Author: Arlene Oost-Zinner

It doesn’t matter. We all speak the language of sacred music.

Listen to this mp3 of Wilko Brouwer’s (regular Colloquium presenter) Locus iste, performed by the Strijpskamerkoor of the Netherlands.

I ended up writing in mode VI this week. Since there is no musical precedent for an English Responorial Psalm in the Mass, I don’t feel obliged to stick with a mode based on tradition from the Gradual. That’s a nice freedom to have.

You can see my work here, at Chabanel Psalms.

That said, it was a challenge to find something singable that would capture the rhythm of speech and a hopeful countenance, which I think this text requires. The way the antiphon reads is a bit clumsy, a bit stilted. Had I been asked, I would have suggested turning it around a bit and starting with “to the upright,” and completing the sentence with “the just man is a light in darkness.”

Now mode VI was tricky for the verses. Some Office tones, like I mentioned last week, lend themselves more easily to English. The good thing about English is that you can argue where the stresses are in a sentence or phrase. If you change the stress, you change the emphasis or meaning ever so slightly. I don’t think this can be overcome, and I choose to look at it as a more positive aspect of English.

If I have done harm to the text and made it read (sing) like one of those lectors….who pauses….after…..EVERY…..word, do let me know. My goal is to keep the English flowing, with nicely positioned vowels and clean consonants. Give it a try.

Setting the Psalm antiphons to something dignified and singable for the congregation is one of my ongoing projects, as many of you know. I’m doing them in real time, and Jeffrey Ostrowski is kind enough to post them over at Chabanel. I’ve gotten almost all the way through the three-year cycle. Even so, I will be going back and revisiting those I did almost three years ago. My process has evolved quite a bit, and is still settling in.

Sometimes the antiphons are so short, it doesn’t seem that anything recognizable, much less memorable, can be made of them. This week we have the opposite problem: Blessed are the poor in spirit; the kingdom of heaven is theirs. It’s long. Yet it is going to have to be something something that the congregation will be able to repeat back after one hearing only. Here is what I’ve come up with this week.

I guess there are lots of approaches. What seems to work best to me is to look at the rhythm of the words. What will make most language sense to the English speaker? Where are the word accents? What does the sentence sound or feel like? Where are the vowels? Which are the consonants that stand out, and where is there beauty?

My next step is to take this string of words, which I’ve presumably analyzed for accent, clarity and beauty, and find a simple melody that arises from it. The melody should seem to flow from the words, be pleasing to the mouth, mind, and ear, and according to my self-imposed rule, should fit into a modal structure.

Even if I find something that meets my criteria I stop right there: what if I am going to run into trouble with the Psalm verses? What if the words accents at the ends of phrases don’t lend themselves to the particular office tone (because those are the ones I use) endings that are available to me based on the mode I’ve selected for the antiphon?

So I scroll forward and look through the verses. Mode II almost always works, or I can make it work. Mode V usually works, or I can make it work. Mode VIII works well. Mode I is fun, and so is Mode VII. Mode VI is pesky. But which one works best? Sometimes I decide to go back and rethink the antiphon and mode, and start all over again. There must be an easier way, right?

Everyone acknowledges the problems with making English conform to the Gregorian tones. Bruce Ford has studied and dealt with the problem for years. And the Meinrad tones and Fr. Weber’s adapted versions are more suited, by design, to the English word accents. Some prefer to use these, for example, Adam Bartlett with the Simple English Propers project. But I have chosen to stick with Gregorian tones for numerous reasons, which I won’t get into right now. I’ll save that for another discussion.

This review of the Winter Chant Intensive has come in from Father Moses of Jesus Pillari, a participant in the class who compares his and others’ journeys to those of the three wise men.

Scott Turkington’s beginners session was excellent. Having done my undergraduate work at the University of Notre Dame and spent four years of my religious life in monasteries in France, I’ve been blessed with some great professors. But the winter chant intensive taught me more “per minute” than perhaps any other course or seminar I’ve had!

We were a very diverse class: a professional jazz singer, two music majors still in college, several men who’d never sung anything before but just wanted to learn, a young woman drafted by her pastor to become the director of music, but who couldn’t yet read music, a Jesuit priest, a seminarian from Canada, experienced chanters, and everything in between. Yet somehow Scott kept all of us interested and learning as much as we could handle for 5 packed days.

As a young priest I came eager to learn more for myself, my community, and all those who come to our Texas mission. I have an average voice, a little experience singing Gregorian Chant, and no formal musical training except for some chant instruction over the years, reading some books, and good-old “on the job training.” There’s a lot I could say about the week and what was helpful, but I’ll simply mention two points:

1. I learned how to make chant more accessible to a congregation, or other beginning chanters. Over and over again I was impressed by how much chant is “made for the common man.” And Scott gave some great, simple, practical ideas, such as simply having people learn some initial chants by heart, or ways of dividing men’s and women’s voices to make it easier for each to find the right pitch, etc.

2. On the other end of the spectrum I feel as if I learned a lot more about what a choir needs to do in order to sing chant beautifully. While I’m certainly not there yet myself, I at least know what to work on, and realize that it’s doable, and doable right now if I can only find the time… I’ve begun doing some “solfege” every morning and have begun—at my superior’s request—by learning the solemn Salve Regina tone. It’s a beautiful piece to sing!

Throughout the week I was struck by the instructors’ humility, availability, patience, expertise, and experience. A rare combination. As we concluded Friday with a solemn Mass in the octave of the Epiphany, I couldn’t help comparing our own journey to that of the three wise men… Among all the peoples of the earth they were the only ones who actively followed the star, perhaps spending great lengths of time traveling, and at the cost of great sacrifices, without knowing for sure what they’d find, perhaps even without knowing if their journey would be successful or if they’d find anything… So many of those at the winter chant intensive are trodding a rather lonely path in their parish and have the pains and frustration of a long journey without yet seeing a lot of results. I can’t help but wonder if one day they won’t receive a wonderful gift as the Lord rewards their long journey with a new springtime of chant in the Church. That’s certainly my prayer….

Father Moses of Jesus Pillari can be reached at the Mission of Divine Mercy in New Braunfels, Texas.