I am well aware that the work of a historian says much about historical facts and events but also a lot about the historian himself. I do not pretend that I am able to “tell how it really was” regarding Church music, as German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) noted. We have in any case only a lot of scattered information, but this is not to be seen as a negative thing: we are called to offer the most plausible explanation from these scattered phenomena, an explanation that is not only valid but also valuable. This could be a stepping stone offered to future generations. I have found an interesting quote online attributed to Dana Arnold, a professor of architectural history: "History is about the past. Yet it exists only in the present – the moment of its creation as history provides us with a narrative constructed after the events with which it is concerned. The narrative must then relate to the moment of its creation as much as its historical subject. History presents an historian with the task of producing a dialogue between the past and the present. But as these temporal co-ordinates cannot be fixed, history becomes a continuous interaction between the historian and the past. As such, history can be seen as a process of evaluation whereby the past is always coloured by the intellectual fashions and philosophical concerns of the present. This shifting perspective on the past is matched by the fluid status of the past itself."
I am quite in agreement with this quote, especially considering the fact that I am not simply a music historian but also a musician, and as such I am always involved with the materials I am studying in a practical and experiential way.
So what is this book? You may call it an introduction to the study of Catholic sacred music. But then we run into a problem with terminology: sacred music? liturgical music? church music? ritual music? There are many ways that the repertoires are called, but we have tried not to lose our mind chasing after all these terminological issues. I know that they may be of interest to some, and I am not playing down the importance of the distinctions among them. Here we have preferred to use "sacred music," for that is also the way the Magisterium still refers to the music for liturgy.