Catholic musicians gathered to blog about liturgy and life
Chant and Converts offers an extremely powerful piece of writing that will mean so much to anyone who has thought much about music and liturgy. I urge you to read the entire piece:
I learned how to sing as a Baptist. I learned what to sing as an Anglican. Then I became a Catholic at a time when it appeared that almost no one in the Church knew how to do either. ->More
James MacMillan has a good article today in the Times:
I was in Amsterdam last week, conducting at the Concertgebouw. I found out that the FSSP (Priestly Fraternity of St Peter) have a thriving parish there, in the Sint-Agneskerk. I went along on Sunday for their beautiful Extraordinary Form liturgy. The Dutch church is a wasteland/joke/disaster area because of 30 years of liberalism. Basically there are no Catholics left here! Or so it seems sometimes, thanks to the usual rubbish. Thankfully there are some younger, faithful Catholics willing to swim against the tide.
I’m still a bit of a novice when it comes to the EF – Sunday’s was my third – but I am struck each time by just how devotional the atmosphere is, even on entering the church. Everything seems focused on the tabernacle. There is a palpable presence of God, which tends to be missing from a lot of churches now, which feel more like Glasgow Central station than a house of prayer….
“Ah, but we can’t go back to the past,” we hear the usual ageing handwringers cry. But the past is the past, and has no bearing any more on the new impetus to sort out the liturgy. Latin Mass can be in the EF and the Novus Ordo – that’s the beauty of Latin, and that’s why the Devil (let alone the Tabletistas) hates it!
“Oh but where is the active participation in the Latin Mass?” cry the liberal killjoys. But lay involvement is clearly possible to the fullest extent in the EF or Latin Novus Ordo. In the three EF liturgies I have attended in the last year, the assembly sang much, much more than one ever sees or hears in a Glasgow “Mass-for-Daily-Record-Man” or its depressing equivalent up and down the country. Everything from the Asperges Me, through the Kyrie, Sanctus and all the Dominus vobiscum/et cum spiritu tuos – sung by EVERYBODY. There is no point in using the past, pre-Vatican II practice as a weapon against the inevitable. None of the young Catholics now committed to good liturgy have any idea what the old curmudgeons are going on about when they moan about the bad old days. Their bad memories are irrelevant and have no bearing at all on the push for improvements. And these improvements will have a bearing on both forms the Mass, especially the English vernacular, I’m sure.
If you have ever doubted the merit of a Viennese orchestral Mass, with its extended solos, as liturgical music, you need to hear Cecilia Nam sing. The clarity of tone, the agility, the precision, the passion and controlled power of her voice is incredibly convincing. As Arlene Oost-Zinner said last year after Nam sang a piece from a Haydn Mass, now I understand when this music works in liturgy: when we are prepared to give God the best art and talent that we have to give.
Nam’s position at the Sacred Music Colloquium is not only as a soloist. She is an extraordinary teacher, providing both voice instruction in a group setting and also director the beginning choir. both are relatively new offerings for the Colloquium, and the extraordinary success is mostly due to Nam’s talents.
In voice class, she works through typical vocal problems and listens to stories with a sympathetic ear, offering great answers along the way. She manages to instill a kind of confidence in everyone who studies under her, helping you to believe that you can do it – which is the first step to actually doing it.
The beginning choir is also hers, and she has turned it into something of an institution. We weren’t sure if the format would work, and worried that by separating out the beginners, we were denying them a chance to sing with more advanced people. It turned out to be the right decision: people who are just starting out with polyphonic singing are more comfortable with others who are at the same level. She walks these new singers through all the steps to make sure that they develop an excellent foundation in theory and technique.
She has a very flattering way of being sincerely interested in all your musical problems — kind of like a great therapist. She ends up being a tremendous resource for all attendees, like having the bonus of a great vocal teacher tutor you personally in the context of what is otherwise a liturgical colloquium. Private lessons from her would cost more than the entire colloquium, so this is a great value as well.
Finally, there is her own beautiful voice. Even if she never spoke a word, just listening to her sing is a rare learning experience of its own.
If you are driving, and conductor Wilko Brouwers is in the back seat, you will likely overhear some interesting sounds. He likes to gently and quietly vocalize to himself.
He plays with pitches and scales. He makes sounds with his mouth, and experiments with the shape of his mouth and its effect on the sound. He plays with various rhythms to see how they change what we tend to do with vowels, and then he tries out a variety of consonants in a variety of interval skips to see how they work. The sounds can be silly or pretty. Really, it sounds like play, and I’m unclear whether he knows that others can hear him. In his mind, he must be imagining how to newly present images to singers to help them sing more precisely and more beautifully.
I’ve sat under his leadership probably six times, and not once have I heard him repeat a metaphor or offer an explanation in the same way. His teaching is always new and fresh and filled with metaphors of all sorts. You won’t hear about the mouth and the lungs or actual body parts, and you hear little at all about what is on the page from which you are singing; instead you hear about birds, flames, eggs, paintings, houses, relationships, emotions – these all figure into his special way of enticing singers to go beyond reading what is on the page and present their sound as something magical. And truly, magical is the only way to describe the results he is able to achieve.
Brouwers is a conductor in the Netherlands who directs a wide variety of chant and polyphonic groups. His singers are very lucky to have him. He is the consummate musician, a person who lives and breaths music as prayer. Americans have the opportunity to experience his direction at the Sacred Music Colloquium. It is unforgettable.I should add too that one rarely finds such humility and old-fashioned sweetness of countenance in a musician of his level of accomplishment. This too is an inspiration.
This song has an important melodic parallel with the entrance antiphon for Christmas Day, Puer Natus Est. Both songs announce the arrival of a king and in similar ways. Both are Mode 7 chants (modes matter!) and they follow a similar formula. This is not an accident. Keep in mind that it was only after Christ’s death and resurrection that it become clear precisely what kind of King he would be.
If we leave out both songs, some important liturgical/theological information is lost.
COLLECT
Current
Father, help us to be like Christ your son,
who love the world and died for our salvation.
Inspire us by his love,
guide us by his example.
Forthcoming
By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God,
may we walk eagerly in that same charity
with which, out of love for the world,
your Son handed himself over to death.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
AFTER COMMUNION
Current
Almighty Father, by this sacrifice
may we always remain one with your Son, Jesus Christ,
whose body and blood we share,
for he is Lord for ever and ever.
Forthcoming
We pray, almighty God,
that we may always be counted among the members of Christ,
in whose Body and Blood we have communion.
This priest tossed the kids out of Mass for failing to sing. A better idea might be to inspire – not hector – them to sing liturgical appropriate music. The article doesn’t say what precisely they were being asked to sing, but I think I can guess.
