Thanks to Chuck Giffen to help me find this!
Ubi Caritas – Stephens
Schola Sainte Cécile and the Renewal of French Church Music
If you ask most people what names come to mind when you associate the words church, music and Paris, there are lots of beautiful places that rise up in the imagination: Notre Dame, Ste Clothilde, St Germain des Pres, St Eustache, the Madeleine: the list goes on and on. It is no secret that the City of Lights has been an inspiration to many a church musician through the ages. And it is still unparalleled when it comes to organ music. It’s hard to go far on a Sunday afternoon and not stumble into a first rate organ concert.
Many moons ago when I lived in Paris, I used to go to a small little church off of Grands Boulevards which may not be a household name, but it certainly will be someday. Not far from the Conservatoire, already home to so many promising musicians of the future, this neo-Gothic wonder not too far off the beaten path is home to what in my opinion is one of the brightest spots in the sacred music scene in the world.
The Church of Saint Eugène is twinned with the parish of Sainte Cécile and in this space you will find a home where the liturgical thought of Pope Benedict XVI and Tradition flourishes. On any given Sunday, you can attend Mass in the French Novus Ordo as well as the Extraordinary Form. In my day, Philippe Guy was the mastermind behind the whole musical affair, and the Abbé François Poté attracted numerous families and young people to a parish which otherwise might have suffered, as the neighborhood around it changed.
The musical programme is quite impressive, if for no other reason than here you can listen to some of the best of the classical repertoire of French sacred choral music. It’s one thing to hear Charpentier’s famed Messe pour minuit de Noël in a fashionable French church. It’s another to experience it alongside sequences from the Parisian Missal, Eucharistic motets from the ancien régime and chant at its finest, Sunday after Sunday in a parish that celebrates both forms of the Roman Rite well.
The parish is itself a veritable vocations factory and a center for traditional Catholic piety. Every year men and women go off to seminaries, convents and monasteries, and others start Christian homes as married layfolk from the altar of this amazing parish.
Today the Maître de Chapelle is Henri Adam de Villiers, who not only presides over one of the most unique programs of Catholic music in Paris, but much more. A contributor to the New Liturgical Movement blog, he has not only an encyclopedic knowledge of Parisian church music, he also is master of theory and practice at the Russian Catholic community of Paris. The Schola Sainte-Cécile runs a blog called Liturgia, which is an impressive place to learn more, not only about the work de Villiers & co are doing in the 9th arrondissement, but also all about Gallican liturgy and music. Not to mention the fact that the Schola has provided music all over Italy for the traditional Ambrosian Rite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enJSG0miCD8&list=UURSpGrA_n-siAOfww5i3WnA
Saint Eugène is certainly a model parish in its spirituality, liturgy and sacred music. But, as a parish, its story is not widely known outside of a few cognoscenti who follow the Parisian music scene. That is about to change. There is a kickstarter campaign to get the message out about the incredible music being done every day at this remarkable piece of heaven on earth.
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| photo credit to Gonzague Bridault |
There is a great way you can learn more about the project and also donate towards it.
The more the world knows about places like this, the more that other parish priests and musicians may be encouraged as they restore the sacred and bring the fullness of the Catholic tradition alive. I am very blessed to have been a quiet, discreet member of its flock for an all-too-brief period of time which changed my life. My hope is that this shining light may go far and wide with this documentary!
“God IS Not Dead” and “Chant is NOT dead” either.
Over at MSF I’ve reported that our parish quietly heard its first EF (Low) Mass via a funeral request. That was effected by a former vicar who’s now the pastor of a parish in a neighboring town who offers the EF every Thursday evening. I went to join a friend in the loft for the chanted hymns for the second time last evening. I’ll revist how this figures into the article in a while.
After returning from Mass and having dinner, we decided to “rent” a movie from UVerse and this week’s releases included “Divergent” and “God is Not Dead.” Having tried to view the first “Hunger Games” installment years ago, I realize I don’t really do dystopia in this era. Once you’ve survived “Blade Runner” and “Twelve Monkeys” you’ve pretty much seen the best of that genre of film making. But the other night’s choice, “God is Not Dead,” is clearly from the “faith-based” production school that is slowly upping its game. Earlier this summer we took in a film about a young Christian teen breaking away from the plans her Contemporary Christian Music star father had laid out for her, and that film was, predictably, so two dimensional it almost qualified for a Flat Earth Society award. So, watching another film of that genre is a bit of a gamble, not so much with budget, but with time.
I’m happy to report that “God is Not Dead,” though certainly flawed here and there, is a very worthwhile endeavor. It’s not “The Passion” or “Babette’s Feast” but it had just as much content and interest as did the blockbuster “Noah.” Set in a bucolic elite college, it weaves the stories of a young Christian student at the beginning of semester having to decide to enroll in a philosophy course so as not to get off-track with his accumulation of credits for graduation. He’s warned by a fellow student that this particular course is instructed by a professor somewhere to the right of Emperor Nero and will likely become Christian fodder with the negative grade as the bow on the top. The Christian commits to sticking it out.
At the first class the professor (Kevin Sorbo, a former TV “Hercules“) somewhat startles his 80 students by demanding they expedite the process of acquiring the wisdom of Nietzche and Hume et al by writing a simple contract stating “God is dead” and signing it. Anyone unwilling to do so, he warns, will be the object of some ugly academic sausage making. Well, you can figure the rest. The Christian kid cannot and will not betray his convictions, and the professor lays out for him the consequences. Woven into the fabric of the story line are characters like the student’s Christian girl-friend who abandons him because his decision contradicts her “plans” for both of them, a student from China fascinated with his first encounter with the conflict of faith at odds with reason, a Muslim student who struggles with her father’s strict adherence to orthodox Islam, and the professor’s live-in girl friend, who is a repressed Christian resigned to leaving her faith at the front door. Long story short, the student’s exegetical response to the professor’s suppression is compelling stuff, but not stiffly delivered or didactic at all.
As the Cafe is about both chant and life, I offer these reflections: 1. We are dismissed from each Mass with the admonition to “serve” God in the interim between that moment and the next we gather for Mass; 2. If there was a movie titled “Chant is Not Dead,” how would that story line best be told?
Yesterday before leaving the office, I scoured the MS website for pre-conciliar daily Missals without finding a usable source to prepare for the EF Mass. But before leaving I also searched my library and found a 1951 St. Joseph’s Missal. I felt so “Eureka!” and stuck it in my bag with the GS and PBC. As I said over at MSF, most of my EF experiences have been of the Missa Solemnis or Requiem rites. So, last evening, going through the Low Mass with the old Missal I realized the experience was yet another unveiling to my almost child-like visceral response to each EF Mass I hear and sing. I am God’s child, I am learning the faith of all time in a manner not unlike children in the First Grade with “My Little Red Book” of stories (“See Jane run. See Spot run after Jane.”)
To wrap up this little soliloquy- from reflecting upon both “events” last night it occurs to me that we all could probably risk a lot more in the public square to witness to Christ, His Gospel and Kingship over our lives. That shouldn’t be news to any readers here, nor am I suggesting any deficiencies in doing so among us. But yesterday’s gospel in the EF (from Matthew, I think) mentions that if we’re more concerned about our “rainment,” we need to consider the lilies, not even Solomon in all his glory was so adorned.” And as regards “Chant is Not Dead,” I’m mulling over (I’m an idea guy, and a bit of an anarchist) about how we locally could do things like “chant flash mobs?” Maybe at the next season of the symphony in the theatre during admission. Maybe at the St. Paddy’s Parade. Or like a few of us did at Indy before dinner at Buca de Beppo’s (fabulous) restaurant, chanting the blessing before the meal.
Pope Saint John Paul II almost hammered this scripture into the collective catholic conscience in so many addresses- “Be not afraid.” In these troubled times perhaps we should amplify that by capitalizing the “e” as well, BE not afraid. It is an awesome joy to chant our praise and prayer to God. We should share it not only in our parishes but, just maybe, in our daily lives….somehow.
Having it all
Yesterday I wrote about one parish’s innovative and very Catholic approach to Vocation Bible School, and soon afterward I found that my own parish–actually just one parish north here in the Diocese of Arlington–had been featured recently on the mystery worship shopper website Ship of Fools.
It’s pretty rare to see an all-positive review of a parish on the website, but the mystery worshipper was apparently thoroughly pleased with her experience.
Particularly gratifying was the juxtaposition of elements that some would like to keep asunder: friendliness, concern for the poor, art, the pipe organ, and solid preaching.
You don’t need to have guitars to be friendly, if you have priests who take plenty of time after Mass to talk to everyone and get to know them. And in this parish, stained glass windows and hospitality for the homeless go hand in hand.
The photos accompanying the article are “before” photos that don’t take into account the recent sanctuary renovations, as documented on NLM a few years ago.
St. Mary’s is an old and pretty parish by American standards, and in a nice area, but the standards it sets for excellence are not governed by those circumstances. What is important here is having everything that is good and Catholic, all at the same time. There are those liturgical activists who would like to oppose concern for the poor against formality in worship, or friendliness against beauty, or welcoming against doctrine. That’s not at all necessary, and hasn’t been in the Catholic Church, ever.
We truly can have it all.
Vocation Bible School
The parish that brought us the junior papal conclave is dressing it up again this summer with Vocation Bible School.
Younger kids are helped by older youth parishioners, many of whom are excellent chanters, to “form habits,” dressing as nuns and monks, and to sing Morning Prayer in choir stalls emblazoned with the marks of their respective Orders.
Fantastic idea for Catholic children!
Reminder: Gregorian Institute of Canada colloquium August 22-23
Various publications in the past few years attest to a growing interest in the office of Compline, including Kenneth Peterson’s Prayer as Night Falls: Experiencing Compline and The Song of Prayer: A Practical Guide to Learning Gregorian Chant. These, and other resources, will be part of a Paraclete Press table at the August 22-23 Gregorian Institute of Canada colloquium, itself dedicated to the office of Compline. In addition to chant, workshop sessions will also introduce lesser-known but beautiful Compline-oriented polyphonic works, including a Salva nos by Palestrina. For more information about the colloquium, held in Regina, Saskatchewan, see www.gregorian.ca. The registration deadline is August 15, 2014.