Vaguely Pious Noises

I have no intention of burdening anyone with the woes of an artist who is wounded that no one appreciates his art. This is the last thing I would endeavor to do. However, I am compelled to express my exasperation with a disease that has infected almost every single church and parish that I have visited in recent years. It is pandemic and perhaps even lethal. Dear reader, I am speaking of Vaguely Pious Noises.

Shortly after my own conversion, I had serendipitously fallen into a parish in which Vaguely Pious Noises were altogether absent. By a singular grace, it took three years before I first encountered Vaguely Pious Noises and discovered their ubiquity. Perhaps this congregation had already developed an immunity to the contagion. Or, perhaps, they had self-selected to quarantine themselves away from it. Regardless, when I graduated from “cantor” to “music director” in search of more edifying and lucrative horizons, I stopped singing plainchant and Palestrina and instead began making significantly more money prostituting myself as a Producer of Vaguely Pious Noise.

Of course, no one admits that they yearn for Vaguely Pious Noises, just as no one markets themself (publicly, anyway) as a Producer of Vaguely Pious Noise. Quite the opposite. If one reads the job advertisement for an organist or music director, one might think that they are looking for the next Kapellmeister of Esterházy Palace. But I have it on good authority that they are not interested in a Kapellmeister. They do not even seem to be interested in a real organist.

Instead, they seem to be afflicted by an inexplicable, inexpressible, insatiable thirst for Vaguely Pious Noises. My dearest reader, I fully understand how harsh such an accusation might sound, and you would be justified in demanding the grounds on which I cast it. I am happy to oblige.

It seems that the proper reaction to well-executed liturgical music is that attention is not drawn toward the music itself but toward the worship of God. If music is truly to be a humilis ancilla to the liturgy—a humble handmaid—then any compliments toward the musician should, in theory, be complimenting his invisibility.

If this is true, then the greatest compliment that the liturgical musician could receive should be something along the lines of “I forgot you were there,” or, “That really helped me to pray,” or even, “That was so seamlessly blended into the liturgy that I almost couldn’t tell if I was on earth or in Heaven because I was so enraptured in sublime contemplation of the Paschal Mystery.” At the very least, a practical compliment would be along the lines of “You made it easy for us to sing with you.”

However, in my entire career, I have received compliments in this spirit exactly two times, both of which were outside of the Mass. At the same time, and much to my chagrin, I seem to receive multiple compliments each weekend which assure me of my success as a professional Producer of Vaguely Pious Noise—comments along the lines of “I love hearing the organ!” or “That was my favorite song!”

These are not insults. They are sincere and born with genuine goodwill. However, I am convinced that they have absolutely nothing to do with music, liturgy, or even real piety. Rather, it is only an involuntary reflex which demonstrates that their increasingly ravenous and all-devouring appetite for Vaguely Pious Noise has finally been placated, if only for a moment.

The even greater indicator is how people respond to Pious Noise when it is not vague. Some music does inspire real, substantial piety and orients it in a specific direction that is worthy of receiving it. Sadly, the chanting of the Parce Domine, or just about any Gregorian chant, does not receive the same happy reception as Vaguely Pious Noises seem to meet. Instead, when confronted with Latin chant, the comments have more often been along the lines of “That was interesting…was that Spanish?” or “That was nice, but I really couldn’t understand what you were saying.”

Dear reader, these comments indicate a far graver situation than their personable façade might suggest. In fact, they suggest that the musician has just been convicted of the worst failure that he could possibly have made: he has failed to satisfy their devouring appetite for Vaguely Pious Noises. Worse, he has forced them to endure an entire liturgy without the fleeting consolation of Vaguely Pious Feelings.

The practical dilemma for the Producer of Vaguely Pious Noises is that it has no uniform category or criteria. Everyone has a very specific idea about what constitutes Vaguely Pious Noise, and the Producer of Vaguely Pious Noise is expected to know and meet everyone’s criteria simultaneously. For some people, Vaguely Pious Noise is simply another word for “The organ, no matter how poorly it is played.” For others, it refers to a certain composer, style, or even a specific song or singer.

The dilemma is that I—like most musicians, I imagine—never intended, wanted, or even expected to produce Vaguely Pious Noises. And yet, in the end, we find ourselves all alone, nested in the choir loft, producing Vaguely Pious Noise on what we all thought was supposed to be the greatest instrument engineered in human history.

It seems that Vaguely Pious Noises have nothing to do with genuine piety at all but only Vaguely Pious Feelings. This may very well be the primary appeal. However, the problem with Vaguely Pious Feelings, just like Vaguely Pious Noises, is precisely that they are vagrant. They do not go anywhere in particular. They are not oriented toward anything or anyone in particular. If they are, then they cease to be vague and begin to resemble real piety. Instead, they wander aimlessly until they dissolve into the ether and are forgotten altogether.

It would seem that Vaguely Pious Feelings are really just nostalgia wearing a cassock, and the Producer of Vaguely Pious Noise is not hired as, nor is he expected to be, a musician. Rather, he is expected to be, at best, a human jukebox—and, at worst, a Vaguely Pious Noisemaker.