In 1962, the Roman Catholic Church commenced with its twenty-first ecumenical council, Vatican II. Priests from around the world gathered to debate and decide on several issues with the goal of modernizing Catholicism while still maintaining its historical tradition. In addition to discussing abstract matters such as the nature and existence of God, the Council Fathers discussed practical issues, among them being the kind of music appropriate for ritual worship, the liturgy. Throughout Western history, the Catholic Church has cited in its documents Gregorian chant sung in Latin and the pipe organ as the musical expressions best suited for ritual worship. Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sancrosanctum Concilium, drew from Church history and recognized chant and the organ's importance as previous conciliar documents and papal writings have done. Yet the Constitution also authorized the use of different styles, languages, and instruments. Once bishops, priests, and liturgists began implementing the reforms, however, folk tunes, jazz and rock styles sung exclusively in the vernacular largely replaced Latin and chant, while strumming guitars, percussion, and piano ensembles supplanted the organ. Amid this revolution, a number of French organist-composers critiqued the liturgical changes through the written word and music.

My dissertation investigates Maurice Durufle (1902--1986) and Jean Langlais's (1907--1991) written and musical protestations of Vatican II's liturgical reforms. The composers' initial writings (1960--1969) communicate their determination to preserve chant and the organ, reflected in their music through the presence of a "transcendent" harmonic language. Characterized by intervallic symmetry, this language has historical associations with the otherworldly in fin-de-siecle art music. Beginning in the 1930s, French organist-composers known as the French Organ School applied the "transcendent" language to Gregorian chant melodies, Latin, and the organ to highlight vertical (human-to-God) dimensions of Catholic liturgy in their sacred music. The French Organ School consequently privileged the Church's identity as a transcendent institution, as existing outside space and time, through music. They then used it to combat what they perceived to be the desacralization of the liturgy after Vatican II. Nonetheless, Durufle and Langlais saw no improvement over the years, and their resolve eroded. Shown in their later writings (1970--1983), they surrendered to this state of affairs either by ironically re-contextualizing or by ceasing use of the "transcendent" harmony altogether.

I show that the music and letters of Durufle and Langlais capture themes that theologians and sociologists have articulated in their work on Vatican II and on twentieth-century Catholicism. As bishops implemented the reforms of the Council, their primary goal was to foster active participation among congregations. Theologians and sociologists have maintained that a consequence of the goal of participation was an over-privileging of relevance, understanding, and inculturation into a liturgy, historically characterized by symbolism, sensory experience, and counterculture. Anything characterized by the latter features---the "otherness" of Latin, chant, ritual actions, and the notion that the Church exists outside of time and space---became stigmatized after Vatican II. In short, the Church experienced a loss of transcendence. This shift in liturgical aesthetic consequently included the music that the French Organ School favored.

Durufle and Langlais expressed ideas similar to sociologists and theologians concerning the loss of transcendence, but they did so through musical language in addition to their writings. By analyzing their compositions, I rescript history of Catholic Church reform in the latter half of the twentieth century through musical language.