The following interview was conducted with Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone via email by
Q: What is the significance of the plural in the title, “Mass of the Americas”?
The idea first came to me early in 2018 as I was looking at the calendar for the year. In the Archdiocese of San Francisco we hold our archdiocesan-wide celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the Saturday before the actual feast day. That year it occurred on December 8. So, we would be celebrating the Mass of the Immaculate Conception, the patroness of the United States and a holy day of obligation here, in the midst of our festivities to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of Mexico and all of the Americas.
I realized that this was a golden opportunity to lift up Our Lady as a unifier of God’s people, of all races and languages, from both sides of the southern border. With all the tensions and divisions in society today, we need to look to our Blessed Mother. We all love her, and, like all mothers, her love unites us into one family of God. I conceived of the "Mass of the Americas," then, as a unity Mass to Our Mother. In Europe they see all of the Americas as one continent, “America.” In our hemisphere we refer to the “Americas,” because of the geographical, historical, cultural and linguistic differences. But we can learn a lesson from how the Europeans see this hemisphere, and seek to build up better mutual understanding and unity. Our Blessed Mother is the way there, and the music of this Mass in a twin honor to Our Lady under these two titles unites these themes. Thus, the “Mass of the Americas.”
Q. Why have a new Mass composed, as opposed to singing Palestrina, Purcell, etc.? How does this affect American liturgy?
Well, in the first place, there is no Palestrina Mass, nor of any other great sacred music composer in history for that matter, conceived as a twin tribute to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Great music in the high sacred tradition composed on themes spiritually appropriate for our times is our vision. Great art in any form is appropriate and relatable to the culture of a particular time and place and reflects that culture, but also elevates it by bringing it into a continuity of tradition that has withstood the test of time and attained the status of classic beauty, giving it the quality of universality: beautiful in every age, culture and generation.
Secondly, it is important that the Church’s great tradition in sacred music and the arts not be viewed as a dead tradition, but one that has been handed on and lives today. This is how it works with secular classical music: the great orchestras of the world continue to play the great symphonies of the great composers – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and so forth; but new compositions of the same genre are being made all the time, and the great orchestras of the world also play those. Likewise for religious classical music, that is, sacred music: our artists need to know we value their work, including a creative genius like Frank La Rocca but also young artists. The circle of composers gathering around the Benedict XVI Institute want primarily to use their gifts for the worship of God. If the concert stage is the only place that welcomes sacred music, we have a problem.
Q: Many people are musical purists, who feel they only pray well with chant—or with Marty Haugen—or some other subgenre of religious music. Can people be wrong about what music helps them experience transcendence? And is personal spiritual experience (even when it is genuine) the right metric for deciding what music to use at Mass? (I think of Sacrosanctum Concilium here, which gives chant “pride of place,” but also allows for “other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony.”)
You’re certainly right about what Vatican II taught on sacred music, a principle going back to Pope St. Pius X and continuing right up through Vatican II, Pope St. Paul VI, and the current documents on the Sacred Liturgy: that the people learn to sing the Gregorian chants together in Latin, while allowing for other kinds of music suitable to the liturgical action. Polyphony developed organically from chant, and has withstood the test of time. Again, this is what gives it the status of classic, the quality of universal beauty. Contemporary compositions have not yet been subject to such a test of time. So only time will tell. But let us keep in mind that the purpose of the Mass is to worship God and to bring us into an encounter with Christ in the Eucharist. If that is happening for anyone in their current parish I don’t want to take that away. But our emptying pews suggest it is not happening for many people.
More beauty and reverence in the liturgy is needed, for that is what, in the first place, qualifies as fitting for the worship of the one, true God. I am convinced it is also central to the key problem we are confronting nowadays, namely, that so many Mass-going Catholics don’t understand or experience the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Every Mass is a miracle. When the outward form of the liturgy doesn’t correspond to the reality of the Mass, people have trouble understanding and experiencing Jesus Christ in the Mass.
Q: Is the length of "Mass of the Americas" a problem for celebrant and congregation? There are other great compositions—Bach’s B Minor Mass, or Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis—that are almost never sung in context for this reason.
The "Mass of the Americas" is really conceived of as a Cathedral Mass. It’s not so much the length as the orchestra that makes it prohibitive for parish use in most parishes. That is one reason we recently released at the Napa Institute the parish version for choir and organ (https://benedictinstitute.org/larocca/). That said, the "Mass of the Americas" has touched a chord and has been celebrated in Tijuana, Houston, New Jersey, New York, Washington D.C., Rome, Chicago and more.
The orchestrated Mass compositions you mention are certainly beautiful, but they are really written more for the concert hall than for worship. This was the movement begun by Pope St. Pius X when he introduced for the first time the principle of active participation into the Church’s Magisterium with his Apostolic Letter Tra le sollecitudini of 1903. The Mass had become more of a performance, with the people as passive observers. Gregorian chant is the Church’s patrimony of liturgical music, and he sought to restore the principle of people actively involved in worship by singing together the chants that are the music proper to Catholic worship. But by holding up polyphony as a prime example of other types of music suitable to the liturgical action, Vatican II acknowledges that there is also a place for choral music, which engages the people with active listening, as is the case when the word of God is proclaimed in the liturgical assembly.
Q: "Mass of the Americas" has been used in both the Novus Ordo and the Traditional or Tridentine Rite. Was it deliberately composed with both rites in mind?
I originally conceived the Mass for our Cathedral on the occasion of our celebration for Our Lady of Guadalupe, and so as a Novus Ordo Mass with the musical pieces in Spanish, Latin, English and Nahuatl (the language of the Aztec people). When I later was asked to celebrate a Solemn High Pontifical Mass in the Extraordinary Form at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, I asked Frank LaRocca to adapt it to that form of the Mass. I did not originally conceive it for that, but that is how it happened.
Q: Who would you say is the audience for "Mass of the Americas," or for whom would you say it was commissioned and composed?
My first intent was to offer a fitting unity Mass for the faithful of San Francisco. As I mentioned, in 2018 our archdiocesan-wide celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe was going to be held on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Since Hispanic Catholics and Catholics descended from European immigrants of generations ago tend not to intermingle too much, I thought that this would provide some impetus to bring the two communities closer together and allow us to celebrate both great Feast days together.
We later brought it to Tijuana as part of a national liturgy conference the Mexican bishops were holding. It was also enthusiastically received there. That’s when we conceived of an international Marian unity tour. It has certainly touched a chord in people’s hearts. I’m especially gratified that U.S. priests are beginning to use the music in their First Mass celebrations. I hadn’t imagined that, but it certainly seems fitting.
The album of the "Mass of the Americas" is being released September 23, 2022.
From Maggie Gallagher, Executive Director of the Benedict XVI Institute founded by Archbishop Cordileone, which commissioned the "Mass of the Americas":
"The long, strange, wonderful journey of Frank La Rocca's Mass of the Americas is about to take its next key step: A new recording is will be released September 23.
"The musical quality is simply wonderful. This is a modern work of genius, with a world-class group of singers in The Benedict Sixteen Choir, conducted by Richard Sparks.
"'A potential classic,' says Stanford Prof. William P. Mahrt. 'Possibly the most significant Catholic composition of our lifetime,' said Dr. Michael Olbash of St. John's Seminary.
"But this is the recent one that knocked me off my feet: 'the best piece of liturgical music for the Mass since Duruflé,' says Prof. Michael Linton, whose music criticism you may have seen in First Things.
"The record producer is no less a talent than Blanton Alspaugh, who has won eleven Grammy Awards and 26 nominations in classical music. Could the Mass of the Americas be his 27th nomination?
How to Order
Here's how you can help: Preorder or (depending when you read this) order the album. Go here to see all the buying options CD or streaming: https://listn.fm/laroccamass.
Read More Here
"Modern Sacred Music at Its Best: the 'Mass of the Americas'," by Dr. Mark Nowakowski, September 20, 2022
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