Significant Works of Monsignor Richard J. Schuler in Sacred Music,
Edited by Virginia A. Schubert 

As seen in our latest print edition of REGINA Magazine on Sacred Music.

By Fr. David Friel:

This recent volume gathers the most important writings of Msgr. Richard J. Schuler (1920-2007), who served as editor of the journal Sacred Music for many years and who distinguished himself as a significant figure in the tumultuous journey of sacred music in the decades following the Second Vatican Council.

Immediately after his ordination, Schuler served as a seminary professor of music.  As a priest, he studied at the Eastman School of Music and also earned a Fulbright scholarship to study in Rome.  His education culminated in a doctorate in music history received from the University of Minnesota.  In 1955, he founded the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale, and he was also a founding member (and, from 1975 to 1998, president) of the Church Music Association of America (CMAA).  From 1966 until 1999, he served as pastor of St. Agnes Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he cultivated an extraordinary program of sacred music that was well-known nationwide.

The editor of this new volume is the late Dr. Virginia A. Schubert, one of the founding members of Schuler’s Twin Cities Catholic Chorale and a former officer of the CMAA.  Schubert was professor emerita of French at Macalester College in Saint Paul and worked closely with Msgr. Schuler.  Being well-versed in his writings, she assembled a fine collection of his most significant articles for this volume.

After the Second Vatican Council concluded, there emerged two rather divergent understandings of the council’s first official text, Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), the dogmatic constitution on the sacred liturgy. Whereas one interpretation sought to read the constitution rather freely and through a lens of novelty, Msgr. Schuler (along with fellow members of the Consociatio Internationalis Musicae Sacrae [CIMS]) saw SC as a document standing in continuity with earlier teaching on the matter of Catholic sacred music. When the history of this period is recounted, Schuler and his collaborators (e.g., Msgr. Iginio Angles, Theodore Marier, Msgr. Johannes Overath, Msgr. Francis Schmitt, and Rev. Robert Skeris) will be remembered. Schuler, himself, was emphatically devoted to the vision of SC, and saw his work with the CMAA and at St. Agnes Church as a faithful implementation of all that SC directed.

The great value of this new book is that it brings together freshly and in one place, many of the most persuasive pieces written by this major voice in the realm of twentieth-century liturgical music, representing a line of thought that is too frequently overlooked.

The chapters of this book are organized into four main sections.  The first section features a seven-part series of articles (collectively entitled “A Chronicle of the Reform”).  They are among the most important pieces that Schuler ever wrote, presenting a historical perspective on twentieth-century liturgical developments that is hard to find elsewhere.

The second and third sections present some of Schuler’s commentaries on the Second Vatican Council and on sacred music, respectively. In the fourth section, readers will find a précis of Schuler’s thought on Gregorian chant and Latin liturgy.

Thereafter, three appendices reproduce biographies and tributes to Schuler written by Charles W. Nelson, Rev. Robert Skeris, and Rev. William Sanderson. These sections humanize Schuler, and they convey his greatness of soul in addition to the acuity of his mind and the generosity of his priestly heart.

At the end of each of the four main sections, a contemporary commentary is given.  Despite their brevity, these short contributions from Paul LeVoir, Rev. John Paul Erickson, Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka, and Rev. Mark Moriarity are effective in highlighting how much progress has been made in recent decades and how much Msgr. Schuler’s vision for the sacred liturgy was forward-looking.

This text could profitably be read alongside other accounts of the history of twentieth-century liturgical music. It serves not only as a primer on Msgr. Schuler’s life and influence, but also as a fine introduction to the enthusiastic and faithful vision of SC that he espoused.

Reprinted with permission from Sacred Music Magazine.