(b Champs-sur-Layon, Maine et Loire, 31 Oct 1920). French Jesuit liturgical scholar and composer. He studied music at the Ecole César Franck in Paris and theology at Lyon-Fourvière. A member of the Society of Jesus since 1941, he was ordained in 1951 and has been active in liturgical development, both before and after the Second Vatican Council, producing a number of influential books and articles and a stream of liturgical compositions. In Paris he worked with the Centre de Pastorale Liturgique and was professor in liturgical and pastoral music at the Institut Catholique. He co-founded the international church music research group Universa Laus.
At the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) there existed within the Roman Catholic Church two musical camps, one concerned with the ‘pastoral’ aspect of liturgical music and the participation of the people, the other focussed on the ‘sacred’ dimension of traditional chant and polyphony and the idea of ‘music-as-art’. Gelineau’s writings from this period influenced the pastoral group. From his knowledge of liturgical history and a comparative study of non-Western rites, he argued for a radical review of the place of music in the reformed Catholic liturgy. In Chant et musique dans le culte chrétien (1962) he reappropriated the idea of liturgical ‘art’ music for the purposes of the pastoral camp by speaking of ‘functional art’, suggesting that the value of liturgical music be judged according to the capacity of such music to fulfil a ritual function. This function, he contended, should determine musical form: for example, when the priest represents God to the people and they respond, the result is dialogue. Thus, if everyone is to participate, only simple, monodic songs, with clear, rational meaning, can be considered strictly liturgical: ‘art for art’s sake’, the esoteric (including wordless ‘jubilus’, with its sometimes unchristian, even ‘magical’ resonances) and styles with ‘profane’ associations are inappropriate within a liturgical context.
Gelineau concluded that the song forms traditionally regarded by the Church as ideally suited to the liturgy had in fact become adulterated over the centuries and that it was necessary to ‘restore’ their original function as popular chants. He wished, for example, to reintroduce the people’s response in the graduals of the Mass. Restricted by the ornate style of Gregorian melodies, however, he developed his own form of responsorial psalmody for the French language that recaptures the poetic structure and imagery of the original Hebrew. This system, with its melodically simple tones designed to express the asymmetrical three- or four-line text structure, has come to be known as ‘Gelineau psalmody’; widely adapted for use in other languages (in English as The Psalms: a New Translation, London, 1963), it has also been much imitated. In present-day celebrations of the Mass the traditional graduals are usually replaced by a responsorial psalm.
Although the ‘pastoral’ argument was not accepted in toto by the Second Vatican Council, its main principles were overwhelmingly adopted in practice. In Gelineau’s later writings, therefore, especially Demain la liturgie: essai sur l’évolution des assemblées chrétiennes (1975), a different emphasis is evident. He argued that since the Church’s traditional song had been swept away after the Council, new forms must be created, but he recognized that the nature of those forms could be determined only when the Christian Assembly itself had stabilized after a period of flux. From this it may appear that Gelineau was no longer seeking to ‘restore’ song forms that had been ‘altered’ in the Middle Ages. However, in ‘Liturgical Music: France and Beyond’ (1985) he was to question the use of ‘everyday’ music in worship, and the tendency of each culture to ‘homogenize’ the rich variety of song forms, which resulted, for example, in a preponderance of responsorial singing in Africa and the use of strophic forms in Europe. He has also expressed regret for such trends as the preference for hymns rather than a restoration of the singing of scriptural and liturgical texts, and the modern division between singing and speaking (see Demain la liturgie) that has led to the abandonment of the cantillation of scripture readings and prayers (a matter to which he had earlier devoted considerable attention; see especially Chant et musique dans le culte chrétien).
Gelineau’s historical theories have found general acceptance among pastoral theologians, but the response of music historians has been mixed. Hucke (1980), following Gelineau, has emphasized the discontinuity of form between early eucharistic psalmody and ‘Gregorian’ graduals. Jeffery (1992), on the other hand, has rejected the premise that a division exists between ‘sacred’ and ‘pastoral’ music: he regards as anachronistic Gelineau’s application of the label ‘artistic’ to ‘Gregorian’ chant (and draws attention to the links between the chant and ‘folk’ song); he questions whether responsorial psalmody was in fact the norm in the early Church, whether early singing was necessarily simpler in style than later singing, and whether each chant genre (e.g. introit) was of congregational origin; he is thus sceptical of the view that later chant necessarily represents a radical break from earlier chant.
As a composer, Gelineau is particularly known for his output of psalms and hymns, including Psaumes (1953–5, from the Jerusalem Bible) for unison voices and chorus, the well-known Vingt-quatre psaumes et un cantique (1953) and Cinquante-trois psaumes et quatre cantiques (1954), Psaumes à quatre voix mixtes I et II (1958), Refrains psalmiques (1963), Dix hymnes du matin et du soir (1968) and Huit cantiques du Nouveau Testament (1970). He has also written a setting for soloists and four-part choir of the Cantique des cantiques (1995), a number of masses, including the Latin Messe responsoriale (1953) for choir and congregation and the Festival Mass (1974), a liturgy of the Dead, Qu’ils reposent (1984–7), for four-part choir and orchestra (1984–7), as well as music in French Mass and Office books (Missel noté, 1988; Le chant des Heures, 1977–97).
Chant et musique dans le culte chrétien (Paris, 1962; Eng. trans., 1964, as Voices and Instruments in Christian Worship)
‘Deuxième Concile du Vatican: la constitution sur la liturgie: commentaire complet, vi: La musique sacrée’, La Maison-Dieu, lxxvii (1964), 193–210
‘Programme musical d’une pastorale liturgique’, ‘Les chants processionaux: recherches sur leur structure liturgique’, Musique sacrée et langues modernes: deux colloques internationaux: Cresuz and Wolfsburg 1963 (Paris, 1964), 17–38, 105–18
‘The Rôle of Sacred Music’, The Church and the Liturgy, ed. J. Wagner (Glen Rock, NJ, 1965), 59–65
Psalmodier en français: méthode complète de psalmodie (Paris, 1969)
Dans vos assemblées: sens et pratique de la célébration liturgique (Paris, 1971)
Demain la liturgie: essai sur l’évolution des assemblées chrétiennes (Paris, 1975)
‘Music and Singing in the Liturgy’, The Study of Liturgy, ed. C. Jones and others (Oxford, 1978, 2/1992), 440–64
‘Liturgical Music: France and Beyond’, Pastoral Music, ix/4 (1985), 23–9
‘When Dealing with Symbols, Nothing is Ever Automatic’, Pastoral Music, x/4 (1986), 37–41
‘Cries of Supplication, Cries of Joy’, Pastoral Music, xiv/1 (1989), 40–43
‘The Path of Music’, Music and the Experience of God, ed. M. Collins, D. Power and M. Burnim (Edinburgh, 1989)
‘Cantillation: Prayer is More Important than Song’, Pastoral Music, xv/3 (1991), 38–41
‘Les divers lieux de la célébration’, La Maison-Dieu, cxlii/4 (1992), 35–43
‘For Clergy and Musicians: Text Revision: the Missal of Paul VI: Valuable, Durable, Questionable’, Pastoral Music, xvii/1 (1992), 14–17
H. Hucke: ‘Le problème de la musique religieuse’, La Maison-Dieu, cviii/4 (1974), 7–20
H. Hucke: ‘Towards a New Historical View of Gregorian Chant’, JAMS, xxxiii (1980), 437–67
P. Jeffery: ‘Chant East and West: toward a Renewal of the Tradition’, Music and the Experience of God, ed. M. Collins, D. Power and M. Burnim (Edinburgh, 1989), 20–29
P. Jeffery: Re-Envisioning Past Musical Cultures: Ethnomusicology in the Study of Gregorian Chant (Chicago and London, 1992), 78–84, 113–14
PETER WILTON