Did you know that Jan Dismas Zelenka wrote a Mass? I didn’t. In fact, I only discovered his charming music a few years ago. At this link you can listen and enjoy. (Thanks Noel Jones.)
Benedict’s Three-Step Process of Liturgical Education
Here is a very nice and thoughtful piece – it is precisely correct – by David G. Bonagura, Jr. on Pope Benedict’s three steps toward liturgical education: celebrate the Mass well, inspire a renewed look at the reformed liturgy, and liberalize the old form of the Mass. The first and third are accomplished – and these are helping to build support for the second.
Taverner’s Ave Maria
A piece we sang at the Colloquium is John Taverner’s Ave Maria. Here is the sheet music, available for the first time, scored for SATTB. He was obviously an amazing composer. Apparently he fell under the influence of the puritans at some point and repudiated his “papist” compositions. Fortunately for us, much survives. This piece in particular is very accessible.
Music Workshop, Sarasota, Florida
If you are anywhere near Sarasota, Florida, this is a wonderful opportunity for you. Edward Schaefer is leading a three-day workshop on sacred music and chant at the Christ the King Catholic Church, July 22-24, 2010. It is only $50.
Fire Up that Anglican Chant!
Google books posts two books of Anglican chant:
Vincent (1880)
Ludden (1860)
I find myself amazed and baffled when I look at these books to imagine the missed opportunities that presented themselves at the Second Vatican Council. But instead of availing themselves to the resources accumulated over 500 years within the Anglican tradition, the postconciliar authorities who revised the liturgical books set out to reinvent the wheel – with predictable results that are being revised yet again. We’ve lost so much time but perhaps the availability of these new resources will inspire the refurbishment of this wonderful tradition within the ranks of the Catholics.
William Byrd Festival: Never Miss It
The schedule for the William Byrd Festival this year is up. It might be the greatest musico-liturgical event of the year. The dates are August 13-29, Portland, Oregon.
Dr. Richard Marlow of Trinity College, Cambridge, England will return to Portland to conduct Cantores in Ecclesia in a two-week festival of choral masterpieces by the greatest composer of the English Renaissance, William Byrd (1540–1623). The festival will feature six liturgical services, three concerts and six public lectures. The services include Byrd’s Masses for Three, Four, and Five Voices, Compline and Evensong from the Anglican rite, Mass for the Assumption with selections from the Gradualia of 1607. The opening concert on August 13 features tenor Oliver Mercer and Mark Williams on harpsichord and organ in a program of Byrd’s consort songs; the Festival Concert on Aug 29, directed by Dr. Marlow, includes Byrd’s moving setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah.
New Mass Setting: Sanctus XII
I’ve been listening to many new ordinary settings being rolled out by many publishers in anticipation of the new translation of the Mass forthcoming (at some point). They vary in quality, and one’s judgment on them largely depends on one’s tastes. But there are common characteristics. The composer is restricted to writing songs that are catchy and metrical, and when they are not accompanied, something essential seems to be lacking. They all have a tendency to remind one of some music one has heard somewhere, though it isn’t always clear where. I do think this is deliberate: the ethos in the Catholic publishing world fears offering music that seems unfamiliar or drawn from a cultural context outside the daily world in which we live. The idea seems to be that the composer should take the stuff we have in our head and use it to invite us to participate in a religious experience. It seems like a good idea but the problem is that this hope isn’t quite visionary and radical enough. It is insufficiently challenging. It dares nothing.
In contrast, consider Sanctus from Mass XII. Now this is the type of music that gives us something completely new, something that sweeps us off our feet, something that invites us to think and pray in a completely new way. I really can’t explain how the Gregorian tradition does it, but somehow it manages to be ever fresh and ever destabilizing in the best possible sense. It shakes us and moves us. I do not envy composers today, who have this kind of material to compete against: