Category: listening

Posted on by Janet Gorbitz

Sacred Treasures of Christmas

AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER at the CMAA ONLINE SHOP.

SACRED TREASURES OF CHRISTMAS is a new recording from the boys of the London Oratory Schola, directed by Charles Cole. The Schola is one of the top boys’ choirs in the world and sings at the London Oratory. The boys, aged 8-18, are all pupils at The London Oratory School.

The Choir’s Director, Charles Cole said: “We are delighted to present our newest album which we recorded earlier this year. ‘Sacred Treasures of Christmas’ focuses on some of the most iconic polyphonic works written for the Christmas liturgy. These motets, rendered so beautifully by the greatest masters of the Renaissance, capture the awe, mystery and effusive joy of the Nativity.”

Sacred Treasures of Christmas, a sequence of music for Christmas, Epiphany and Candlemas, continues the ‘Sacred Treasures’ series, an anthology of sacred repertoire drawn from the liturgical motets which the boys sing at the London Oratory.

Charles Cole continued: “Through these recordings, the Schola seeks to bring to a wider audience the music which adorns the liturgies at the London Oratory. These motets have an important function within the liturgy and are not solely beautiful works of art to be appreciated in a removed context such as a museum or art gallery. Their sacred purpose, the way they are experienced by the boys who sing them, and the manner in which they are heard at the Oratory, are before all else within the liturgical context.”

The motets on the new album celebrate the Nativity itself, before moving on to the Feast of the Epiphany and the Adoration of the Magi, and concluding with the Purification of the Virgin. Amongst the composers represented are Victoria, Guerrero, Palestrina, Lassus, Clemens, Sheppard and Tallis.

Sacred Treasures of Christmas from London Oratory Schola on Vimeo.

For more information, visit Hyperion or the London Oratory Schola websites.

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Posted on by Mary Jane Ballou

Sounds Like Chicken, Tastes Like Mozart: The Peril of Easy Comparisons

When I read National Geographic magazine as a child, explorers eating exotic foods, such as alligator, always seemed to characterize it as “tasting like chicken.”  Well, if you’ve ever eaten anything described that way, you know the characterization is two things:  wrong and unfair.  Nothing tastes like chicken except chicken and gator really tastes just like gator.

Previewing a recording of the Missa Alma Redemptoris Mater by Anselm Viola, an 18th-century priest composer at Montserrat, my first thought was “sounds like Mozart.”  And then as I listened more deeply, I realized “No, it sounds like this composer writing in this place for those singers at that time.”  (Incidentally, this is one of the few works of Viola that survived the destruction of the monastery’s library and musical archives by the Napoleonic forces in 1811-1812.)

The easy comparisons of meats and compositional styles can be helpful.  People will eat the exotic food or listen to an unfamiliar composer since they like the one they know.  But it still puts the less-known into an all too convenient box and can blind us to the unique qualities of things in themselves.

In short, use those easy comparisons when they are useful, but try to get “out of the box.”  Even better, of course, no boxes when we listen.

Posted on by Mr. C

We are the “Large Array”

If you’ve ever seen the film version of Carl Sagan’s “Contact,” you’ve seen two of many magnificent earthbound radio telescope installations, namely the Large Telescope in Arracebo, Puerto Rico and the Very Large Array of dish telescopes in the New Mexico desert. Jodie Foster’s character resolutely believes that “little green men” have and are trying to contact “us.” So, she and her crew relentlessly listen for frequencies that are unidentifiably “foreign” to cosmological emmissions.

I’ve had my second bout of bronchitis at a colloquium this year, but got antibiotics called in from California which I got onboard immediately. That allowed me to participate in my schola and choir for each day, amid getting some rest at other points of the day. But, during yesterday’s Mass (Latin OF) and Wednesday’s EF I purposefully sat in the very back- does that make me a real Catholic or just a conscientious PIP?- even though bronchitis isn’t contagious.

The Reverend Doctor Ed Schaefer’s schola chanted the Latin Introit from the very front of the nave on the gospel side. From the back of the church I could hardly hear them without intensive focus on my part. When I psychologically adjusted to that I heard first the men effortlessly sailing through the antiphon in a manner that would suggest an almost sotto voce vocal technique, but it really wasn’t. They sang with what Horst Buchholz says, “sing with two ears, not one mouth.” And then the more accessible treble women took over the antiphon adding the beauty of womenchant with almost sheer perfection. I had to write down, “I’m listening to angelic choirs (literally?) crossing, or permeating the noises and frequencies that reverberate through both the cosmos and our earth. AKA, “Contact.”

It was yet another revelation to me from yet another moment in a colloquium. Actuoso means that, like those telescopes, we have to have our human “operator,” our will and desire, predisposed to listen for those beatific sounds. Maybe all of them won’t be perfect or pretty or pristine, but they’re there at every Mass. And if you don’t understand what I’m saying, get thee to a colloquium.