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Our readers will be interested to know that Registration for the Southeastern Sacred Music Conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee is ongoing through this Sunday night, July 17.

The conference is a project of the Southeastern chapter of the Church Music Association of America, and features CMAA leaders among its faculty, including Dr. Jennifer Donelson, Andrew Leung, and Bruce Ludwick.

The conference is hosted at the magnificent Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul on July 22-23 (Friday and Saturday), and includes instruction in the following areas:

• learn to read and sing Gregorian chant (or further develop your chanting ability), under the direction of Dr. Jennifer Donelson
• gain the skills and tools to immediately improve your parish music program, guided by the wisdom of the Second Vatican Council and
• explore repertory options (many of them available at no cost) for the Ordinary Form of the Mass, no matter what your parish or choir situation
• study special topics, including sacred polyphony, use of the organ, restoring Catholic tradition to the funeral Mass, and a session for clergy with Father David Carter, and
• participate in a solemn Vespers and solemn sung Mass and hear the basilica’s majestic pipe organ in recital.

Full details, registration, and contact info may be obtained at the Southeastern Sacred Music Conference website.

Amidst all the discussion of Ad orientem, many may not have caught a small but important musical note last week. In his Sacra Liturgia address of July 5, Robert Cardinal Sarah, Prefect, Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, his Eminence spoke at length of the need to reexamine conciliar and papal teachings.  Returning our focus to God, and our profound need to worship him, there was a beautiful reflection on Sacred music:

…we must sing the liturgy, we must sing the liturgical texts, respecting the liturgical traditions of the Church and rejoicing in the treasury of sacred music that is ours, most especially that music proper to the Roman rite, Gregorian chant. We must sing sacred liturgical music not merely religious music, or worse, profane songs.

James MacMillan writes

Far from being a spent force, religion has proved to be a vibrant, animating principle in modern music and continues to promise much for the future. It could even be said that any discussion of modernity’s mainstream in music would be incomplete without a serious reflection on the spiritual values, belief and practice at work in composers’ minds.

Much more in his brilliant essay here.

One of the hidden benefits to a common orientation of priests and people towards the Lord in liturgy is that the priest is free to pray. Instead of having to compose his face for public viewing, he can be himself before His God. He can return to honesty and simplicity. He has a unique role, surely, but it is a humble role. He is not the central focus of the action, like an actor, but its true servant.

Similarly, the people of God can pray to God without meeting the eyes of the priest. They can be honestly praying the prayers to God, instead of composing themselves to be seen as respectable before the priest. The Mass is a time for honesty and clear intentions, not for show. “Your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

The priest is indeed an intermediary in the Mass, but it is “no longer I, but Christ in me.”

Although we are together, let us take our eyes off of one anothers’ eyes, and let each other pray.

Here’s an opportunity to check out:

CHANT COLLOQUIUM 2016
August 11-14, 2016
Saint Augustine’s Seminary, Toronto

The Gregorian Institute of Canada is pleased to announce its 11th Annual Colloquium, to be held at St. Augustine’s Seminary, Toronto, ON, August 11-14. Our plans include a series of practical chant workshops ranging from introductory to advanced, featuring the outstanding clinician Adam Bartlett, composer and editor of Simple English Propers (CMAA, 2011), and editor of the Lumen Christi Missal, Lumen Christi Simple Gradual, and Lumen Christi Hymnal (Illuminare Publications, 2012-2015). Active as a teacher, workshop leader and speaker, Adam has traveled widely offering catechetical and training workshops on topics of Catholic sacred music and liturgical chant.

The colloquium also includes a series of scholarly papers in honour of the late Andrew Hughes, renowned Canadian chant scholar and Professor at the University of Toronto.

In addition to the workshops and lectures, there will be daily offices and Sunday mass sung with Gregorian Chant.

The Program and Registration Form are online at www.gregorian.ca .

Many of our readers will have heard that Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, asked yesterday for a return to a unified posture of both priest and people, turned together toward the Lord.

For too long, a misunderstanding of the need for mutual affirmation of priest and people has “closed the circle” of the liturgy, effectively leaving no place open for God in se.

The transcript should be available by next week at the Sacra Liturgia facebook site. 

Thank you, Your Eminence, for your leadership!