Gelineau, Joseph

(31 October 1920, Champs-sur-Layon, Maine et Loire, France)

   Jesuit priest since 1951 and liturgical scholar, his most influential compositions are four sets of psalms and canticles dating 1953–1963 which attempt to imitate in French the original poetic structure. These provided a model for the responsorial psalm in the Roman Catholic mass since 1970. As liturgist he argued in Chant et Musique dans le Culte Chrétien (1962) that the chief value of liturgical music was in its ability to perform a ritual function and that the great body of traditional Catholic music, too complex for the congregation, had to be replaced by simpler chants. In 1985, however, he regretted the commonness of much new liturgical music and the preponderance of strophic songs to the exclusion of Biblical chants.

   See also Liturgical Movement; Second Vatican Council; Taizé.