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Our human emotions are an important criterion for the continued renewal and development of Sacred music. There is a great chasm in many places distinguishing the Church’s patrimony, her Heart and Mind, from a more popular view.

Church music and other liturgical arts are easily mistaken in their aim and goal.  Contrived, emotional and superficial, the aim is to entertain, fill a void, please an audience, rather than a humble service to the liturgical ceremony, glorifying God and sanctifying the faithful.

An aforementioned source is Msgr. Guido Marini’s address to a liturgical conference in Mileto.  Translated into a compact book, his reflections are worth reading, re-reading and passing around:

“Thus, singing and music in the liturgy, when they are truly themselves, are born from a heart that searches after the mystery of God and become an exegesis of this same mystery, a word that, in musical notation, opens onto the horizon of Christ’s salvation. Therefore, there is an intrinsic bond among word, music, and chant in the liturgical celebration.

Music and chant, in fact, cannot be separated from the Word of God, of which, indeed, music and chant ought to be a faithful interpretation and revelation. Chant and music in the liturgy stem from the depth of the heart, that is, from Christ who dwells therein – and they return to the heart, that is, to Christ, And from the question of the heart, He comes as the true and definitive response. 

This objectivity of chant and liturgical music should never be consigned to the superficial and extemporaneous nature of our sentiments and fleeting emotions, which do not correspond to the greatness of the mystery being celebrated.”  

Rev. Msgr. Guido Marini, Liturgical Reflections of a Papal Master of Ceremonies, English Translation © 2011, p.40.

Join Musica Sacra Florida for our 7th Chant Conference!  

We’ll be meeting at St. Mark the Evangelist Church in Tampa, Florida this year.  Over on the west coast of the state and easily accessible to one and all.  You can find all the details – and register – over at www.musicasacra.com. There are four different workshops, two Masses – one Extraordinary Form and one Ordinary Form.  Chant choirs at both beginning and advanced levels. Fellowship with other singers. A fantastic faculty (of which I am a modest member) and propers for the Friday evening Mass sung by the Florida Pro Musica Schola, directed by Larry Kent.

Beginner or advanced or somewhere in-between – all are invited to join us. It promises to be a wonderful little conference. So come on down, up, or across!

Thank you, and all the best!

The following is from Chris Mueller:

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Many of you know that World Youth Day is an event convened every 2-3 years, where high school and college-aged kids and young adults from all over the world gather in some large international city (e.g. Cologne, Sydney, Madrid…) for a week, to celebrate Mass, meet the Pope (or at least be near him), and grow in their faith. This event is huge – millions of young people convene every time it happens! In fact, World Youth Day 1995 in Manila held the record for the largest-ever papal event, when over five million pilgrims gathered for Mass with Pope St. John Paul II. (That record was recently broken when Pope Francis celebrated a Mass for over six million people… in Manila!)

This summer World Youth Day will be held in Krakow, Poland, and I have the honor of having been invited to conduct all the music at the English-language Masses! There are so many English-speaking pilgrims that these Masses will be held in a giant stadium. There will be a morning Mass each day, for five consecutive days.

Additionally, my family, which sings polyphony and chant together as the Mueller Family Schola, has been invited to give a concert as one of the cultural events that take place each evening at this enormous gathering. And my wife and kids will not only be present for our concert, but they’ll be joining me to sing at all the Masses I’ll be conducting as well.

One of my goals is to incorporate polyphony and chant into every Mass. I think it would be amazing to set a kind of liturgical template that youth from all over the world would take back to their parishes. “We heard all this beautiful music at the Masses in Poland – can’t we have that same music at our own church?” I’ve been working closely with Dominican Friars from the United States and Poland as we carefully plan all these liturgies. And we expect a pretty big choir!

But here’s where I need your help:

In order to direct the wonderful music this July in Krakow, my family and I first have to get to Krakow. And so I’m asking if you would support our Kickstarter campaign, to help us raise enough funds to bring gorgeous polyphony, beautiful chant, and ourselves to Poland. We would be very grateful for your help, and we promise to pray for you unceasingly in our gratitude!

Thank you for your kind consideration and for your support –

Chris Mueller and the Mueller Family Schola

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tl;dr Support Traditional Sacred Music at World Youth Day by contributing to this Kickstarter Campaign.

There is an interesting discussion going on about the reformed liturgy as practiced since Vatican II. The discussion concerns an expression of Cardinal Sarah’s: “too much man and not enough God.”

I would like to propose that this expression, while accurate, does not reach to the heart of the problem, which is philosophical and theological. The real liturgical question is this:

Is the firmament permeable, or not?

1) If God is absent from the world, separated by the bright line of an unbridgeable horizon from earthly life and in a noumenal realm, then we are on our own. We are orphan children of an absent God, making our own way, and depending primarily on each other. Petitions and hymns are discussions among ourselves about values. The congregation is the primary instantiation of community. The most appropriate posture is humans facing humans, closing the circle. Intelligibility is of highest importance.

2) If God is actively at work in the world here and now, on earth and in earthlings, continually strengthening and raising us, then liturgy is a privileged opportunity to meet God. Liturgical language expresses our dependence on God’s help. Petitions and hymns ask for more and more divine intervention, and not only for those present in one time and place, but for all people, living and the dead. The most appropriate posture involves all of the people facing the divine presence. Receptivity to grace is our highest action, and God Himself is of the highest importance.

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Obviously there are multiple possible reasons for believing in one or another of these admittedly schematic theories of life, the universe and everything. But may I suggest that one possibility is the error of Esau, who sold his birthright for a nice dish of stew.

If God were absent from the world–which He is not–then we would be able to make our own morality. Right and wrong would be up to us. But it is not. And the cost of license would be much too high to pay.

One of the motivations for the reform of the reform–certainly my motivation–is that the reformed liturgy in its casual iterations leaves us feeling lonely for God. It distracts from prayer, rather than fostering recollection. It proposes a worldview in which we are stuck, alone, with what we have and who we are, rather than accurately expressing the truth, which, thanks be to God, is this:

the sky’s the limit.

On our sister site New Liturgical Movement, Peter Kwasniewski posts excerpts from his intriguing analysis of musical styles suitable for the Liturgy.

When we hear chant, there is no ambiguity or ambivalence about what it is or what it is for; it breathes the spirit of the liturgy and cannot be mistaken for secular music in any way.

 Much more–follow the links!