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Notes
1 Making the pilgrimage to the Taizé community is itself quite a challenge. The village of Taizé is not easily accessible. Travel by public transportation involves train and bus to get to this “out of the way” place tucked into the Burgundian hills of eastern France.
2 See also J. L. Balado, The Story of Taizé, 3rd rev. ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988); Douglas A. Hicks, “The Taizé Community: Fifty Years of Prayer and Action,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 29 (Spring 1992): 202–14; Judith Marie Kubicki, Liturgical Music as Ritual Symbol: A Case Study of Jacques Berthier’s Taizé Music, Liturgia condenda 9 (Leuven: Peeters, 1999).
3 In 1996, these statistics were published in a single sheet brochure entitled “The Taizé Community” and disseminated at the pilgrimage site to visitors.
4 Brother Émile, “Taizé Community,” in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, ed. Nicholas Lossky, et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), 969.
5 Douglas A. Hicks, “The Taizé Community: Fifty Years of Prayer and Action,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 29 (Spring 1992): 206.
6 Edward Davis, “The Ecumenical Ecclesiology of Max Thurian, Brother of the Community of Taizé: A Catholic Appraisal,” PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, 1970, 247.
7 See Kubicki, Liturgical Music, 96–102.
8 Praise God: Common Prayer at Taizé, trans. Emily Chisholm (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1977), 7. Published in French as La Louange des Jours (Taizé: Les Presses de Taizé, 1971).
9 This is not to say that these later compositions have been able to capture the quality and genius of Jacques Berthier’s original work.
10 Dirk G. Lange (Geneva), interview by author (Buffalo, NY), December 30, 2022, via ZOOM.
11 The Taizé website and other publications describe young people as between the ages of 18 and 35.
12 See also Kubicki, Liturgical Music, 45–51.
13 It is striking that Berthier’s compositional technique has been described as constituting a reconciliation between an old and a newer compositional style since the overall spiritual vision of the Taizé community has been to be a leaven for the reconciliation of alienated humanity on many levels of human fragmentation. When the little village church that originally housed the worshipers became too small to accommodate the large number of pilgrims, a German organization called Sühnezeichen (signs of reconciliation) set up international teams of young volunteers who built the great Church of Reconciliation at Taizé. See Kubicki, Liturgical Music, 45.
14 Kubicki, Liturgical Music, 70–75. See also Paul Griffiths, “Aleatory,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1980), 237. While the term “aleatory” is musical, the element of choice and variations in the actual moment of the prayer can also express an openness to the Holy Spirit who is alive and active within the community and those directing the worship.
15 The rationale for using Latin was that it would put all youth on an equal footing because of its unfamiliarity.
16 John Langshaw Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 5.
17 Jean Ladrière, “The Performativity of Liturgical Language,” in Liturgical Experience of Faith, eds. H. Schmidt and David N. Power, Concilium series, no. 82 (New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1973), 56. See also Kubicki, Liturgical Music, 147–159.
18 Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1982), 307–330.
19 Taizé website, December 3, 2022.
20 Brother Dirk, interview by author, May 22, 1996, Taizé, France.
21 Kubicki, Liturgical Music, 178.
22 When this author visited Taizé for the first time in 1996, it was clear from interviews that the brothers had no intention of selling a “product.” It was the spirit of prayer and hospitality and unity that was experienced at Taizé that attracted visitors and inspired them to share their experience when they returned home.
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Judith M. Kubicki
Judith M. Kubicki is an associate professor emerita at Fordham University. Currently, she is serving as provincial minister of the Felician Sisters of North America, Our Lady of Hope Province.