. There
was the invention of a kind of “people’s liturgy” … when I heard these
refrains, it came into my mind something which my professor at the
Seminary used to say: “the liturgy is something given by the clerics to
the people” (“la liturgia è del clero per il popolo”). It descends from God and does not come up from the bottom. I have to admit, however, that this foul-smelling appearances have made themselves a bit more rare. The
young generations of priests are maybe better than those who came
before them, they do not have the ideological fury of an iconoclastic
ideology, they are full of good feelings, however they lack in education.
What do you mean, Maestro, when you say “they lack in education”?
It means that they need it! I am speaking
of the structure that the wisdom of the Church had so delicately
chiseled in course of centuries. You do not understand the
importance of the seminary: a liturgy that is fully lived, the orderly
articulation of the different periods of the year and all this
experienced in social communion with the brothers... Advent, Lent, the
big feasts that follow after Easter. All of this is educational and if you only knew how much!
A foolish rhetoric wants to depict the
seminary as something which spoils the priest, that the seminarians,
remote and far away from the world, remain closed in themselves and
distant from the people. This is pure imagination, invented by people who wish to dissolve an age-old formative richness and replace it with emptiness.
Let
us return to the crisis of the Church and to the fact that so many
seminaries have closed down, do you, Monsignore, support a return to the
continuation of Tradition?
Look
here, to defend the old rite is not the same as being a worshipper of
ancient times; it is to be “eternal”. You see, when one gives the
traditional mass names like “Mass of Saint Pius V” or “Tridentine” one
is wrong, it makes it seem as if it is a mass belonging to a certain
epoch. It is our Mass, the Roman universal Mass, valid
everywhere and in all times, a single language spoken from the Oceania
to the Arctic’s. Concerning the continuity in time, I would
like to tell you an episode. Once we were together with a Bishop whose
name I forgot, in a small church in Mugello, when there came the sudden
notice that a brother of ours had died. We suggested that we at once
celebrate a Mass, but then we realized that we only had old Missals at
hand. The Bishop refused categorically to celebrate. I will never forget
it and I repeat that the continuity of the liturgy means that –
except for small details – it can be celebrated today, with that old
dusty missal standing on a bookshelf and which for four centuries or
more has served my predecessors.
Monsignore, there is much talk about a “reform of the reform” which could take away the deformities that came in the 70-ies.
The
question is rather complicated. That the new rite had deficiencies is
by now becoming evident for everybody, and the Pope has many times said
and written that we must “keep what is ancient” (guardare all'antico). However
we must beware of the temptations of introducing hybrid measures. The
liturgy with a big “L” is the one that comes to us from centuries back,
it is the reference, it is not the debased liturgy which holds so many
compromises “that make God sad and the enemy happy” ("a Dio spiacenti e a l’inimici sui”)
What do you mean, Maestro?
Let
us for instance take the innovations in the seventies. Some ugly songs
in beat that were in vogue in the churches in 1968, are today already
archeological pieces. Giving up perennity and emerging oneself in time,
means that one is condemned to the fads of fashion. In this
connection I come to think of the Reform of the Holy Week in the 1950's,
made with some hurry under the pontificate of a Pope Pius XII who was
already exhausted and tired. Only some years later,
under Pope John XXIII who in liturgical matters was of a convinced and
moving traditionalism, came a telephone call to me from Mons. Dante,
Master of Ceremonies of the Pope, who told me to prepare the “Vexilla
Regis” for the coming celebration on Good Friday. I was somehow taken
aback and answered: “They have forbidden me to do it”. The answer was:
“But the Pope wishes it.” In a few hours I organized the repetitions of
the songs and very happily we sang again the same songs which the Church
had sung in many centuries on that day. All this only to say
that when one distances oneself from the liturgical context those voids
become difficult to fill and you can be sure they are noticed! In
front of our liturgy of many centuries we should contemplate it and
venerate it and remember that in our mania for “improvements”, we only
risk doing great damage.
Maestro, what role does music play in this process?
It has an incredibly important role for
many reasons. The affected “Cecilianism” to which certainly Perosi was
no stranger, with its tones that were so mild and enticing to the ear
had introduced a new romantic sentimentalism, which had nothing to do,
for instance, with the eloquent and solid physicality of Palestrina.
Some extravagant deteriorations introduced by Solesmes had cultivated a
subdued gregorianism, which also was the fruit of a pseudo-restauring
passion for the Medieval ages, which were so popular in the nineteenth
century.
The idea of an opportunity to recuperate
the archeological vein, both in music and liturgy, of a past, from which
the so called “oxen centuries” (seculi bui) of the Council of Trent separated it ….. in
short an archeology which has nothing at all to do with Tradition and
which wishes to restore something which maybe never existed, is a bit similar to certain churches restored in the “pseudoromantic” style of Viollet-le-Duc.
What does it mean, Monsignore, when in the musical field you attack Solesmes?
This
means that the Gregorian chant is modal, not tonal and not rhythmical,
it has nothing to do with “one, two, three, one, two, three”. We should not despise the way people sung in our cathedrals and replace it with a pseudo-monastic and affected murmuring. A song from the Middle Ages is not interpreted with theories of today, but one should go about it as it was then. Moreover
the Gregorian chant of another historical time could also be sung by
the people, sung using the force with which our people expressed their
faith. Solesmes never understood this, but we should recognize
the learned and great philological work executed on the old manuscripts.
Maestro, how far have we come in our days with the restoration of Sacred Music and the Liturgy?
I cannot deny that there some signs of restoration, but I still can see that there persists a certain blindness, almost a complacency for all that is vulgar, coarse, in bad taste and also doctrinally temerarious.
Most important, do not ask me, please, to make a judgement on the
guitar-players and on the tarantellas which are sung during the
Offertory.….The liturgical problem is serious, do not listen to
the voices of those persons who do not love the Church and who oppose
the Pope and if you want to cure the sick then remember that the
merciful doctor makes the wound purulent (fa la piaga purulenta).
