Chant Café

Depending on how each parish celebrates All Saints and All Souls, this could be one of the busiest weekends of the year. And we’re not exactly dealing with light things. It’s not about parties or apple bobbing, but about the last things and how they affect each person.

A priest who celebrates his three allowed Masses today might easily tack on an extra one this evening, not to mention baptisms and weddings made possible by the longish weekend. Musicians may not have had much family time on Thursday evening, with no end in sight until Sunday afternoon.

Just one of those tough weekends of the liturgical year. Wishing everyone well!

“The Dominican House of Studies schola has just released its first album, In Medio Ecclesiae, under the aegis of the newly founded Dominicana Records. The album is available now for download here; CD purchase coming soon.

Through the direction of Fr. James Moore, O.P., the student choir has been working for more than eighteen months to produce a recording of the finest-quality liturgical music from different eras and traditions of the Church. The album contains fifteen pieces, with seven works from the various liturgical seasons, three timeless hymns of rejoicing, three in honor of specific saints, and two in praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The repertoire of In Medio Ecclesiae includes Dominican chant, Renaissance polyphony, Eastern chant, and new compositions and arrangements by Fr. James Moore, O.P. and Br. Vincent Ferrer Bagan, O.P. The pieces are in both Latin and English, and borrow from the Italian, Spanish, English, Polish, and American musical traditions of various eras.

Dominicans know, of course, that a work of art always shows the hand of the artist, and this collection is no different. The album includes pieces dear to the heart of our liturgical tradition, from a polyphonic setting of St. Thomas Aquinas’ O sacrum convivium to the chant for St. Dominic’s feast day, In medio ecclesiae, in addition to a variety of other pieces both simple and complex.

Created and produced by the talents of our brothers and professionally mastered, the album is an offering from our fraternal life to the life of the world.”

Read more here.
See a list of tracks.
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The National Catholic Register has just published an interview with Mr. Nicholas Lemme, director of the schola cantorum at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary (FSSP) in Denton, Nebraska, on his “conversion” from rock music to Gregorian chant, including the influence of the CMAA on his journey.

What courses do you teach at the seminary? 

I primarily teach how to sing Gregorian chant, which the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council state is to be given “pride of place” in the Church’s worship. My classes are mainly devoted to learning the Solesmes method of interpretation, but we also take a look at the history of chant, its function in the liturgy, its spirituality and its influence on other forms of Western music. In addition to this, I’ve recently started giving a class on the power of music in general. How that class was made possible is an interesting story.

I remembered that, during my “subtle conversion,” I had gradually stopped listening to the conventional rock music produced from the ’60s to the ’90s. The lyrics in those songs were filled with promotion of vices such as pride, disobedience, vanity and lust — none of which corresponded with the virtue I was hoping to acquire. Most of the records I had in my music library were removed in a very matter-of-fact way that seemed natural to me. I didn’t need to put a lot of reflection into it.

It wasn’t until my first year at the seminary (while discerning a vocation) that I discovered there might be more to the story. I had grown accustomed to the beautifully structured seminary life. We had regular times for prayer, manual work, study and recreation. During the times of prayer, we would chant the Divine Office, and, of course, there was also chant (and some polyphony) at Masses. We were enveloped in a beautifully mysterious atmosphere, where our minds and hearts were drawn upward into the realm of the Divine.

After four months of not listening to recorded music, I decided to do some recreational listening on my iPod. A heavy-hitting, rock-influenced jazz instrumental came on the mix. I was startled out of my little piece of heaven into an atmosphere of agitation. What was previously an almost temptation-free environment had become a battleground filled with anxiety.

You had already come to dislike rock, so what was new about this experience? 

What really got me thinking was: There were no words to the song, so those were not the concern. The music itself was agitating me. Everyone, whether musically inclined or not, will agree that certain types of music tend to evoke certain emotions. The sentiments felt upon hearing Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries are assuredly not the same as those felt upon hearing Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina.

However, where the connection is often missing, as it had been for me, is from the specific emotions to specific vices or virtues. Take anger, as an example. Anger itself is not sinful, but once it has gained entrance into the soul, it is very difficult to control and can lead to sin.

So if the topic is presented, it should be done in a way that somehow engages the intellect. This is possible through Allegro of Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, but not through Metallica’s House of Puppets, which negates the intellect by its coarse, mindless grinding.
Once the emotion of anger is presented without any reference to rationality, its influence can easily lead to vice. An angry person finds it more difficult to pray and forgive or to be patient and generous. Christian living is impaired without the affected person even knowing how that came about.

This connection between emotion and virtue was a huge revelation to me, so I began reflecting on the topic and looking more deeply into it. I found that what was revealed to me was actually a concept that has been with us since antiquity.

Plato expressed the force of music in his Republic this way: “Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.”

Father Basil Nortz, ORC [Canons Regular of the Holy Cross], has written and spoken of how it is essential to realize that it is not only the lyrics of a song that will affect us. The music itself enters into the deepest recesses of the soul to influence us there even more profoundly than words. The reason for this is: Words must first be understood by the mind, but music is immediately grasped by the emotions, regardless of previous training or culture.

So you disagree with adding good lyrics to rock music? 

Let me put in this way: I wouldn’t be moved in quite the same way by hearing the words of Agnus Dei set to a fast-paced, heavy-drum beat. In reality, it would obliterate any positive influence the words would have had. The words really need to match the music; that’s good art.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote before his papacy in The Spirit of the Liturgy that, “Not every kind of music can have a place in Christian worship.” In order to determine what kinds of music do have a place, he gave this criterion: “Does it integrate man by drawing him to what is above, or does it cause his disintegration into formless intoxication or mere sensuality?”

Additionally, he stated in A New Song for the Lord that rock music is “thoroughly opposed to the Christian notion of redemption and of freedom.” Therefore, he continued, “Not for aesthetic reasons, not from reactionary obstinacy, not from historical immobility, but because of its very nature, music of this type must be excluded from the Church.”

The ontology (or the very being) of music should determine where that music is found. I have yet to find a culture or religion that does not have its representative music. Early on, rock music represented and shaped my own culture, or way of life. Now, I now tend to be drawn, and to draw from, music that elevates the soul without negating the intellect. Gregorian chant seems to be the paradigm of this, but other examples can be found that encourage the pursuit of virtue as well.

This is a fascinating topic that will occupy my thoughts the rest of my life. There’s still so much for me to learn, but I’m grateful for having my eyes opened to it, and I hope to pass it along well to the seminarians.

I would consider the subject properly disseminated to them if they appreciate music’s power over their souls and live out what so many great thinkers have taught about music — not only from a liturgical standpoint, but from an ontological one as well.

There’s a mysterious and strong influence exerted through music, so we should delight in making the effort to seek out those types of music that ennoble and lift us higher. The ultimate goal is to sing the praises of almighty God in heaven, and we begin to do this on earth in a most notable way when we engage in reverent Christian worship.

Read the rest here…

Mantilla tip: https://www.facebook.com/DonGuidoMarini

English composer John Ainslie has prepared new simple settings of the Entrance and Communion Antiphons for Advent and Christmas. Free downloads for parish use are available in fully integrated 4-line, 5-line, and 5-line accompaniment editions.

See the project’s homepage for details.