LITURGICAL MUSIC ABERRATIONS IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH: A POST VATICAN II ASSESSMENT OF NIGERIAN CHOIRS

Abstract

 There has always been a conflict between sacred and secular music, between liturgical and ordinarily sacred music and even within several church domains, a conflict between the worshipper and the entertainer. Not many scholars have paid attention to liturgical aberrations as a subject matter of research in sacred music. In the liturgical music history of the Roman Catholic Church, the concept of aberrations has become dialectical; from the early Church to the medieval, from the medieval to the modern Church, from the modern to the reformation era up to the post Vatican II Church. There have remained two schools of thought on liturgical musical aberrations; the liberal and the conservative. Through an observational, survey and historical approach, this research unearths the subject matter of liturgical musical aberrations, citing numerous indices of abuse of form and identity, inordinate instrumentation, undue performance theatricality, monopoly of participation by choirs and so on. Apart from looking at the subject matter of aberrations from the liturgical point of view, this paper also argues that liturgical musical art works from post Vatican II musicologists in Nigeria who fail to adapt liturgical compositions to the indigenous creative genius are also guilty of aberrations.