Introduction

A quick email from Jeffery Tucker convinced me to give this blogging thing a go, and I thank him very much for considering my thoughts on sacred music to be worth sharing. I’ll certainly do my best, but for now I will simply introduce myself to the fine readers here.

I won’t bore you with a list of my musical credentials, but I probably should say that I have a PhD in Historical Musicology from the Florida State University, where I spent a bit of time the fine early music ensemble. I remember my first graduate seminar paper topic. I had no idea what to write about, having recently decided to “try out” musicology at the master’s level. I told my professor that I spoke a little Spanish and might want to look in that direction. Long story short, I produced a paper on the only named composer in the Las Huelgas Codex, one Johannes Roderici (aka Johan Rodriguez). Little did I know that this paper would become my first conference paper and lead to an entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition. More importantly the research prompted me to think a bit about the liturgy of the Middle Ages and how different it was from the Mass I attended near the university.

I was playing bass guitar in the “choir” and having a pretty good time. I even took my future wife to church on our first date! Well, I recall playing along one day, but before Mass ended I recalled thinking “This isn’t right.” I was more concerned with how people appreciated my playing than what I was playing for. Within a few weeks I quit the contemporary group and began attending the music-less Mass. There was no other option to escape the GIA material that was presented at all the other Masses.

It wasn’t until I got my first DM job in a little town in SE PA that I began to really see the issues in our sacred music. Whenever I tried to make things a little more dignified, I was cornered by someone who did not like it at all. It didn’t matter that the choir was sounding better than it ever had and that I could hear people singing the more traditional hymns and the chanted Lord’s Prayer. Everyone was deathly afraid that the young people would leave en masse. Well, I learned that they were going to leave in any case since it was traditional to stop attending Mass after Confirmation, since parents felt they had done their jobs and wouldn’t drive them to church anymore. Needless to say, I was appalled. I tried to put together a contemporary group for Saturday Masses, but it didn’t seem to help much and I hated doing it. I eventually moved to Gettysburg and took the position at the historic church downtown and was heartened to have only organ and choir or cantor. Still, there was only so far we could go before resistance cropped up. I thought I might be crazy, but it was that year that I attended my first Colloquium. Needless to say that I saw what “could be” and met fellow travelers on the road to reforming church music. It truly was a glimpse of heaven. I also realized that my academic work and my spiritual life could work together.

So, the point of this ramble was let you know that I will focus my comments on a few matters. In particular, I want to look at the Divine Office in the usus antiquior. This is particularly on my mind these days as I write about Spanish practices in the Renaissance. I am currently working on a collection of essays contributed by the top scholars of historical hispanic music — chant and polyphony. I also want to present my thoughts on some of the excellent recordings of polyphony that I run across.

I hope what I have to offer is interesting. It will be fun for me. I would say more, but I hear a baby crying and must run.