I.
It began in September, 1958. "It" is the entombment of most of the Catholic liturgical music of the past and the seeding of the new-renewed or redefined if you prefer-role of music in the liturgy. The 1958 instruction on Sacred Music began it all as music's response to Mystici Corporis and Mediator Dei, the theological ancestors of more active congregational participation in the liturgy. The 1904 Motu Proprio of Pius X on music that the 1958 document referred to was no longer the definiThe impact tive Torah and Mishna of of Vatican II church music. It was now conupon American musu:zans sidered a prophetical document and communities from a quickly receding past. of worship The Motu Proprio confronted the sins of its own time and re+ affirmed the core of tradition that had been lost or subRICHARD J. WOJCIK merged in the social and cul+ tural revolutions of the postTridentine western world. The Instruction of 1958 took a new tack. Like the decree revising the Holy Week rites in 1955 it was a probe or at least a hesitant sign of the coming revolution in liturgical rites and music. The Constitution on the Liturgy from Vatican II (1962) projected the new course through necessarily broad and com-
LITURGICAL SURVEY,
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