Category: Jeffrey Tucker

Jonathan Ryan is playing Thursday evening at the Church of the Holy Family in New York (7:30pm), and the lineup looks simply incredible.

The New York Times has taken notice of the Internet Music Score Library Project, and the dramatic change it has meant for music. If anything, the story understates just what a difference this project has made for the availability of classical music. It has breathed new life into what has long been a dying genre, making a world of music available to people to try, practice, and perform – and doing so outside monopolistic publishers and their overpriced scores.

Indeed, I would say that this site is saving music from the publishers, and restoring a system of distribution that prevailed for hundreds of years on the Continent and gave rise to the most vibrant and flourishing musical culture we’ve ever known. The ethos of sharing and learning from others pervaded music before the age of copyright, which permitted growth and development generation after generation.

The story does not mention the Choral Public Domain Library, but the effects of this site for Church music have been similar. There is just no chance at all that our own schola would have ever gotten started without this site, and this is true of hundreds of other parish-based scholas. It is now common for most any schola to sing exclusive from packets of music that are downloaded for free. It is especially useful for trying out music. We have no problem in passing out half a dozen scores in the course of one rehearsal, keeping what works for us and tossing out what does not. This would be impossible in a world of music imprisoned by copyright and caged by state-protected publisher monopolies.

This entire method of distribution has been a major boon to the whole of serious music, and brought to life what otherwise might be a dying tradition. What’s more, this method has taught modern composers the merit of publishing in the Creative Commons to assure wide distribution, and given rise to a new financial model as well: the revival of commissions and patronage rather than royalty as a means of supporting new composting. Indeed, the Chant Cafe has had a role here in funding the Simple English Propers project.

The NYT article hints at the tragedy for long-dead composers whose works are still under copyright. Their work is being overlooked and thereby under-performed. This is a very sad situation. I should mention also that many liturgical texts are now burdened with this old model of pay-to-pray and this seriously harms the cause of evangelization in the same way that the old copyright system nearly killed classical music in our time.

The Tennessean offers a story about a new direction for the work of John Michael Talbot. OCP will be the publisher.

The Chant Cafe is pleased to offer this report on the Renaissance Weekend in Dallas, Texas, written by Gregory Hamilton:

The Renaissance polyphony Weekend under the direction of Dr. William Mahrt celebrated its twentieth anniversary on February 18-20th.

Each year, lovers of great polyphony gather together in Dallas for a full weekend of singing music of the great European polyphonic masters. This year, in honor of the 400th anniversary of the Vespers of 1610 by the Venetian master Claudio Monteverdi, director William Mahrt chose late a mass setting of Monteverdi, a motet by his forerunner Luca Marenzio, motets by other less-know but fine composers including, Sebastian de Vivanco (1550-1622), Jacobo Gallus (1550 – 1591), and the proper chants for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary time.

The value of such a weekend intensive lies in the opportunity to learn and know the music of the great polyphonic masters from the inside out. To understand this music, to experience it fully, it music be sung. This, year, we were able to experience a mass by a master of both the prima prattica and the seconda prattica, terms as Dr. Mahrt pointed out, were coined by Monteverdi himself. The mass is a fascinating amalgamation of the two styles, both the ‘old’ polyphonic species counterpoint, and the ‘new’ homophonic/basso continuo style where text painting was key. Although the Nuove Musiche originated in the development of the solo song and madrigal, by such composers as Caccini and Marenzio (represented this weekend by his motet “O Sacrum Convivium”), It is clear that Monteverdi was the most important representative of this style, and truly innovative in bringing it into church music.

Fr. Ralph March, O.Cist, chant scholar and long-time professor of music at the University of Dallas, celebrated the Novus Ordo in Latin at Holy Trinity Seminary, on the campus of the University of Dallas. Fr. March presented a thought provoking homily of the nature of God reflected in beauty and music for the liturgy, and our response and participation in this mystery.

The choir, from all over Texas and the Southern United States, numbered about 50. Thanks go to the organizers of the weekend, and especially the seminarians of Holy Trinity Seminary.

Dr. Gregory Hamilton
Holy Trinity Seminary, Diocese of Dallas.
http://www.holytrinityseminary.com
http://www.gregoryhamilton.org

The Record offers more detail on the wonderful group Q, which will soon release its album of Victoria Responsories. I’m particularly excited because our own schola has begun to explore this music for the first time this season, and I’m startled by so many aspects of it. These pieces are not motets in the way that we’ve come to know them over the last ten years of singing.

It seems more evident that the structure is all designed for textual declamation as a first priority. Unlike texts such as O Sacrum or or Cantate Domino, these are not familiar to us, and it seems that Victoria understood this point and structured the pieces to make the communicative purpose more evident. It really is a different world for polyphony.

The singers who are members of Q come out of long experience as Church musicians at Trinity College, and it is clear from interviews that they have done extensive study of the music with an eye to making it come to life with only one singer per part. We can only hope that this CD will reveal the music in a way that has never been done before.

Their CD, Tenebrae Reflections, is their first under their group name Q and will be launched at a performance at St Joseph’s Church in Subiaco on 19 March at 7.30pm, and is available from The Record Bookshop.
The music of Q – which stands for Quartessence – is not just for concertgoers, Cichy said.

“We try to engage, to show the music in all its beauty for what it is. It’s also an evangelising act – faith through art,” Cichy said. “The most eloquent arguments or apologetics for our faith are made through art, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) said, it’s in these brief encounters that we have a depth of experience that we wouldn’t gain from reading a whole library of books.
“The function of music in church, apart from worship of God, is to make the Word flesh.

“Christ came in the Incarnation; music draws us into the mystery – it’s our way of seeking the face of God in this life before we’re perfectly united with Him in the next.”

LeCoultre, Francesco and van Reyk have been singing responses since they were in primary school at Trinity College under the expert guidance of Annette Goerke, famed Cathedral organist for 40 years and director of music for some 25 years who first took organ lessons from Fr Albert Lynch, who revolutionised the music culture in the Archdiocese.

She is also one of the few people in the Archdiocese to have been awarded the Holy Cross Pro Ecclesia Et Pontifice (“For Church and Pope”), the award given to lay people and clergy for distinguished service to the Church.
The trio was also part of the Cathedral choir as Trinity also supplied choirboys for the Cathedral since 1938 when Fr Lynch, who established the choir, approached the Christian Brothers for assistance.

The quartet’s repertoire has evolved according to each other’s strengths and interests which converged when they returned to the works of 16th century Spanish composer Tomas Luis de Victoria, plus many items that LeCoultre, Francesco and van Reyk sang in the Cathedral choir and realised with sadness that none of them were sung anywhere in the Archdiocese.

I had a few minutes in the car and, though I rarely listen to radio, I turned it on today and landed on some random channel. The girl was singing with one of these wheezy helpless voices, gasping pathetically about her love for her guy and how badly she wants to be alone with him. The words — which I would not repeat here — and the sensibility were lurid, tacky, and embarrassing.

It struck me how much more provocative teenage music had become since I was young. What was once disguised is now out the open, the sexuality overt rather than implied. It was depressing. The song ended, and then came the shock: the announcer said that this was a Christian praise music station. It was supposed to be a religious song, and I suppose the listener is free to interpret it as the listener chooses: the teenager hearing what he or she wants to hear and the parents doing the same.

Collect

CURRENT
Father, keep before us the wisdom and love
you have revealed in your Son.
Help us to be like him
in word and deed.

FORTHCOMING
Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that, always pondering spiritual things,
we may carry out in both word and deed
that which is pleasing to you.

(This week, the comparison is taken from Fr. Z, who provides a long discussion)

Post-Communion

CURRENT
Almighty God, help us to live the example of love
we celebrate in this Eucharist,
that we come to its fulfillment in your presence.

FORTHCOMING
Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that we may experience the effects of the salvation
which is pledged to us by these mysteries.