Catholic musicians gathered to blog about liturgy and life
One of the frustrations I’ve had for a long time is finding a current Latin Missal online for quick reference. A poster at the MusicaSacra Forum told of a copy available at scholasaintmaur.net.
With no apparent restrictions on the text, and in the interest of greater accessibility in the English-speaking world, there is now a copy hosted at musicasacra.com for direct download: Latin Missal 2002.
Work continues on preparing the repertoire for the Sacred Music Colloquium this summer, and one of the composers who will contribute music is Antoine Brumel (1460-1512), one of many pre-Reformation composers of polyphony who are being rediscovered in our time. Ever since I first heard his “Missa Et ecce terrae motus,” I’ve been enraptured by his style. Here is the Gloria from that Mass, as sung by the Tallis Scholars.
In the three years since the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum that liberalize the traditional Mass now called the “extraordinary form,” the rise in interest in liturgical tradition has been marvelous to see.
The figures on the number of EF Masses now available are impressive given the short period of time, but the importance of Summorum goes far beyond this aspect alone. Full access to preconcilar liturgical forms represents an openness to a tradition that had been previously been shut out in a period upheaval that gave many the impression that Catholic liturgy had somehow been totally reinvented in the postconciliar period. This was arguably a main reason for Summorum: to re-integrate the new with the old and restore the sense of continuity that Pope Benedict XVI speaks about.
What is important today are the reports, increasingly credible, that a new instruction is forthcoming that will place new restrictions on the celebration of the traditional rite, particularly as regards ordination of priests. Enough reports have reached my own inbox to lead me to believe that something is underway. If there is anything that can be done to prevent any pullback from Summorum, it should be done.
This is why I would strongly suggest go to motuproprioappeal.com/ and sign the petition right now. There are already more than 500 signatures.
Msgr. Robert K. Johnson, director of the diocesan Office for Divine Worship and temporary administrator of St. Paul Cathedral, gave a seminar for musicians on the new missal. This story illustrates just how much effort is being put into truly starting a new era for Catholic music, beginning with the new Missal chants.
There will be hundreds of such reports over the coming months.
You must read this wonderful speech by Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev at the Catholic University of America, February 9, 2011.
Here is a small excerpt on Bach:
Bach is a universal Christian phenomenon. His music transcends confessional boundaries; it is ecumenical in the original sense of the word, for it belongs to the world as a whole and to each citizen separately. We may call Bach an ‘orthodox’ composer in the original, literal sense of the Greek word ortho-doxos for throughout his life he learnt how to glorify God rightly. Invariably he adorned his musical manuscripts with the words Soli Deo Gloria (‘Glory to the One God’) or Jesu, juva (‘Help, O Jesus’). These expressions were for him not merely verbal formulae but a confession of faith that ran through all of his compositions. For Bach, music was worship of God. He was truly ‘catholic,’ again in the original understanding of the Greek word katholikos, meaning ‘universal,’ or ‘all-embracing,’ for he perceived the Church as a universal organism, as a common doxology directed towards God. Furthermore, he believed his music to be but a single voice in the cosmic choir that praises God’s glory. And of course, throughout his life Bach remained a true son of his native Lutheran Church. Albeit, as Albert Schweitzer noted, Bach’s true religion was not even orthodox Lutheranism but mysticism. His music is deeply mystical because it is based on an experience of prayer and ministry to God which transcends confessional boundaries and is the heritage of all humanity.
Bach’s personal religious experience was embodied in all of his works which, like holy icons, reflect the reality of human life but reveal it in an illumined and transfigured form.
Bach may have lived during the Baroque era, but his music did not succumb to the stylistic peculiarities of the time. As a composer, moreover, Bach developed in an antithetical direction to that taken by art in his day. His was an epoch characterized by culture’s headlong progression towards worldliness and humanism. Center stage became ever more occupied by the human person with his passions and vices, while less artistic space was reserved for God. Bach’s art was not ‘art’ in the conventional meaning of the word; it was not art for art’s sake. The cardinal difference between the art of antiquity and the Middle Ages on the one hand and modern art on the other is in the direction it takes: pre-Renaissance art was directed towards God, while modern art is orientated towards the human person. Bach stood at the frontier of these two inclinations, two world-views, two opposing concepts of art. And, of course, he remained a part of that culture which was rooted in tradition, in cult, in worship, in religion.
Sunday’s Communion antiphon, vivid in its presentation of language, beautifully sung on this video below. Follow along with the text and see what emerges in your mind, and consider how the music gives added majesty and beauty:
They did eat, and were filled exceedingly, and the Lord gave them their desire: they were not defrauded of that which they craved.
Pre-Lent – Quinquagesima: Communio from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.
