Against the Robots

Excerpt from The Holy Mass, yesterday, today and tomorrow , quote from Mr. Dominique Ponnau, director of the Louvre School, Conference given in Le Mans, on September 19, 1998.

“I remember. This memory is a cultural and human touchstone for me almost every day. It was in June 1985, in Pont-à-Mousson, at the end of the symposium “Music in the Church Today.” Maurice Fleuret—may his soul rest in peace—the magnificent director of music and dance for Minister Jack Lang, the friend of Pierre Mauroy, the man of the left, the enlightened and determined promoter of contemporary music, took the floor. His words were fiery. They were words of supplication; one could say so, since he himself pleaded. I will quote him directly , but I have never forgotten that word: it is his. He spoke of what Western music, from its origins to the present day, owed to the Church, to the liturgy of the Church, what the music of Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Messiaen owed to the music of the Church: everything .” Western music owed everything to the liturgical music of the Church, he said. And he himself, Maurice Fleuret, in his own life as a musician, owed everything to the music of the Church? Everything . He owed it everything, he said. And this Western music that owed everything to the Church, to the liturgy of the Church, what did it owe to Gregorian chant? Everything , he said. All Western music, he said, owed everything . But the Spirit of Gregorian chant, he said, this spirit which he could not imagine ceasing to breathe, where was it breathed? In the liturgy, he said. And it was at this moment that he implored the Church…: “I beg you,” he exclaimed, addressing the clergy present, “do not leave the monopoly of Gregorian chant to the State. It is made for the liturgy.” And it is in the liturgy that it must be practiced.