Listen with the Ear of the Heart: Music and Monastery Life at Weston Priory by Maria S. Guarino

Abstract

Reviewed by: Listen with the Ear of the Heart: Music and Monastery Life at Weston Priory by Maria S. Guarino Karl Isaac Johnson Maria S. Guarino Listen with the Ear of the Heart: Music and Monastery Life at Weston Priory Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020 214 pages. Paperback. $34.95. American Catholic liturgical life after the Second Vatican Council is woefully understudied in the academy outside of theology. In particular, ethnographies—fieldwork-based studies of human beings—are rare. Maria Guarino's Listen with the Ear of the Heart: Music and Monastery Life at Weston Priory, a study of the guitar-playing Benedictine monks of Weston, Vermont, is a rare example of such ethnography. The reader learns many unexpected things about the Weston monks—their tastes, their goals, their origins—and is left questioning the usual narratives of post-Vatican II American Catholicism. However, Guarino herself does not reflect on these insights completely, as her monograph does not fully interpret her fieldwork. Guarino writes that her Catholic upbringing, with folk music and guitars instead of organs, was the inspiration for this project (ix), and that she sought to study some of the pioneers of the modern "folk Mass" liturgical style, the monks of Weston Priory. Though she writes that the book is not about "determining what sorts of music are best or most appropriate for liturgy" (xi), her liturgical tastes and opinions pop up throughout, sometimes [End Page 95] intrusively. Guarino adopts a reflexive ethnographic style; a positive trend in ethnomusicology for the past thirty years. But Guarino's reflexivity can be overbearing. Chapter one is more about her personal perspective (sixteen pages) than outlining historical, liturgical, and scholarly contexts (five pages). She briefly describes Weston musical style—quiet, non-metrical, poetic (21)—but focuses more on her own reaction to the style and how it did not fit her preconceived notions. Her liturgical tastes emerge in the text when she is confronted with styles she does not prefer. This is most evident in chapter two, the weakest part of the book. When the Weston brothers confess their love of Gregorian chant (38), she visits the chanting monks of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, a Québécois monastery. What follows is a bizarre account: she writes that she feels "alienated" by the organ and the "institutional church," thanks to her "anti-institutional populism" (51); she recoils at the singing of a Marian hymn (56); and she dismisses modern chant practice as "not ancient, revived, don't forget," (57). An ethnographer should describe foreign experiences without judgment, attempting etically to adopt the perspective of those she studies—with a sensitivity that chapter two lacks. Guarino's touching accounts of her interviews with the Weston monks show her deep relationships with them and unearth heretofore unknown perspectives on their liturgical revolution. The monks corroborate her idea that they are liturgically innovative: they eschew the usual gendered trinitarian language for the terms "Creator, word, and spirit of new life" (70), and they readily admit the influence of hippie and folk music of the 1960s (87). However, the monks admire Gregorian chant (66) and did not drop it because they had an ideological stance against it: it was simply too difficult for them (81); neither do they have anything to say against Latin. Guarino's preconceived notions of liturgical change remain despite these confessions: to her, the pre-conciliar Mass was "mumbled," the laypeople were ignorant, and the council opened a "floodgate" of liturgical creativity (82). This reinforces a common misunderstanding that prior to Vatican II, there had been no investment in lay comprehension and participation [End Page 96] in Mass. The monks confide in her that they never intended to start a liturgical revolution; they simply created music that was practical to them. But she still ascribes to them a rebelliousness and pioneering bent that they themselves eschew. The interviews with the Weston monks, which demonstrate the relationships necessary for good ethnography, are the greatest strength of the book, though one wishes she had attempted to interview the monks of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac as well. Her descriptions of the Weston grounds and the profound but mundane experiences of...