MUSIC NOTES

Several people have mentioned in the past that we need a thread specifically about music but nobody has started one so I'm going to do it. This thread could be used to discuss music in the church. Or, since we are blessed with a pope who loves music, is musically talented himself, and often attends musical performances in his honor, this thread could comment on those topics. Or, we could just talk about our own musical likes and dislikes.

The following article is awfully long but it discusses the virtues of Gregorian Chant, which, with the new emphasis on the Latin Mass, may soon see a revival of interest and appreciation. Also, here is a link to a page full of sites about Gregorian Chant, including history, groups that perform it, and places where it is studied.
www.music.princeton.edu/chant_html/#perfs


Chant Leaves the Ivory Tower

By Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker
Crisis Magazine
July/August 2007

In November 2006, Francis Cardinal Arinze, the head of the Congregation for Divine Worship, came to St. Louis, Missouri, the home of the musical revolution of the early 1970s, and delivered a blunt message to American parishes. “It is not true that the lay faithful do not want to sing the Gregorian chant,” he announced. “What they are asking for are priests and monks and nuns who will share this treasure with them.”

His comments go to the heart of the objection that one is most likely to hear when it comes to reform in liturgical music, namely that chant is for experts and snobs, not common people in the pews. Cardinal Arinze, by virtue of his position in the Curia, was speaking on behalf of the pope.

Gregorian chant is “marked by a moving meditative cadence,” he said. “It touches the depths of the soul. It shows joy, sorrow, repentance, petition, hope, praise or thanksgiving, as the particular feast, part of the Mass or other prayer may indicate. It makes the Psalms come alive. It has a universal appeal which makes it suitable for all cultures and peoples.”

Cardinal Arinze continued to explain that the Second Vatican Council did not do away with chant, but rather the opposite: It sought to universalize it in the Roman Rite. He cited Church documents, Canon Law, and the writings and speeches of popes. He urged every parish to use it, for theological, artistic, and pastoral reasons. His speech was inspiring, sweeping, and unmistakably clear: Parishes are the rightful home of chant.

Parishes Take the Step
Encouraged by new writings, a new push from the Vatican, and a growing sense of how tiresome liturgical folk music has become, many parishes around the country are discovering Gregorian chant, or at least taking the first steps in that direction. The National Registry of Gregorian Scholas, maintained by the Church Music Association of America, has 140 scholas listed to date, most of them formed within the last two years. Workshops on chant are not only proliferating; they are filling to capacity months in advance.

But new scholas quickly find that mastering the music requires more rehearsal time than they might have thought. And this is not the only or even the most significant challenge, which involves all the considerations that are lumped together under the category of “pastoral,” since it is not only the schola that is learning but also the celebrant, the parish leadership, as well as the congregation. There are huge barriers to overcome, and doing so requires hard work and decisive leadership.

The challenges are large enough, in fact, that Michael Joncas, in his influential book From Sacred Song to Ritual Music (OSB, 1997), wrote that he seriously doubts that chant could ever make a return. Many agree. But here they are as wrong as those who doubted that the Jewish people could ever regain Hebrew as a working language. Enough love of the Faith and the medium in question can and does make the difference. Together they can make a language speak and sing again as an integral part of Catholic liturgy.

Consider the point at which we are beginning this journey. For many decades, Gregorian chant has largely been the province of two sectors: performance art and academic specialization. In art, chant made a notable resurgence in the 1990s in a series of high-quality recordings of monastic singing that soared to the top of the sales charts. It might be tempting to dismiss this event as little more than a temporary fad for new-sounding mood music to be consumed by a generation raised on New Age spirituality. And yet such a dismissal is too quick. While it is true that its text and purpose were probably lost on many who purchased the music, it still provides a window into the sound of the sacred that one is unlikely to find anywhere else in the culture. It also gave a boost to the emerging market for recordings of 16th-century polyphony. The marketing of chant contributed to a greater emphasis on “authentic” performances that integrated chant propers with polyphonic motets and ordinary parts of the Mass for a complete liturgical reconstruction.

As beautiful and wonderful as many of these recordings are, they can also serve to intimidate singers at the parish level, leading people to believe that this music can only be sung by professionals or monks, not by average musicians. Only the wealthiest of parishes can afford to hire specialists to sing week in and week out, and so they would seem to have no choice but to continue what they are currently doing.

There is a further problem with contracting out sacred music. In order for chant to be a part of parish life again, it is not enough that people hear specialists alone demonstrating its glories. This can introduce the danger of a performance ethos to the chant. In order to truly take part and feel a sense of ownership, people must involve themselves in the singing, or at least develop a spiritual appreciation for what is taking place. A greater integration of the work of the schola and the congregation is required.

Out of the Ivory Tower
As for academia, chant has remained a narrow specialization for many decades. The emerging consensus among most academics has not been favorable to a restoration of chant in liturgy. These specialists would rather write and study as a purely academic exercise. For a musicologist to be a partisan for public performance is to expose a bias that supposedly cuts against academic distance.

What’s more, for decades academics have been severely critical of the old restoration efforts undertaken by the monks of Solesmes, which, with their rhythmic markings, are the one viable source for chant editions available to average Church musicians. It presumes that the rhythm and notes of chant are accessible to regular people and provides a method by which anyone who can match pitch can sing chant in his or her own parish. The method worked well for a century and continues to be the basis of chant in liturgical music.

But the academic fashion for semiology—the science of signs—has claimed that the rhythmic signs of the old Solesmes scholars have no strong historical basis, and that rigorous scholarship must once again return to the earliest possible manuscripts. There is no fixed rhythm to chant, they claim, and the chant cannot be read from current editions. In effect, this means starting from scratch.

Absurdly, the findings of the semiological school are sometimes invoked as the reason—or, rather, the excuse—for why parishes should not attempt to sing the chant. And because there are very few editions available that accord with the findings of semiologists, singers are left with no editions at all. The irony is palpable: Higher criticism and detailed scholarly investigation are being used to discredit any attempt to revive Gregorian chant, and the word “semiology” is being tossed around as the catch-all excuse for being satisfied with a substandard status quo. A recent issue of a widely read liturgical planning guide cited this reason to support the idea that parishes must continue to use contemporary music, at least or until semiologically correct editions are produced.

A Method for All Time
The Solesmes method, which rightly gained the official approval of the Vatican, was developed with a specific purpose in mind. The goal of the turn-of-the-century restoration was to re-enliven the music for use in liturgy, not merely to develop critical editions for scholars. The use of the rhythmic markings, the choice of chant editions to use, and even its original typography (at once medieval and innovative) served this purpose. The goal was to create a universal standard so that singers from all over the world could gather and read and sing the same musical language. In this respect, the restoration was a spectacular success, and the results have never been more useful than they are today.

When Solesmes began this restoration, chant editions were in disarray, and had been for two centuries. In setting out to restore them, they had loftier goals than merely transcribing tenth-century manuscripts. They wanted to elevate them and point to a new and more perfect ideal. This goal is wholly justifiable. When one goes to visit Jefferson’s home, do we really want to see it as it was when Jefferson lived in it, or do we want to see it as he imagined it could be, with gardens in bloom and mechanical parts that work? So it is with chant editions: What Solesmes created is more glorious than anything that had existed previously.

This is where the semiological critique of the older Solesmes school misses the mark. The official editions of chant that we have today are not designed primarily for academic use. They serve the purpose of keeping larger groups of singers together so that the chant can be more beautiful. In this respect, the method is brilliant and essential for parishes today. Whether the editions precisely re-create the chant style of the tenth century—which we are not really in a position to say either way—is beside the point, especially for music that seeks timelessness.

But there is another issue: Most parishes are missing the appropriate artistic sensibility that is a precondition for consistent use of chant in line with what the Church is asking of us.

The Sound and Feel
The most dramatic change that comes with a step toward chant, whether in English or Latin, is due to the sound and feel of “free rhythm” as opposed to the metered rhythm of contemporary (and this includes 19th-century) hymnody. The metered style is grounded in a strict beat, such as that found in any popular music. The free-rhythm style of plainchant has an underlying pulse but it is not forced into blocks of three (as in a waltz), four (as is most typical), or five (yes, some contemporary standards use music in 5/4). Free-rhythm style permits the music to take flight and lifts the sung prayer in a vertical way as it is presented at the altar of God.

The Christian choice of unmetered music is not an accident of history. “It would seem as if the first Christians deliberately avoided poems in meter,” writes Adrian Fortescue in Pange Lingua. “They must have been familiar with them. Both the Greek and the Latin languages had an abundance of lyric poetry before the time of Christ. It would have been easy to write religious verse in those meters. But they did not.” And why? Fortescue writes that metered music and poetry were associated with worldly concern and didn’t reflect the worshipful piety and freedom of the Psalms.

And what did the early Christian sing? “There is no doubt as to what he sang, in the first place. He sang the Psalms of David. Christians had one book that was, at first, their whole literature, the Bible. . . . They sang the Psalms, of course, in Greek. To them psalms were what they are to us, prose divided into short paragraphs. So in awe they sang the threatening Psalms; when they were joyful they sang the happy ones . . . . None of these verses shows any trace of meter in the Greek.”

It takes only one listen to discern the musicological difference between metered hymns and plainsong. What the early Christians intuited turns out to have dominated the large part of Christian history: We have always sung with prose that is untied from strict meter. The goal of the community in its sung worship has not been to bring about toe-tapping but to lift up our hearts, away from worldly concerns into heavenly ones. We sing plainsong rather than toe-tapping music for the same reason that the Eucharistic prayer is in the form of poetic prose rather a memorable limerick. The former is more fitting for elevated worship.

From Theory to Practice
Today, however, most parishes need to be re-acculturated into this free style of singing music, and an excellent place to begin is with English chant in the core of the people’s parts in the ordinary of the Mass. This is arguably a more important first step than taking on the issue of language or anything else. People must again develop an association of free rhythm with Christian worship. The Sanctus is the ideal beginning. A setting such as the following provides an excellent entry point to the sound and feel of free rhythm:
This tune is the most basic of all English settings, the one found in the Sacramentary.

Chant has a weightlessness to it that points heavenward. Its tune and style place the worshipper in a fitting mode of prayer precisely at the point in the Mass when it is most essential to leave time and enter a liturgical eternity. A setting such as this prepares the faithful to undertake more difficult settings in Latin (the Church has provided 18 settings of the ordinary chants for the faithful to sing).

The simplicity of this chant, especially sung unaccompanied, is palpable; it illustrates how holiness and solemnity in liturgical music can be achieved without the complications of academic debates. This takes the intimidation element out of the far-reaching agenda of Cardinal Arinze. It further illustrates how music can and should be another means of prayer, an extension and lifting up of the spoken word.

The next steps take us through the Agnus Dei, the Kyrie, the responses of the people, and to simple settings of the proper parts of the Mass. The congregation can begin learning traditional Latin hymnody, and the schola can explore the eternal glories of the Solesmes edition of the Graduale Romanum. There are years and years of practice and exploration here, always striving toward a new and fitting ideal.

That is no small point. The ideal is what provides the incentive to push forward and the benchmark against which the practice can be measured. We must be clear on this point: What is at issue here is not the introduction of chant as a means to achieve greater “diversity” of style within the parish. The case for chant has nothing to do with appeals to this or that interest group and its aesthetic preferences. Liturgy is an act of the people directed to God, not the “community” and its particular interests, as in Babel. What gives us a sense of community is not our earthly identity, tastes, and preferences but our common goal of worshipping God.

This is why the Church speaks of Gregorian chant as having “primacy of place.” It is the ideal against which all other music must be measured, and the perfection of the goal we should strive to achieve. It preexists and extends beyond liberal and conservative musical tastes and thereby bypasses that dead-end debate entirely.

And what of the problem of skill level? During Advent last year, some cloistered nuns made their singing of the O Antiphons publicly available. They were beautiful but imperfect. Indeed, there were moments in the recording in which some sisters missed the notes completely. Yet the sister who made it available wrote that they are not embarrassed by the imperfections, since “we know that the angels fix our mistakes and make our music perfect before presenting it at the throne of God.”

What a beautiful image. It brings two points home: First, the music we sing in liturgy is heaven-bound, always and ever directed toward the goal of presentation at the throne of God. The sound, style, feel, and text of the music, then, must be fitting to that goal. Second, it shows us that it is possible to have ideals without the ability or even the opportunity to perfect them. Our gifts to God will never be perfectly suitable, but that doesn’t mean that we should despair. We must proceed with courage and hard work to do what Cardinal Arinze is asking, to work toward the ideals mapped out by the Church—not only since Vatican II but since the earliest years of Christian music-making.

There is no reason to wait for the cathedrals to give direction or for the bishop or the pope to intervene with mandates. Genuine progress in this regard begins right at the parish level. Here is the home of simple Christian folk doing something truly beautiful for God.

Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker are directors of the St. Cecilia Schola Cantorum in Auburn, Alabama. Contact them at contact@ceciliaschola.org.

(Songs of the Taize movement utilize some of the features that make Gregorian chant effective. Below is an explanation from a Taize website.)


Meditative singing

Singing is one of the most essential elements of worship. Short songs, repeated again and again, give it a meditative character. Using just a few words they express a basic reality of faith, quickly grasped by the mind. As the words are sung over many times, this reality gradually penetrates the whole being. Meditative singing thus becomes a way of listening to God. It allows everyone to take part in a time of prayer together and to remain together in attentive waiting on God, without having to fix the length of time too exactly.

To open the gates of trust in God, nothing can replace the beauty of human voices united in song. This beauty can give us a glimpse of "heaven’s joy on earth," as Eastern Christians put it. And an inner life begins to blossom within us.

These songs also sustain personal prayer. Through them, little by little, our being finds an inner unity in God. They can continue in the silence of our hearts when we are at work, speaking with others or resting. In this way prayer and daily life are united. They allow us to keep on praying even when we are unaware of it, in the silence of our hearts.

The "songs of Taizé" published in different languages are simple, but preparation is required to use them in prayer. This preparation should take place before the prayer itself, so that once it begins the atmosphere remains meditative.

During the prayer it is better if no one directs the music; in this way everyone can face the cross, the icons or the altar. (In a large congregation, however, it may be necessary for someone to direct, as discreetly as possible, a small group of instruments or singers who support the rest, always remembering that they are not giving a performance for the others.) The person who begins the songs is generally up front, together with those who will read the psalm, the reading and the intercessions, not facing the others but turned like them towards the altar or the icons. If a song is begun spontaneously, the pitch is generally too low. A tuning fork or pitch pipe can help, or a musical instrument give the first note or accompany the melody. Make sure the tempo does not slow down too much, as this tends to happen when the singing goes on for some time. As the number of participants increases, it becomes necessary to use a microphone, preferably hand-held, to begin and end the songs (they can be ended by singing "Amen" on the final note). The person who begins the singing can support the others by singing into a microphone, being careful not to drown out the other voices. A good sound-system is essential if the congregation is large; if necessary check it before the prayer and try it out with those who will be using the microphones.

Songs in many different languages are appropriate for large international gatherings. In a neighborhood prayer with people of all ages present, most of the songs should be in languages actually understood by some of the participants, or in Latin. If possible, give each person a song sheet or booklet. You can also include one or two well-known local songs or hymns.

Instruments: a guitar or keyboard instrument can support the harmonic structure of the songs. They are especially helpful in keeping the correct pitch and tempo. Guitars should be played in classical, not folk style. A microphone may be necessary for them to be heard. In addition to this basic accompaniment, there are parts for other instruments.

Here is a link to a page where many Taize songs in various languages can be heard:

www.taize.fr/en_article681.html

I'm predicting an untimely end for the iPod described below.


British musicians send pope iPod nano packed with modern church music

By Simon Caldwell
Catholic News Service

LONDON (CNS) -- British musicians recorded the classic Irish hymn, "Sweet Heart of Jesus," in a calypso, disco style and sent it to Pope Benedict XVI on an iPod nano.

Pope Benedict might like it, or he might become the first pontiff in history to throw an iPod into the trash.

The musicians' intention, however, was to soften the pope's attitude toward modern church music.

The gift is from contemporary Catholic songwriters Jo Boyce and Mike Stanley, and it features a new album of classic hymns reworked in modern forms of music. The duo has used instruments such as pianos, saxophones, guitars, drums and synthesizers to recreate centuries-old works in laid-back gospel, folk, funk, soul and lounge-music styles.

The album, "Age to Age," was downloaded onto an iPod and sent to Pope Benedict in the hope of gaining a "papal seal of approval," said a Sept. 4 press release by the Catholic Communications Network of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.

The move is something of a gamble given that Pope Benedict, an aficionado of classical music, said in 1996 that rock music was not very uplifting for the soul and certainly did not belong in church.

Last year, Pope Benedict said that "an authentic updating of sacred music cannot occur except in line with the great tradition of the past."

But the artists see the new album as a chance to demonstrate to Pope Benedict just how good modern church music can be.

"We wanted Pope Benedict to hear how some of the more traditional songs can be interpreted in a contemporary way without doing an injustice to the truth they contain," said Stanley.

Boyce added: "There is much talk in church circles at the moment about the inappropriateness of contemporary instruments like drums and guitars in favor of the more traditional sounds of organ and choir.

"However, our experience over the last 11 years suggests it need not be an either/or situation, but rather both/and -- what really matters is the standard of musicianship and the ageless truth it seeks to express," she said.

Stanley and Boyce, based in Birmingham, England, also have contacted Apple Inc., the manufacturer of iPods and the controller of a large percentage of the international digital music download market, in the hope that it may offer Pope Benedict some free downloads from its online iTunes store.

Stanley said: "We'd be delighted to know that the pope enjoyed our versions of classic hymns. But it got us wondering what he listens to himself. My guess would be classical or choral music, but it would be fascinating to find out what other tunes he would add."

The album, which will be released Sept. 15, features "Soul of Savior," written by Pope John XXII some seven centuries ago, and "Make Me A Channel," based on the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, recreated as soul ballads.

"How Great Thou Art," written by a Swedish pastor after he was awestruck by a walk in a thunderstorm, is reproduced as a rousing folk duet, along with "Be Not Afraid," written by the Jesuit Father Robert Dufford and billed by Boyce and Stanley as one of the best-loved hymns in the United States.

The complete digital collection of Boyce and Stanley recordings on iPod nano have also been sent to Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor of Westminster, who, like Pope Benedict, is a classical pianist.

Pope Benedict is already the owner of an iPod; last year, a group of Vatican Radio employees gave him a device loaded with Vatican Radio programming and classical music.

It included musical compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frederic Chopin, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky. The stainless steel back was engraved with the words "To His Holiness, Benedict XVI" in Italian.

Turning Mysticism Into Music

ROME, SEPT. 5, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Setting the writings of great Carmelite mystics to music is the objective of "Hermosura," the first international competition of sacred Carmelite music.

The Teresian Carmelite Association in Italy launched the initiative with the goal of "generating the most possible interest, above all in countries in which the writings of the Carmelite mystics are part of their literary heritage," Luca Garbini, the artistic director of the competition, told ZENIT.

Among the mystical phrases listed are "Living Flame of Love" by St. John of the Cross, "Let Nothing Disturb You" by St. Teresa of Avila, "Story of a Soul" by St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, and "Who Are You, Sweet Light?" by St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).

Garbini explained the criteria for selecting the pieces: "The choice was made by considering both the musicality of the texts and their particularly 'strong' content, in order to inspire the composers to musical creations with a strong emotional impact.

"We want to recover beauty in a renewed repertoire of sacred music."

Pontifical Institute for Sacred Music--Rome


This is an excellent page on the Vatican website that enables you to listen to a beautiful selection of choral and instrumental religious and classical music.

www.vatican.va/roman_curia/institutions_connected/sacmus/documents/rc_ic_sacmus_sound...

Cardinal Ratzinger on Liturgical Music


Cardinal Ratzinger’s well-reasoned essays on sacred music bring to mind vividly
the fact that the liturgy is, after all, divine.

By Michael J. Miller
(Reprinted from the July 2000 Homiletics and Pastoral Review)

■In an article entitled “Liturgie und Kirchenmusik” (Liturgy and Church Music) published in 1986 in Communio, Cardinal Ratzinger referred to the incompatibility between rock music and the liturgy of the Church. A storm of progressive protest ensued, most of it aimed at the messenger instead of arguing to the contrary. How can a theologian judge modern music? What right does a Curia official have to say how today’s young people should participate in the Liturgy? Implicit in the controversy was the hackneyed caricature of Ratzinger as the "Teutonic academician turned doctrinal watchdog."

A revisionist view became necessary in 1996 with the publication of another book-length interview with the Cardinal (this time by German journalist Peter Seewald), because the second Ratzinger Report began with eighty pages of biographical information. His Eminence, we learn, is only human after all. Reminiscing about his childhood in Bavaria, Cardinal Ratzinger admits that music (especially Mozart) had a major role in his family life. “Music, after all, has the power to bring people together. . . . Yes, art is elemental. Reason alone as it’s expressed in the sciences can’t be man’s complete answer to reality, and it can’t express everything that man can, wants to, and has to express. I think God built this into man.” 1

Being an intellectual does not disqualify one from commenting upon either music or liturgy, provided one recognizes the limits of rational discourse. As Cardinal Ratzinger himself put it, theologians “cannot enter into musical discussions per se, but they can nonetheless ask where the seams are, so to speak, that link faith and art.” 2

What follows is a summary of three articles by Cardinal Ratzinger on liturgical music which appeared in German journals during the years 1986-1994 and were reprinted in English as part of the anthology, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today.3 The essays were written for different occasions, but they follow the same pattern: the author contrasts a problematic theory or a pernicious trend with the true theology of the liturgy, and from that draws conclusions as to the proper place of music in the liturgy and suggests guidelines for practical applications.

[Click on the link below for the rest of the article.]

www.ignatius.com/magazines/hprweb/miller07-2000.htm

From thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/
for those who may be in a position to influence what their local church does by way of sacred music:

First Polyphony:
A Fresh Start for the Choir
posted by Jeffrey Tucker

Several people have written to ask for some relatively simple music that would put a choir on a new track toward solemnity. For the choir, the goal of the first pieces of music are to 1) get the choir used to singing without instruments, 2) help with the stability and sound, 3) eliminate vestiges of popular styles such as ego-swoops and the rest, 4) help to create a new understand of rhythm that is free and flexible, and 5) provide models for working on chant-like phrasing

For the congregation, these pieces help familiarize people with a sense of our timeless heritage. They are not all super easy by modern standards, and all will require lots of rehearsal time, but as these things go, these are 10 of the most approachable.

I don't need to say that this list is wholly subjective. There are tens of thousands of possibilities but these are my choices based on ease of singing and beauty of the piece itself:

1. I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say (Tallis, the original score with melody in the tenor line).

2. If Ye Love Me (Tallis)

3. O Esca Viatorum (att. Issac)

4. O Bone Jesu (att. Palestrina)

5. Jesu Rex Admirabilis (att. Palestrina)

6. Voce Mea (G. Croce)

7. Virtute Magna (Croce)

8. Adoremus Te (att. Palestrina)

9. Ave Maria (Arcadelt)

10. Lord for thy Tender Mercies Sake (Hilton)

Ave Maria

Inspired by Wulfrune’s post on the Notables thread of Luciano Pavarotti singing Ave Maria, I decided to do a search for various other versions of that lovely song. I discovered that zillions of people with all kinds of voices (and some without any at all) have attempted various renditions of the song. Some are absolutely beautiful and others are….bizarre. I decided against including two male Russian sopranos. Here’s a sampling starting with Pavarotti.


Pavarotti
Shubert’s Ave Maria.
youtube.com/watch?v=2uYrmYXsujI

Sumi Jo
Caccini’s Ave Maria
youtube.com/watch?v=fjZ8fBGtMaI&mode=related&search=

Kathleen Battle/Christopher Parkening
Gounod’s Ave Maria
youtube.com/watch?v=E0o9ku8yw4U&mode=related&search=

Mario Lanza
Shubert’s Ave Maria (from some movie)
youtube.com/watch?v=5OZ1SzFQHkI

Jessye Norman
Gounod’s Ave Maria
youtube.com/watch?v=jMpUxtAtAPw

Chanticleer (with scenes from Rome)
youtube.com/watch?v=SnZ23vUcpJk&mode=related&search=

Ivan Rebroff (has to be from a movie)
Gounod’s
youtube.com/watch?v=a6DOUB3O35E&mode=related&search=

Hey, benefan, thank you for posting these musical links.
What a beautiful collection of different versions it is. You have made a good choice.

I can hardly decide, what I would prefer.
For me, the tendency goes to Mario Lanza's voice. His voice is softer than Pavarotti's, I guess. (Please, don't kill me, Pavarotti fans. Luciano Pavarotti was, no, he IS terrific, no doubt!)

Look, our good old german Ivan Rebroff is also present! And his version isn't the worst!
Thank you very much.

OOoh, the Mario Lanza recording is superb... the teary-eyed girl is a bit saccharine but my dear daughter Catherine will adore it - she has loved M L since watching the Great Caruso at age 8 or so. I've sent her the link!

Thanks Benefan!

Anyone interested in sacred music can read through the entire issue of MUSICA SACRA with the link kindly provided by the knowldegable folks at the New Liturigcal Movement.

www.musicasacra.com/publications/sacredmusic/pdf/sm134-2.pdf

Another link provided by the TLM's Jeffrey Tucker yesterday was to a 1977 article by Cardinal Ratzinger on Theological Music, which MUSICA SACRA published in 1985 and is available as a 9-page PDF file
www.musicasacra.com/pdf/theoproblems.pdf
[I will convert this to WORD and post it when I have the time.]

And TLM itself
thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/
is a must-visit site for all things ecclesially esthetic.

I failed to recognise the music being played for Papa [not at the Mass - at the two meetings]. Firstly there was a quartet playing - what? I knew it but couldn't place it. Then, at the Konzerthaus, it seemed like a sinfonia concertante, played by a small string orchestra. Both were probably Mozart.
I did recognise the Alleluia from Exsultate Jubilate - brilliantly sung by a young soprano.
But the rest? Can anyone please supply the exact titles?

Sorry this is a bit garbled - in a hurry to watch the Papal Audience encore in a minute. But please, someone, supply these titles!

Luff, Mary x

Thank you benefgan for the Mario Lanza's link.
I adored (adore) Pavoritti's voice( I saw him live once) but Lanza's voice was( is) heavenly.

Benedict’s Mozart

What the Pope Learned From His Favorite Composer

BY FATHER ANDREAS KRAMARZ, LC
National Catholic Register
September 23-29, 2007 Issue | Posted 9/18/07 at 11:44 AM

Austria’s president honored Pope Benedict on the final day of his visit to the “Alp Republic” Sept. 9 with Mozart music in the Vienna Concert House. After the music, the Holy Father met with Church and civil volunteers in order to honor their service.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in the Austrian city of Salzburg in 1756, but that’s not why his music was played for the Pope. In fact, there have hardly been any cultural events that Pope Benedict has attended in which a piece of Mozart has not been performed.

That’s because it is well known that Mozart is the Pope’s favorite composer.

Consider what Pope Benedict contributed last year to a book collecting 58 testimonies for the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth:

“When in our home parish of Traunstein on feast days a Mass by Mozart resounded, for me, a little country boy, it seemed as if heaven stood open. In the front, in the sanctuary, columns of incense had formed in which the sunlight was broken; at the altar the sacred action took place of which we knew that heaven opened for us. And from the choir sounded music that could only come from heaven; music in which was revealed to us the jubilation of the angels over the beauty of God. …

“I have to say that something like this happens to me still when I listen to Mozart. Mozart is pure inspiration — or at least I feel it so. Each tone is correct and could not be different. The message is simply present. …

“The joy that Mozart gives us, and I feel this anew in every encounter with him, is not due to the omission of a part of reality; it is an expression of a higher perception of the whole, something I can only call inspiration out of which his compositions seem to flow naturally.”

Music for the Pope is much more than mere entertainment. He possesses a profound sense of aesthetics.

Influenced by the great theological aesthete Hans Urs von Balthasar, in many of his essays the Holy Father has reflected upon the importance of beauty and harmony for the faith and, especially, for expressing faith in liturgy.

“The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes, so that later, from this experience, we take the criteria for judgment and can correctly evaluate the arguments,” he wrote in August 2002 in a remarkable message, dedicated to the “contemplation of beauty” and directed to a meeting of the Communion and Liberation Movement in Rimini, Italy.

In the same text, he recalls an experience he had after listening to a Bach concert conducted in Munich by Leonard Bernstein.

After the last tone had faded away, he looked spontaneously at the person next to him “and right then we said: ‘Anyone who has heard this knows that the faith is true.’ The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer’s inspiration.”

Since his childhood, the Holy Father had learned to appreciate music that “had a bigger and bigger role in our family life,” as he recounts in the 1997 book-length interview “Salt of the Earth.”

For 30 years, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, the Pope’s brother, was the director of Regensburger Domspatzen (The Cathedral Sparrows of Regensburg), perhaps Germany’s most prestigious boys choir. And even as Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger continues to play the piano in some free moments he may find in the midst of his heavy workload.

Before he became Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that he remembers that Traunstein, where he spent most of his youth, “very much reflects the influence of Salzburg. You might say that there Mozart thoroughly penetrated our souls, and his music still touches me profoundly, because it is so luminous and yet at the same time so deep. His music is by no means just entertainment; it contains the whole tragedy of human existence.”

Pope Benedict’s sensitivity for the beauty in music and art as much as his particular affection for Mozart’s style may well be one of the explanations not only of his well-rounded style, but also of the intellectual architecture of his theological writings, which are characterized by a high degree of perfection, with a rare combination of simplicity, clarity, depth, and both logical and persuasive power.

That’s why Cologne Cardinal Joachim Meisner calls Pope Benedict the “Mozart of Theology.” Cardinal Meisner developed this further in a homily that he gave on the occasion of the Pope’s 80th birthday in St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin:

“Pope Benedict XVI has the gift of pointing out to people the sanctifying message of the Gospel in its beauty, fascination and harmony, so much so that he is called the ‘Mozart among the theologians.’ His theology is not only true and good, it is also beautiful. His words sound like music in the ears and hearts of people. He manages masterfully to transform the notes of the Gospel into thrilling music. That’s why the stream of pilgrims that flock to his audiences is growing every month.”

The Pope’s appreciation for beauty is by no means blind optimism.

In fact, the Holy Father has remarked that the “wounds of humanity” don’t justify a flight into irrational aestheticism, closing our eyes before the often difficult reality of life. In his 2002 reflection he said that Christ is recognized by the Church both as the “fairest of men” (see Psalm 45:3) and the disfigured one, during his passion:

“Whoever believes in God, in the God who manifested himself, precisely in the altered appearance of Christ crucified as love ‘to the end’ (John 13:1), knows that beauty is truth and truth beauty; but in the suffering Christ he also learns that the beauty of truth also embraces offense, pain, and even the dark mystery of death, and that this can only be found in accepting suffering, not in ignoring it.”

And he continues: “The icon of the crucified Christ, however … imposes a condition: that we let ourselves be wounded by him, and that we believe in the Love who can risk setting aside his external beauty to proclaim, in this way, the truth of the beautiful.”

So it is that the Holy Father’s words in praise of the volunteers in the concert hall on Sept. 9 could just as well be applied to the music that preceded it: “The value of human beings cannot be judged by purely economic criteria. Without volunteers, then, no state can be built up.”

And not without music, either.


Legionary Father Andreas Kramarz is a professor and music director at the Legionaries’ Novitiate and College of Humanities in Cheshire, Connecticut.

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Forgive the indulgence, but on 1/22/07, I posted this item in POPE-POURRI, to which I truly expected some reaction from the Forum. There was not a single comment, however. Now that the above article refers to it, I thought it might be useful to re-post it on the thread:

---

This is one year late, but yet again, from ALFA Y OMEGA (issue of February 2006), comes the Spanish translation of a text that Pope Benedict XVI contributed for a book that was being put together to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth in 2006, with contributions by 60 personages, mostly artists.

Helga Rabl-Stabler, president of the Salzburg Festival, provided the text, entitled "My Mozart," to the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung, which published it on the Feast of the Epiphany last year.

The magazine does not say so, but I imagine this could well be the first secular contribution by any Pope to any book - even if it does begin and end with God! Here is my translation from the Spanish, which was translated from the German:


My Mozart
By Benedict XVI



In our parish of Traunstein, when they performed a Mass by Mozart during church holidays, to me, a boy who lived on a farm, it felt like the heavens had opened.

In front of me, in the presbytery, columns of incense rose which muted the sunlight. In the altar, the sacred celebration was taking place, a celebration that we knew would open up heaven for us. And from the choir came music that could only have come from heaven, a music that showed us how the angels must rejoice over the beauty of God. And some of that beauty was present there with us.

I must say that even now, something like that happens to me when I listen to Mozart. In Beethoven, I hear and feel the effort of genius to give its all, and in fact, his music has a grandeur that touches me to the core. But the passionate efforts of Beethoven are perceptible and sometimes, in a passage or two, it shows in the music.

Mozart is pure inspiration - or at least, that's what I feel. Every note is just right and cannot possibly be any other. His message is simply there. And nothing in it is banal, nothing is simply playful. Existence is neither demeaned nor falsely harmonized. Nothing is left out of its grandeur and its importance, but everything becomes a totality, in which we also feel the redemption of the dark side of life even as we perceive the beauty of truth, which so many times we may wish to doubt.

The joy that Mozart gives us - and which I feel in every encounter with him - is not based on shutting out reality, but it is an expression of the most elevated perception of all, which I can only characterize as inspiration, from which his compositions seem to flow as if they were so obvious.

And so, listening to the music of Mozart, I am left ultimately with gratitude that he has given us all this, and gratitude because all this had been given to him.

Benedict XVI

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From the ever informative and au courant thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/
referring to a publication by Musica Sacra -
www.musicasacra.com/pdf/highmass.pdf
'Guidelines for Liturgical Services
according to the 1962 Missale Romanum:
Music for High Mass
Rev. Scott A. Haynes, S.J.C.
Canons Regular of St. John Cantius
Chicago



Musicians' cheat sheet
on the extraordinary form
posted by Jeffrey Tucker

At last, a short list of Q&A for musicians who are attempting the transition from ordinary to extraordinary form. This is beautifully done and only 6 pages. It is printable. So it begins this way:

Question: What Masses require the singing of a choir?

Answer: The Masses that require the singing of a choir are the High Mass, which has the following variations: High Mass (i.e. “Missa Cantata” or “Sung Mass”); Solemn High Mass (i.e. “Missa Solemnis”); Pontifical High Mass

Question: What is a High Mass (“Missa Cantata”)

Answer: A High Mass is a Mass sung by a priest without the assistance of a deacon and subdeacon.

Question: What is a Solemn High Mass (“Missa Solemnis”)

Answer: A Solemn Mass is a Mass sung by a priest with the assistance of a deacon and subdeacon.

Question: What is a Pontifical High Mass?

Answer: A Pontifical High Mass is sung by a Bishop, with the assistance of a deacon, subdeacon and the other required ministers and the choir.

Question: Is the music which the choir expected to sing the same in these Masses?

Answer: As far as it concerns the choir, the music that is prescribed to be chanted is the same, with a few distinctions. In a Pontifical Mass, excepting a Pontifical Requiem Mass,the Bishop chants the Pontifical Blessing, to which the choir must sing the responses.

Question: What parts of the High Mass are to be sung by the choir? In what language is the choir expected to sing the parts of the High Mass?

Answer: At a High Mass, the choir must sing the following:

etc.

Benedict XVI, Mozart
and the quest for beauty
By Mark Freer


This is an old article I found by chance today that I decided to post here because it puts together a lot of music-related material about the Ratzinger previously reported in this Forum, plus some pertinent and beautiful citations from the ever-quotable Hans Urs von Balthasar, probably the 20th century's theologian of beauty par excellence. And that the whole article really is a music article. It comes from the Australian magazine AD 2000, issue of April 2006.


Mark Freer is a leading Church musician and concert pianist. He is organist and choirmaster for the Latin Mass at Holy Name Church in Adelaide, and has performed and broadcast in Australia, Switzerland, Germany and Italy.

At the 2005 international seminar in Lugano, Switzerland, commemorating Hans Urs von Balthasar's 100th anniversary, he presented a lecture and a Mozart concert accompanied by the leader of the Queensland Orchestra, Warwick Adeney; his seminar paper appeared in the Spring 2005 'Communio' journal entitled "The Triune Conversation in Mozart: Towards a Theology of Music".

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg on 27 January 1756, and his 250th anniversary was celebrated yearlong in 2006 in concert halls and on the airwaves all over the Western world.


Everyone, it seems, loves Mozart. As a small boy I would march round and round the room to an old recording of the Haffner Symphony that my father used to play, and in my professional vocation as a musician that love has remained and grown.

I find myself in excellent company in this regard.

The Pope's brother Msgr Georg Ratzinger - for thirty years choirmaster of Regensburg Cathedral - recently gave an interview to a Swiss Catholic press agency, in which he divulged that Benedict XVI's favourite musical pieces are Mozart's Clarinet Quintet and the Clarinet Concerto.

Inside the Vatican reported that Benedict was playing Mozart on his piano on the Sunday afternoon following his installation as Pope, when he returned to his old apartment to see his brother.

And papal biographer George Weigel said in Newsweek after Benedict's election that "here is another surprise for cartoonists of the dour Ratzinger: he's a Mozart man, which I take to be an infallible sign of someone who is, at heart, a joyful person."

Georg Ratzinger supplies further anecdotes:

"Does he still find time to 'tickle the ivories'?"

"Very seldom. But the last time I was in Rome with the Cathedral Choir the piano lid was open, and Mozart sonatas were lying there, open. He knows himself that his playing is hardly of an elevated standard, but he enjoys it. And his desire to make music still finds its most beautiful outlet in Mozart."

"What sort of piano does he have then?"

"It's of no particular brand. We bought it when he was a lecturer in Freising. The action is not so great, but it looks very nice, and the tone is fine. For the papal palace in Castelgandolfo the Steinway firm has donated a small grand piano, one which I also used to enjoy playing very much. Then there's talk of getting one for the Vatican too, but my brother said it's not worth it. For one thing he doesn't have much time, and also he gauges his own abilities realistically. For his own playing, his old piano is good enough."

Msgr Ratzinger also gives a musical portrait of their family home.

"At home we played the harmonium. Our parents were of the view that it would prepare us for the organ. In one practice book was a piece of two lines reputed to be by Mozart. I could never identify it later. The 'Mozart year' 1941 brought an intensification. During the 150th year after the composer's death there was a Mozart broadcast every Sunday, at lunch time. As I was the one in the family who was the most musically engaged, I was allowed to occupy my father's place at the table, which was directly next to the radio. Then in July I went with my brother to a Mozart concert put on by the Regensburg Cathedral choir. There they sang excerpts from The Impresario in costume; it was quite wonderful. I couldn't sleep the whole night."

But let's hear Benedict himself on the subject.

In the extended interview that was published ten years ago as Salt of the Earth, we read:

"You are a great lover of Mozart?"

"Yes! Although we moved around a very great deal in my childhood, the family basically always remained in the area between the Inn and the Salzach. And the largest and most important and best parts of my youth I spent in Traunstein, which very much reflects the influence of Salzburg. You might say that there Mozart thoroughly penetrated our souls, and his music still touches me very deeply, because it is so luminous and yet at the same time so deep. His music is by no means just entertainment; it contains the whole tragedy of human existence."

"So luminous ... so deep ... contains the whole tragedy of human existence", says the man who is now Pope. Many, including myself, would agree.

The deeper one enters into Mozart's music, the more one anticipates insights in between those little quavers and crotchets; in short, the more one allows it to "penetrate the soul", the more it is felt as transcendent, sublime, consummately beautiful.

Hans Urs von Balthasar was a close friend of Cardinal Ratzinger. Together with Cardinal de Lubac and others they founded Communio, an International Catholic Review, published today in fifteen countries.

Balthasar dared to express himself in directly theological fashion, speaking of the miraculous Mozart who had the "power of the heart" to sense infallibly the true and the genuine.

Referring to The Magic Flute, he writes: "What must appear everywhere else as a vain image of fantasy or even of blasphemy - the definitive revelation of eternal beauty in a genuine earthly body - may well have become blessed reality just once, here, in the realm of the Catholic Incarnation."

And this astonishing passage from his Tribute to Mozart:

"Do we not come from God and return to him, passing through the waters and fires of time, suffering and death? And why should we not permit ourselves to be led through the dissonances of our existence by the Zauberflöte, a tremendous adumbration of love, light and glory, eternal truth and harmony? Is there a better, indeed another manner to bear witness to the nobility of our divine filiation than to make present whence we came and where we are going?

"All those whom we take for our models tried to have it that way, and above all he who knew himself to be the Son of the Father, who had the face of the Father before his eyes always, and whose will he accomplished. Mozart serves by making audible the triumphal hymn of a prelapsarian [before Man's Fall] and resurrected creation, in which suffering and guilt are not presented as faint memory, as past, but as conquered, absolved, fixed present."

All this will inevitably scandalise those who regard Mozart primarily as a Freemason, and The Magic Flute principally as a piece of Freemasonic symbology, both true enough in themselves.

Balthasar too - the "theologian of beauty" - is viewed in certain circles with suspicion. Yet, as Cardinal Ratzinger said at von Balthasar's funeral, "The Church itself, in its official responsibility, tells us that he is right in what he teaches of the Faith".

The subject of Mozart's Freemasonry was raised with Georg Ratzinger.

He said, "It isn't for me to pass judgement on Mozart. He was a man with many difficulties arising from the period he lived in, and from the circumstances of his life. The issue of his Freemasonry disturbs me insofar as he was not only an ordinary member, but attained the rank of Master, and wanted to found his own lodge. Freemasonry was obviously fashionable at that time in Vienna. Certainly he hoped for material gain from his membership. Whether he reflected on the theological implications I don't know."

No thoughtful Catholic will have difficulty distinguishing Mozart's music from his Freemasonry, any more, for example, than separating Bach's work from his Lutheranism.

Moreover, if we were to dismiss every human work that had been created by a sinner as invalid, there would not be much left standing. I was once taken to task for leading a congregation in a "Protestant tune", to which I replied, "Which note was Protestant?" Let us move on.

All beauty comes from God. There is no beauty that does not come from the Father through Christ, Himself the embodiment of all beauty. St Augustine, in a famous passage from the Confessions, addresses God as Beauty personified: "Late have I loved You, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved You!"

Contrary to popular opinion, true beauty (the only kind there is, despite Satan's posturings) is objective. Truth and goodness are beautiful just as the beautiful is true and good.

A wonderful passage from Balthasar's The Glory of the Lord says, "Beauty is the word that shall be our first. Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendour around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another [my italics]. Beauty is the ... one without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which ... has bid farewell to our new world, leaving it to its avarice and sadness."

In former times the liturgy, too, "refused to understand itself" apart from beauty: beauty was taken for granted. The fact that the holy liturgy has - in broad terms - been a casualty of the modern exaltation of ugliness is for Benedict XVI a matter of grave concern.

He speaks scathingly of mass culture geared to quantity, production and success: "Pop music joins up with this culture ... It is a reflection of what this society is, the musical embodiment of kitsch ... Hindemith used the term brainwashing for this kind of noise, which can hardly be called music any more ... Is it a pastoral success when we are capable of following the trend of mass culture and thus share the blame for its making people immature or irresponsible? (A New Song for the Lord, p.108).

For him, "faith becoming music is part of the process of the Word becoming flesh" (p. 122).

But there is no chance here of doing justice to the breadth and profundity of our theologian-Pope's writings.

Here is one small small taste: "It is not the case that you think something up then sing it; instead, the song comes to you from the angels, and you have to lift up your heart so that it may be in tune with the music coming to it. But above all this is important: the liturgy is not a thing the monks create. It is already there before them. It is entering into the liturgy of the heavens that has always been taking place. Earthly liturgy is liturgy because and only because it joins what is already in process, the greater reality (p.129).

And a last word from Msgr. Georg Ratzinger:

"Many describe your brother as the "Mozart of theology". What do you think of this title?"

"Joachim Cardinal Meisner of Cologne coined this phrase. It has a certain justification. My brother's theology is not as problematic and difficult as that of Karl Rahner ... Directness, clarity and form: his work does seem to have these elements in common with Mozart's music."

Sandro Magister's Oct. 5 blog, translated here, informs us that the Italian premiere of the Mass for Benedict XVI, TU ES PETRUS, reported in this thread last week, will be part of this year's International Festival of Sacred Music and Art. This item was also posted in POPE-POURRI:


The sixth edition of the International Festival of Sacred Music and Art will take place in Rome from October 10-14, with the events to take place within the four papal basilicas - St.{Peter's St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore and St. Paul outside the Walls.


The Vienna Philharmonic has now become a fixture of the festival. This year, it will present Verdi's Requiem Mass, under the baton of Daniele Gatti, and the participation of the Choir of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and the following soloists: Fiorenza Cedolins, soprano; Dolora Zajick, mezzosoprano; Fabio Sartori, tenor; and Ferruccio Furlanetto, bass. This event will take place in the evening of October 11 at the Basilica of St. Paul outside the walls.

On October 12, Vincent Dumestre will conduct a concert of early 17th-century sacred music from Milan.

On October 12, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, under Ton Koopman, will perform Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B-minor at the Basilica of St. John Lateran.

But this year's festival will open with the Italian premiere of the first Mass composed for a Pope since the 19th century: Wolfgang Seifen's Mass, TU ES PETRUS, composed for Pope Benedict's 80th birthday last April. Archbishop Angelo Comastri will celebrate the Mass at St. Peter's Basilica at 5 p.m. om Wednesday, October 10. (Seifen is a noted organist and choir master from Berlin).

The annual Festivals are under the sponsorship of the Fondazione Pro Musica e Arte Sacra, under Hans Albert Courtial, together with Daimler Chrysler Italy. The festivals raise funds to finance the restoration of selected churches and other sacred monuments.

This year, the target work is the complete restoration of the Valerian Mausoleums in the ancient Roman necropolis underneath St. Peter's Basilica.

For more information about the festival, its site is at
www.festivalmusicaeartesacra.net


Wednesday October 10, 2007 - 17:00

Wolfgang Seifen, Missa Solemnis "Tu es Petrus"
for choir, orchestra and organ
Solemn Holy Mass dedicated to His Holiness Benedict XVI

Symphonisches Orchester der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Humboldts Studentische Philharmonie
Humboldts Philharmonischer Chor
Constantin Alex, conductor

Tu es Petrus: a taste of something new, a contemporary sacred mass dedicated to Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict is indeed the Petrus of our time. The Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei: the catholic liturgy enriched by music, today, as it was in the past. A truly auspicious gesture for art and the Church.

Five prayer stations along the Eucharistic Sacrifice leading towards communion, bringing us in union with God, performed in the most solemn of settings, the Basilica of St Peter. Stately ceremonial music composed for large orchestral forces, choir and organ, the instrument that does most justice to the liturgy. The Mass, dedicated to the 80th birthday of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, is a momentous celebration. Each element contributes to an artistic and cultural event of profound spiritual and religious significance to be embraced with joyous celebration and humble wonderment.

The work, composed by the fifty one year old German composer, distinguished organist and choir director, Wolfgang Seifen, displays total fidelity to the sacred text. It is an outpouring of the religious nobility of the catholic liturgy, a discourse on the mystery that elevates the prayers of the Mass to music and chants. The church pays thanks, the artists pay homage and men of faith gather to listen.


Thursday October 11, 2007 - 21:00

Giuseppe Verdi, Messa da Requiem

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Choir of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Rome
Fiorenza Cedolins, soprano
Dolora Zajick, mezzosoprano
Fabio Sartori, tenor
Ferruccio Furlanetto, bass

Daniele Gatti, conductor


An immense masterpiece of vast proportions, an uninhibited and bold proclamation that consumed all the creative energy of the composer whose music conveys austere recollections through a highly personal stylistic vocabulary.

In his Messa da Requiem, Verdi exerts a very subjective interpretation of religion, in which apocalyptic visions of the last judgement are alternated with the soul's retreat in front of the omnipotence of God. It is the drama, and a theatrical drama at that for Verdi, faced by the souls of the departed when confronted with Eternal life as they wait for the final judgement. A drama that is moulded, indeed almost sculpted, as the most consummate of sacred works: it is "music of massive proportions" as described by the musicologist Franco Abbiati "rich in melodic lines and true-to-life evocations".

Ringing through this seven movement work, each one a portrayal of the "immense Christian tragedy" is the Dies irae, resounding within the vast expanses of the Christian Temple built in memory of Paul the Apostle. During his life he was the very incarnation of the tragedy we speak of: he became a disciple and apostle of Christ whose death redeemed us from sin. Libera me Domine is intoned by the soprano in the closing bars of this masterpiece: free me from earthly bonds and sin so that I may be free to rejoice in the infinite joy of the Lux aeterna.


Friday October 12, 2007 - 21:00

Nova Metamorfosi -
Musica Sacra a Milano nel primo Seicento

Le Poème Harmonique
Vincent Dumestre, conductor


A quest for rapturous ecstasy so that we may see with our eyes the golden wonders of art and hear with our ears the sweet melodies of Paradise, already here on earth. Everything, including our senses, works towards glorifying the Almighty, as do our souls, both pure and unguarded, rejoicing in this glory. The reactionary rigour of the music spurns all that is worldly and mundane transforms it into something sacred. Homophonic music that reigns supreme in the earthly and heavenly courts expunges any hint of sensual pleasure.

Yet it is almost by stealth that the music's refined and genteel ornamentation, so rich in invention, engages us; it is an understated prelude to the splendours and freedom of expression of the baroque. The temporal madrigal is put to one side, yet its spirit still lingers; its character changed, very much like the mortals in the Metamorphoses by Ovid. The senses are stripped of all pleasures and earthly vices as we reach up towards God and in doing so experience the purest of pleasures. The voices and instruments resound in unison in a meditative, noble and solemn proclamation.


Saturday October 13, 2007 - 21:00

Johann Sebastian Bach, Mass in B minor, BWV 232

The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir
Marieke Steenhoek, soprano
Iestyn Davies, countertenor
Jörg Dürmüller, tenore
Klaus Mertens, bass

Ton Koopman, conductor

St John Lateran, the Cathedral of Rome, "is very well worth a Mass": particularly when it comes to a great timeless and universal monument of music. A monument "aere perennius", one that is more lasting than bronze, as indeed are Ovid's Odes. Johann Sebastian Bach's colossal B minor Mass, was this magnificent and august ode not composed in tribute to the mystery and glory of God? A sublimely holy, sacred work of rigour and complexity in whose intricacy we escape to a fantasy of self indulgent pleasure that evokes feelings of profound emotion.

The architecture of the music is literally a representation of a Christian basilica: the Credo, the "symbol of faith" is the central nave, the doctrinal heart that branches out to the chapels, the mysteries of the faith and liturgical actions. Bach's Mass incorporates the ordinary of the mass, the set of texts of the Church, each glorified by the music and voices and each contributing to the creative wholeness of the music.

An exacting symmetry and symbolic language infuse the music of Bach: ancient techniques and style alternate with modern expression much like a Basilica housing a collection of works of art torn between the past and present. This choral fugue reaching towards the Almighty is an act of exaltation and one from which the listener emerges exhilarated and ecstatic. Stricken with awe and freed from earthly suffering, he remains enraptured by extraordinary beauty shrouded in mystery.

Miserere by Gregorio Allegri


I think this is a beautiful piece. It is sung by the Tallis Scholars choir from England.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=x71jgMx0Mxc

====================================================================

Thank you for the link, Benefan. I think maybe this Wikipedia information about Allegri's Miserere will also help in our appreciation.


Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.["Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness."]

Miserere by Gregorio Allegri is a piece of a cappella religious music (a setting of Psalm 50/51) composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, probably during the 1630s, for use in the Sistine Chapel during matins on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week.

It was the last of twelve Miserere settings composed and chanted at the service since 1514 and the most popular: at some point, it became forbidden to transcribe the music and it was only allowed to be performed at those particular services, adding to the mystery surrounding it. Writing it down or performing it elsewhere was punisheable by excommunication.

The setting which escaped from the Vatican is actually a conflation of verses set by Gregorio Allegri around 1638 and Tommaso Bai (1650 - 1718, also spelled Baj) in 1714.

The Miserere is written for two choirs, the one of five and the other of four voices. One of the choirs sings a simple version of the original Miserere chant; the other choir, spatially separated, sings an ornamented "commentary" on the other choir.

Many have cited this work as an example of the stile antico or prima prattica. However, its constant use of the dominant seventh chord and its emphasis on polychoral techniques certainly put it out of the range of prima prattica. A more accurate comparison would be to the works of Giovanni Gabrieli.

Although there were a handful of supposed transcriptions in various royal courts in Europe, none of them succeeded in capturing the beauty of the Miserere as performed annually in the Sistine Chapel.

According to the popular story (backed up by family letters), the fourteen-year-old Mozart was visiting Rome, when he first heard the piece during the Wednesday service. Later that day, he wrote it down entirely from memory, returning to the Chapel that Friday to make minor corrections.

Some time during his travels, he met the British historian Dr. Charles Burney, who obtained the piece from him and took it to London, where it was published in 1771. Once it was published, the ban was lifted, and Allegri's Miserere has since been one of the most popular a cappella choral works now performed. The work was also transcribed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1831 and Franz Liszt, and various other 18th and 19th century sources survive.

Mozart was summoned to Rome by the Pope, only instead of excommunicating the boy, the Pope showered praises on him for his feat of musical genius.

Burney's edition did not include the ornamentation that made the work famous. The original ornamentations were Renaissance techniques that preceded the composition itself, and it was these techniques that were closely guarded by the Vatican. Few written sources, not even that of Burney, showed the ornamentation, and it was this that created the legend of the work's mystery.

However, the Roman priest Pietro Alfieri published in 1840 an edition with the intent of preserving the performance practice of the Sistine choir in the Allegri and Bai compositions, including ornamentation.

The piece as it is sung today, with a top C, is not authentic. It is the result of an error in the first edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music of 1880, in an article on ornamentation by the musicologist William Smith Rockstro.

In it, he wrote out the first half of the verse twice, but transposed the second half up a fourth, as recorded by Felix Mendelssohn when he transcribed it. As a result the bass part leaps from F sharp to C, a progression (known as a tritone) forbidden by the rules of counterpoint at the time when Allegri was working.

Sir Ivor Atkins, the choirmaster of Worcester Cathedral, copied the Rockstro verse from Grove's for his English language edition of 1951, and liked what he heard.

Authentic editions have been produced in the last few years using Alfieri's account of 1840, original Vatican source material and other manuscripts, but most modern listeners know only the garbled 20th century version which remains highly popular with conductors.

The Miserere is one of the most often-recorded examples of late Renaissance music, although it was actually written during the chronological confines of the Baroque era; in this regard it is representative of the music of the Roman School of composers, who were stylistically conservative.

Over the years many visitors to the Vatican during Holy Week have been disappointed if there was not an Allegri Service on their day.

Arguably the most famous recording of Allegri's Miserere was that made in March 1963 by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Sir David Willcocks, which featured the then-treble Roy Goodman. This recording of the Miserere was originally part of an LP recording entitled 'Evensong for Ash Wednesday' but the Miserere has subsequently been re-released on various compilation discs.

Pope calls Beethoven's 'Ninth' masterful expression of optimism

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service
Oct. 29, 2007

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- After listening to a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony," Pope Benedict XVI called the work a masterful expression of optimism in the face of suffering.

The pope listened to the performance by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the Vatican Oct. 28. Afterward, he gave a talk that reflected his interest in music and his familiarity with Beethoven's work.

Beethoven's "Ninth" is one of the best-known compositions of Western music and was written when the composer was almost completely deaf. Its finale, "Ode to Joy," uses soloists, chorus and orchestra.

The pope said he was increasingly amazed at the work, which was Beethoven's last complete symphony, written after years of self-isolation.

"Beethoven had to fight internal and external problems that brought him depression and deep bitterness and threatened to suffocate his artistic creativity," the pope said.

Then, in 1824, Beethoven surprised the public with "a composition that broke the traditional form of the symphony" and elevated it to an expression of joy and optimism, he said.

The pope said the careful listener can follow this drama in the music itself, as it progresses from the dark tones and famous "empty fifths" of the strings at the beginning of the overture to an explosion of jubilation at the end.

The sense of joy that emerges from the music is "not something light and superficial, but a sentiment acquired through much work, overcoming the emptiness of someone who had been pushed into isolation by deafness," the pope said.

A Renaissance in Church Music?

Hymn to St. Michael Competition Evokes Music in Church Tradition


BY JOSEPH PRONECHEN
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER STAFF WRITER
October 28 - November 3, 2007 Issue | Posted 10/23/07 at 9:47 AM

NEW YORK — The Feast of the Archangels on Sept. 29 took on an extra dimension for William Conroy and Paul Jernberg this year.

In February, Conroy’s Gift of Faith Foundation announced a contest for composers: Write a hymn using the text of the Prayer to St. Michael.

Reading about the competition in the Register, Jernberg answered the challenge. So did 151 other composers.

His winning composition, “Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel,” received its first public hearing at Mass Sept. 30, in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Manhattan, which was celebrating its 150th anniversary.

“I think it’s a beautiful hymn written in faith and with faith,” commented Father Myles Murphy, pastor.

Conroy was surprised and overwhelmed by the number of entries. He found the quality of the entries made judging no simple task.

“I whittled the selections to the 20 best pieces submitted and turned them over to the judges,” he said. “In my judgment, those 20 final pieces were all worthy of consideration, and all beautiful.”

One of the two judges was EWTN host Father George Rutler, who has written about sacred music. “Most recent music has been emotive or even sentimental, lacking the intellectual sturdiness of objective worship,” he said. “Our music reflects our culture, which is at an aesthetic low ebb. I’m glad to say that the winning hymn is a happy exception. It is fine sacred music.”

Father Rutler, who is pastor of the Church of Our Saviour in Manhattan, said many composers today “do not have good models, and so they produce cocktail lounge music, just as architects produce churches that are theaters instead of temples.”

One of Conroy’s goals was to encourage artists to help return culture to its Christian roots. Jernberg saw a hope for an authentic renewal of Catholic sacred music and art in this country.

“I intended the hymn to have a classical feel, a connectedness to the tradition, but also have a certain vitality and freshness that would speak to people today,” he said. “I had a real concern to make it as universal as possible and not to do something that would please one group and not others. I was writing this hymn to make it a bridge that would work for younger people and older people together, and also different cultural groups.”

He already sees the hymn helping youngsters to pray. He is founding director and musical director at Magnificat Academy & Choir School in Warren, Mass., where the choir recently recorded the hymn on CD.

The renewal of sacred music is an important dimension of the school, founded in 2005 for boys and girls, grades 4 to 12, with the blessing of Worcester Bishop Robert McManus.

“Hopefully, it can be another means this prayer can take root,” Jernberg said of his new hymn.

Jernberg credits his 10 years in Europe, primarily Sweden and France, as among influences on his work as musician and composer. He became a Catholic in 1992, and while working for the Baptist Church in Sweden he regularly associated with a Franciscan monastery that had daily Gregorian chant.

As for primary major influences, he credits the “wonderful benefit of clearly articulated guidelines formulated by the Church,” especially the Second Vatican Council’s Musicam Sacram (Instruction on Music in the Liturgy) and Pius X’s motu proprio Tra le Sollecitudini (On Sacred Music).

“For me, these documents are like trumpet calls that can inspire us to greatness and help us to measure our success in fulfilling our vocation as composers,” he said.

He said the documents note the foundational importance of Gregorian chant and call for new forms that take into account present needs while not ignoring the past.


Pope Benedict

He made his comments around the same time Pope Benedict XVI, in a visit to Rome’s Pontifical Institute for Sacred Music, said the Church needs to guide the development of sacred music, not by “freezing” it in a certain style but by “seeking to combine the legacy of the past with the worthwhile novelties of the present.” The Pope said Oct. 13 that this ideally would “achieve a synthesis worthy of the exalted mission [sacred music] has in the service of God.”

Jernberg said he is “constantly working for a synthesis of artistry, prayer, connectedness to our heritage and holy inspiration.

Conroy found that the people at the Mass where the hymn premiered “very much appreciated” it. One was lifelong parishioner Jeanne Caffrey, who found the melody “beautiful” and the words “so apropos.”

“You just wanted to sit and listen to it,” said Caffrey, who would like to see the St. Michael hymn be part of every Mass.

In fact, the Gift of Faith Foundation’s second competition goal was to inspire use of the hymn at the end of Mass. For more than 80 years, priests and people recited the Prayer to St. Michael after Mass, the only vernacular words they spoke together during or after the liturgy. But when the Mass was reformed in the 1960s, it was omitted. The prayer originated with Pope Leo XIII, who in 1886 directed it to be recited publicly after Mass. He composed it after experiencing a profound, frightening vision of present and future struggles of the Church against the devil.

Two individuals already offered to publish Jernberg’s hymn.

Said the composer, “My fervent prayer and hope is that it’s a little, tiny piece in the greater renewal of sacred music in our country and the Church.”

Sacred Music Needs Governing, Says Director of Institute

States Deviations After Vatican II Have Been Rampant

ROME, NOV. 8, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Perhaps a pontifical office with authority over sacred music would correct the abuses that have occurred in this area, suggested a Vatican official.

Monsignor Valentín Miserachs Grau, director of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, said this at a conference last Saturday, marking the 80th anniversary of the diocesan institute of Sacred Music of Trent, L'Osservatore Romano reported.

The pontifical institute directed by the monsignor was originally established by the Holy See in 1911. It is an academic institution dedicated to teaching and also performing sacred music. But, Monsignor Miserachs said, "In my opinion, it would be opportune to establish an office with authority over the material of sacred music."

Need

Monsignor Miserachs contended that "in none of the areas touched on by Vatican II -- and practically all are included -- have there been greater deviations than in sacred music."

"How far we are from the true spirit of sacred music, that is, of true liturgical music," he lamented. "How can we stand it that such a wave of inconsistent, arrogant and ridiculous profanities have so easily gained a stamp of approval in our celebrations?"

It is a great error, Monsignor Miserachs said, to think that people "should find in the temple the same nonsense given to them outside," since "the liturgy, even in the music, should educate all people -- including youth and children."

"Much music written today, or put in circulation, nevertheless ignores not only the grammar, but even the basic ABC's of musical art," he continued. "Due to general ignorance, especially in certain sectors of the clergy," certain media act as loudspeakers for "products that, devoid of the indispensable characteristics of sacred music -- sanctity, true art, universality -- can never procure the authentic good of the Church."

A reform

The monsignor called for a "conversion" back to the norms of the Church. "And that 'norm' has Gregorian chant as its cardinal point, either the chant itself, or as an inspiration for good liturgical music." He noted that his recommendations are not related to Benedict XVI's document on the use of the 1962 Roman Missal.

"'Nova et vetera,'" he urged, "the treasure of tradition and of new things, but rooted in tradition."

Monsignor Miserachs suggested that contact with tradition should "not be limited to the academic realm, or concerts or records." Instead, "it should become again the living song of the assembly that finds in it that which calms their deepest spiritual tensions, and which makes them feel that they are truly the people of God."

Here is a website of all sorts of Catholic music--traditional and contemporary (sigh)--including many snippets to sample:

www.catholicmusicnetwork.com/

Enchoy!

Teresa and Benefan, thanks for your last posts.

[1] Poor (excellent musician) Monsignor Grau has been pleading in this way for many years.

[2] Benefan - I don't have the guts to click on those CD's advertised in the Catholic Music site.....Will do tomorrow, after a glass of white wine....

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Dear Crotchet,

I was just going to comment that an Oct. 18 article by Sandro Magister, 'A new musioal season at the Vatican', which I posted in NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT on Oct. 18, Post 9290 on
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354494&p=134
appeared to indicate that such a special office as Prof. Grau desires was in the works.

Here is the relevant part of the article:

---

The third event is Benedict XVI's visit to the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, on the morning of Saturday, October 13.

To the professors and students of this institute – which is the liturgical-musical "conservatory" of the Holy See, the one that trains Church musicians from all over the world – the pope cited Vatican Council II, where it says that "as sacred song united to the words, it forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy" (Sancrosanctum Concilium, 112). ...

He also confirmed that "three characteristics distinguish sacred liturgical music: sanctity, true art, and universality, meaning its ability to be used regardless of the nature or nationality of the assembly."

And he continued:

"I am certain that the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, in harmonious agreement with the congregation for divine worship, will not fail to offer its contribution for an 'updating', adapted to our time, of the abundant and valuable traditions found in sacred music."

This expectation could soon be followed by the institution, in the Roman curia, of an office endowed with authority in the area of sacred music. It is already known that, as a cardinal, Ratzinger maintained that the institution of such an office was necessary.

But Benedict XVI has also made clear his preferences in regard to the type of sacred music that should be promoted.

In his speech to the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, the pope mentioned the name of only one living "maestro" of great sacred music: Domenico Bartolucci, 91, who was seated in the front row and whom the pope later greeted with great warmth.

Bartolucci was removed from his position as director of the papal choir of the Sistine Chapel in 1997. And his expulsion – supported by the pontifical master of ceremonies at the time, Piero Marini – marked the general abandonment in the papal liturgies of the Roman style, characterized by great polyphonic music and Gregorian chant, of which Bartolucci is an outstanding interpreter.

The only group that remained to keep this style alive in the papal basilicas of Rome was the Cappella Liberiana of the basilica of Saint Mary Major, directed since 1970 by Valentino Miserachs Grau, who succeeded Bartolucci in this role.

Miserachs is also the head of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, to which the pope has entrusted the task of "guiding wisely the development of such a demanding genre of music."

Bartolucci and Miserachs: Benedict XVI's dual point of reference, in Rome, in the field of liturgical music.

---

I posted the article in NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT because it is primarily about his orientation for Church music, rather than about just Church music per se.

"... I don't have the guts to click on those CD's advertised in the Catholic Music site.....Will do tomorrow, after a glass of white wine...." Crotchet


Good idea, Crotchet. Click on the "Traditional" or "Liturgical" sections first so you don't get done in by culture shock. I would suggest avoiding the rap CDs by Fr. Stan Fortuna (Catholic version of Eminem) unless you have a glass of strong whiskey or the like.

An Early Christmas Present
from Olivier Messiaen
posted by Michael E. Lawrence
thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/


The name of French composer and organist Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) has come up in conversations once or twice this week, and many of you probably have never heard of him.

So I thought I'd share this video of Naji Hakim, Messiaen's successor at La Trinite in Paris, playing Messiaen's Dieu parmi nous from La Nativite du Seigneur. Hakim is playing the organ at La Trinite. Notice the incredible echo in the building.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyGAfTuJQD4&eurl=http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogs...

Messiaen's music is, it seems, under-appreciated in many quarters. (And, once again, continuing in my ongoing theme, that's not to be laid completely at the feet of the Glory and Praise gang.)

While much of what he wrote he never intended as liturgical music but rather as religious music, there is much that we can learn from his compositional technique. Moreover, whatever his intentions in these pieces, one can bet that his improvisations at Mass were not much different than these masterpieces which have come down to us.

Many have trouble getting beyond the sounds in Messiaen's music which they perceive to be dissonance. Believe it or not, Messiaen actually used well-organized harmonic schemes, the colorfulness of which only become more and more apparent with each listening. This isn't to say that there is no dissonance, only to say that there is much less than it first seems.

Moreover, Messiaen's music sure is a far cry from the Second Viennese School. And, as a colleague of mine just mentioned over the phone, Messiaen's music "is not Victorian music, and you just have to get over that."

It may also be helpful to know how Messiaen constructed his music. As a devout Catholic, he composed music which relied on Christian imagery. This particular piece, Dieu parmi nous (God Among Us), depicts the angels rejoicing on the night of Christ's birth, among other things.

In his work, Messiaen also drew on the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, which he read studiously, and also on material about St. Francis of Assisi. Colorfulness is an important aspect of his writing.

In addition to all these, Messiaen made use of unusual modes of limited transposition, as well as Gregorian chant, and even bird songs. All of this is fused into his own personal style, much like Bach fused French, Italian and German influences into his own individual approach.

By all accounts, Olivier Messiaen was a saintly man. He was a genius but also a hardworking servant for the Church. It seems to me that someone who is in a position to do so should begin the cause for his canonization. Church musicians need someone to look up to - a hero to inspire them, and Olivier Messiaen is just the man we need.

====================================================================

Wikipedia has a lot of very intreresting material on Messiaen the man and his music. (And I don't think it's the sort of entry that mischief-makers have tampered with!)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Messiaen

One of the amazing facts in an amazing life is this:

---

Messiaen's special relationship with the organ began in autumn 1927, when he joined Dupré's organ course. Dupré later reminisced that Messiaen, having never seen an organ console before, sat quietly for an hour while Dupré explained and demonstrated the instrument, and then came back a week later to play Johann Sebastian Bach's Fantasia in C minor to an impressive standard.[7] From 1929 Messiaen regularly deputised for the organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris, Charles Quef, who was ill. When Quef died in 1931 and the post became vacant, Dupré, Charles Tournemire and Widor among others supported Messiaen's candidacy to succeed him. With his formal application Messiaen enclosed a letter of recommendation from Widor, and the appointment was confirmed in 1931.[8] Messiaen remained the organist at la Sainte-Trinité for more than sixty years.

---

Ancient music wins new fans


By Paddy O'Flaherty
BBC Northern Ireland
Nov. 12, 2007


One of the world's oldest styles of religious music is attracting a host of new enthusiasts.

Gregorian chant is usually associated with monks in monasteries, but it's being heard more often now in regular services.

Its growing popularity brought 70 representatives of choirs from Northern Ireland to a chanting workshop in the Dominican Convent in west Belfast.

The college chapel became a study for a day as experts passed on advice on how best to perform the ancient melodies.

Principal tutor Donal McCrisken said Gregorian chant was an excellent medium for vocal training.

"You have to sing it very purely - very accurately," said Mr McCrisken.

"You have to have an absolute ear for unanimity. It has to be exactly together."

Mr McCrisken, who is head of music at St Malachy's College in Belfast, said the music's origins lay in the ancient chants of the Jewish church which were adopted by the early Christian church.

Its first major champion was the 6th century Pope Gregory I, known as Gregory the Great.

Nearly 1,400 years later, Gregorian chant is again being encouraged by Gregory's successor, Pope Benedict XVI.

He described the music as "a great tradition."

Mr McCrisken said the music wasn't simply a relic of the past.
"It continues to have a major effect," he said.

"Composers writing liturgical music today - the great composers like John Tavener, Henryk Gorecki and Arvo Part - they are all referring back to that purity of line that you find in Gregorian chant."

The Gregorian workshop was arranged by Schola Gregoriana, a choir formed two years ago by Queen's University students who share a love of the music and its history.

One of the choir founders, Eamonn Manning, welcomed Pope Benedict's encouragement for the music.

"It has always been advocated in the documents of the church," he said.

When it's taught well and promoted properly, it can really take off and be extremely beautiful

"We're lucky Pope Benedict has recently highlighted the significance of this music.
"He's known for having a great love of very good music and he sees it as being very important for the liturgy in the modern age."

Eamonn Manning is certain the music will become more popular with modern congregations.

He said: "When it's taught well and promoted properly, with sensitivity to parish clergy and parish choirs, it can really take off and be extremely beautiful."

Donal McCrisken agreed that, to the musical novice, Gregorian chant has a strange appearance, with square notes and only four lines instead of the usual five.

"It is strange-looking music if you haven't grown up with it," he said.

"But it's not as difficult to sing as some people imagine. If you haven't grown up with it, an introduction as we've had in this workshop goes a long way towards removing the mysteries."

The Most Beautiful in All Christendom . . .

By Michael Linton
First Things
Wednesday, November 21, 2007, 6:37 AM

It’s probably the best music in New York. OK, I’m not in New York, I’m in Tennessee. And, even if I were in New York, I wouldn’t be able to hear all the music in the city to say which was the best—but I bet I’m right anyway. And I’m not talking about the Metropolitan Opera or the New York Philharmonic or the revival of A Chorus Line. I’m talking about the music at services at Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue. And unlike those other venues, it’s free, and you can hear it now.

www.saintthomaschurch.org/stream2.html

Two blocks up Fifth from Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and next door to the Museum of Modern Art, Saint Thomas is one of America’s architectural gems. Designed by Bertram Goodhue (who also gave us the Nebraska State Capitol and the complex that is now the Museum of Man in San Diego’s Balboa Park) and Ralph Adams Cram (who was responsible for the nave of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and Princeton’s University Chapel), Saint Thomas may be the only American gothic building that actually rivals its medieval models. The reredos (the carved screen behind the altar), with its multitude of ivory-colored limestone saints and amethyst stained glass is the most beautiful in Christendom. (No, I haven’t seen all the churches in Christendom either, but I bet I’m right about this too.)

But it’s the music for which Saint Thomas is famous. In the tradition of the British cathedral choir school, Saint Thomas operates a boarding school for boys between the third and eighth grades. Music for the services is provided by these boys, augmented by men singing the tenor and bass. Although the school was founded in 1919, the high reputation of the parish’s music was largely stamped by the extraordinary musical couple Gerre and Judith Hancock, who worked at Saint Thomas for more than thirty years, beginning in the early 1970s. Upon the Hancocks’ retirement in 2004, the position passed to John Scott. Scott came to New York from St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, where he had been appointed organist and director of music when he was just thirty-four. But the appointment of an Englishman to this important American position was controversial (and made more so by the appointment of a British musician to lead the music at the National Cathedral the previous year), and American musicians resented the apparent return of a kind of colonial obeisance to cultural imports from Europe.

Import or native trained, Scott’s musicianship is formidable. Taking a cue from the BBC’s long-standing broadcast of Choral Evensong from British cathedrals and college chapels, this fall Saint Thomas began making Scott’s work with the church’s singers available over the Web. The parish is conservative High Anglican (the present rector is a trustee of the Anglo-Catholic seminary Nashotah House), and between September and May the men and boys sing for the Sunday eleven o’clock Eucharist, and Evensong on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And did I mention that the services are beautiful?

Recent podcasts featured the best performances I’ve ever heard of Randall Thompson’s Alleluia and the fourth movement of Brahms’ German Requiem. (And these are live performances, no mixing-room funny business here.) The service music is chosen with unusual intelligence; for All Saints, the Mass settings were the ones that T.L. Victoria had based on his motet “O Quam Gloriosum Est,” with the original motet sung at Communion. And the hymns are unsurpassed. From the website, it isn’t clear if Scott or an assistant is accompanying the congregation from one of the church’s two organs, but the pacing, registration changes, and modest reharmonizations are all done to emphasize the changing texts of each verse. Its glorious hymnody simply doesn’t get any better than this.

Of course, the High Church Anglicism at Saint Thomas—with a good dose of nostalgia for King and Country—isn’t without its own foibles. The chamber ensemble that occasionally accompanies the choir is called the Concert Royal (funny how some upper-crust New Yorkers resist the notion that Cornwallis actually surrendered), and the various intoned texts, with their exquisitely precise elocution, deserve every sarcastic dart Monty Python threw at them. The psalms and canticles are sung to Anglican chant. Unlike the much older Gregorian version where, after a possibly involved monophonic introduction, the psalm text (frequently reduced to a single verse) is sung to fairly simple psalms tones, in Anglican chant the entire psalm is sung to a complex set of harmonized phrases. It’s all very tricky to sing and well beyond the capabilities of congregations and parish choirs who can’t practice it daily. And although I still prefer simpler settings that allow the full congregation to sing the psalms, under Scott’s direction the chant is strikingly beautiful and respectful of the texts and makes as good a case as can be made for tradition.

Christians are told that we should train our appetites for heaven. It’s hard, especially when it’s a place that is both so distant and silent. But there are times when we do get glimpses of that realm with the “many mansions.” For me, watching the people run down the aisles to accept Jesus as their savior in Billy Graham’s 1982 Moscow crusade, the revival that spread across college campuses in the spring of 1995, my wife and I holding our newly born daughters—these were moments when my imagination felt that heaven might be real, and memories of those moments continue to nudge my appetite to desire it more. Anglican worship, celebrated with true piety, can be that kind of a glimpse too. And as Pope Benedict seeks to restore the dignity of the Mass and Willow Creek Community Church begins to reexamine its philosophy of ministry, Saint Thomas might be a place to look for a service that models heaven. The music is really good too.

Michael Linton is head of the Division of Music Theory and Composition at Middle Tennessee State University.

Benefan, Teresa, you really give us some fine posts on this thread. The Messiaen-post is top class (one of our South African composers used to call him "Messy Anne" because he wrote "too many notes"; he just didn't like his music!) I'm now listening to today's service in St Thomans, New York, thanks to Benefan's link in the post above. The organ is still playing and I'm curious to hear the choir. It should be very good, and let's give the devil its due - the High Anglican services are usually most beautiful and spiritually very uplifting. Thanks again.

The Prayer


A duet by Lani Misalucha and Josh Groban in the Philippines

youtube.com/watch?v=WK3o5ueu_uY&feature=related