Catholic Sensibility

Bob Dufford described his exposure to and his love for musical theatre and the classics. The America story continues: One day, another Jesuit arrived at rehearsal with an original song and a guitar. Seeing that guitar, Dufford thought, "There goes the neighborhood." That Jesuit was John Foley. Foley, as it turns out, studied piano since age five, but when he entered the Jesuit novitiate, his superiors rarely gave him permission to practice. So he asked some seminary chums to show him around the guitar. The move would be providential, as the council soon after opened the door to the use of new instruments, including the guitar, in the liturgy.

Imagine! If the Jesuits had let him practice on that piano, the whole course of American liturgical music may have changed. There might be no "For You Are My God," no "Cry of the Poor," none of that.

Once they started singing, Dufford was surprised to find he appreciated Foley’s song. "You played through it and you sang it, and I thought, ‘This is not what I was expecting.’" Inspired, he began to write music of his own.

In my own life, when I was exposed to other songwriters, I was inspired to see what I could do. At the Newman Community as an undergrad, I was impressed with the music the Saturday night group was doing. Mind you, I avoided the folk Masses of my home parish; I didn't really care for Mudd, Wise, or Repp. But the St Louis Jesuit songs were something else entirely. First, I noticed these songs were scriptural. I was able to immediately pick out Psalm 139 in "You Are Near" and Abraham's call in "Yahweh, the Faithful One." The group had two clarinets and a flute, and occasionally the director was able to talk his girlfriend into playing recorder or bassoon. Not only was I hearing liturgical music a few notches up from home, but I was hearing it led by good guitar players, competent singers, and orchestral instruments. By the time I was drifting from Newman to my new parish, I had begun writing songs. And by 1983, I was adding parts for clarinets and flutes, just in case I ever joined a group with wind players.

On a trip to a Jesuit novitiate, on which he met Dan Schutte, Dufford was shocked; they were playing his songs and the songs of Foley. He had no idea that their compositions had been circulating. In fact, their music was stimulating the compositions of the novices.

Schutte remembers, "Their stuff was singable and scriptural and it reached your heart in way that was more than the sentimental group stuff that was being produced."

As I was reading the story of this meeting, I realized what a great disadvantage parish music directors today are in. Composition blossomed during the post-conciliar years because it was more of a shared effort amongst like-minded musicians trying to give vernacular liturgy a voice. The simple songs of the mimeographed 60's were giving way to more refinement, more prayer, more skill. And people were working together to produce this music. How many people do you know who were inspired to start a music publishing company by the good example of the novice down the hall? As a portable and intimate instrument, the guitar had a natural advantage, even when the novice masters were locking the practice room. It was almost inevitable that the guitar would come to prominence as the new liturgical instrument. And the reality is, many guitar players got damn good at music. In not a few places, they surpassed the musicianship of parish organists, especially those pianists pressed into service to "help out Father" for a dozen or two Masses a week.