Why is Gregorian chant making a comeback?
by Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker This article is reprinted here with the kind permission of the authors, Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker, and of York Young, Managing Editor at The Catholic Answer, where it first appeared in the November/December 2007 edition. The pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI has been marked by new efforts to promote excellence in sacred music. His apostolic exhortation of March 2007, Sacramentum caritatis, encourages teaching Latin chant in seminaries and singing it in liturgies, with particular emphasis on international gatherings. The Pope has been quite direct in other settings as well. “An authentic updating of sacred music,” he said in June 2006, “can take place only in the lineage of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony.” (Polyphony is music performed by multiple voices singing different, harmonized parts.) Last but not least, Pope Benedict’s recent apostolic letter Summorum pontificum (July 7, 2007), which al
