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Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Music and the Great Mistake

Randolph Nichols writes as follows:

An applied physics professor and pillar of my former choir at St. Brigid Church in Lexington, Massachusetts, tipped me off to this New Republic article by Philip Kennicott, Art and Architecture critic of the Washington Post. Kennicott sees a parallel between the decline in American orchestras and the experience of post-Vatican II liturgy:

“For decades, the musical world has been going through its own protracted and painful Vatican II, initially driven by the assumption that the only thing that really ails the form is a superficial matter of liturgy and presentation. Conductors should turn away from the altar and face the congregants, speak in the vernacular, and forego white-tie-and-tails vestments. The service should be consumer-friendly.”

Though failing to offer a solution to the nation-wide orchestra dilemma, Kennicott makes a compelling case that attempts to broaden the market base by disregarding artistic standards has failed. “One can understand how and why adults concoct this sort of thing, why a market has developed for political poster music that offers only a generic sense of sadness at mankind’s sufferings. But why make young people play it? It seems a very ill sign for the future that bad music is so willingly foisted on serious junior musicians who have already made a commitment to the art form.”

I see the result of this “generic” thinking in recent ads for music directors within my own archdiocese. Newly formed collaborative parishes are requiring that applicants must be able to provide music in a “variety of genres.” That’s code meaning the applicant must not have strongly held artistic convictions. Or another way to put it, the aspiring musician must be able to program music with which he or she is uncomfortable. However you define it, it is a recipe for failure.

Posted on by Jennifer Donelson

Registration Deadline: Sept. 13th – Excellent Line-up for CMAA in St. Paul!

The countdown to the registration deadline has begun for “The Renewal of Sacred Music and the Liturgy in the Catholic Church: Movements Old and New,” a conference hosted by the CMAA in Saint Paul October 13-15, 2013.

Familiar faces like Jeffrey Tucker, Horst Buchholz and Cecilia Nam, Bill Mahrt, Michael O’Connor, Susan Treacy, Ed Schaefer, and yours truly will be there; and many excellent performers and scholars new to the CMAA will make for a great line-up!

This conference is a great opportunity to get away before the hubbub of preparing for Advent and Christmas begins, as well as an excellent immersion in the life of St. Agnes Parish, Msgr. Schuler’s home for decades, and home to the well-known and loved Twin Cities Catholic Chorale.

In addition to all the concerts and presentations, we’ll have wonderful opportunities for fellowship over meals, as well as the chance to tour Msgr. Schuler’s personal archives, as well as the archives of St. Agnes and the Cathedral of Saint Paul.

The deadline is next Friday, September 13th!

From the website:

The conference seeks to explore, through critical analysis, former and present efforts to revive the Church’s sacred liturgy and music, particularly as exemplified by Msgr. Schuler’s work. Questions central to the conference theme include:

– Which efforts have resulted in a true restoration of the Church’s liturgy and sacred music?

– Upon which principles has authentic liturgical and musical renewal operated in the past?

– Which reform actions have had deleterious effects on sacred music and the liturgy?



Here are just some of the paper topics and recitals lined up for the conference: 

  • “The Twentieth-Century Liturgical Movement and American Church Architecture” – Matthew Alderman
  • “Louis Bouyer and the Pauline Reform: Great Expectations Dashed” – Dr. John Pepino
  • “Twentieth-Century Reform and the Transition from a ‘Parallel’ to a ‘Sequential’ Liturgical Model: Implications for the Inherited Choral Repertoire and Future Liturgical Compositions” – Dr. Jared Ostermann
  • “The Effect of 2007 Motu Proprio on Sacred Music and the Liturgy” – Dr. Edward Schaefer
  • “Singing ‘the Living Voice of the Liturgy’: The Liturgical Movement and Music in the United States, 1940–1960” – Fr. Robert Johansen
  • “Joseph Bonnet, Animateur of Gregorian Chant Congresses” – Dr. Susan Treacy
  • “Mariology and the Motet in the Early Seventeenth Century: The Marian Motet Cycle of Juan de Esquivel” – Dr. Michael O’Connor
  •  “Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O’Connor, and the Reforms of the Liturgy of the Roman Rite” – Devin Jones
  •  “How Firm a Foundation: Hints from Blessed John Henry Newman and the Tractarians in Contemporary Catholic Liturgical Reform” – Dr. David Paul Deavel
  • “Reginald Mills Silby: The Westminster Connection” – Dr. Kevin Vogt
  • “Cum Angelis Canere: To Sing with the Angels, or A Farm Boy Learns to Sing Mozart” – Fr. Michael Miller
  • “Factum est silentium in caelo: The Silence of Sound in the Heavenly Liturgy and the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy” – Nathan Knutson
  • “Cantate Domino Canticum Novum – Renewing the Faith through Devotional Music – A Recital for Organ and Voice with music by Leisentritt, Campra, Rheinberger, and Langlais” – Dr. Cecilia Nam, soprano and Dr. Horst Buchholz, organ 
  • “The Celebration of Sorrow in the Roman Rite” – Fr. Eric Andersen

  • “Chant in Children’s Education: A Means of Reform for Music in the Parish” – Scott Turkington and the Children’s Choirs of Holy Family Parish 


      • The conference will include the celebration of vespers (featuring Mozart’s Vesperae Solennes de Confessore) and Missae Cantatae at the Cathedral of Saint Paul and Church of Saint Agnes, featuring an orchestral Mass (Paukenmesse by Franz Joseph Haydn), classical works for organ, chanted Gregorian propers, and a modern polyphonic setting of the Mass ordinary (Messe Salve Reginaby Yves Castagnet).

      We hope to see you there in October!  

      www.musicasacra.com/st-agnes 

    Posted on by Kathleen Pluth

    Photos of Pope Benedict

    It’s nice, isn’t it, that on the Feast of St. Gregory the Great, the magnificent Benedictine Pope, the liturgical and ecclesiastical reformer, we catch a glimpse of the Pope Emeritus, to whom these verses from the hymn to St. Gregory, Anglorum iam Apostolus, equally apply.

    From riches and from wealth you turned.
    The glory of the world you spurned,
    That you might follow, being poor,
    Prince Jesus, who was poor before.

    This Christ, High Pontifex, decreed
    That you would take His Church’s lead,
    And learn St. Peter’s steps to tread:
    The rule of all called in his stead.

    You wondrously solved riddles deep:
    The mystic secrets Scriptures keep,
    For Truth Himself has taught you these:
    The lofty sacred mysteries.

    O Pontifex, our leader bright,
    The Church’s honor and its light,
    Through dangers let them all be brought,
    The ones you carefully have taught.
     
    The unborn Father let us praise,
    And to His Son like glory raise,
    And to their Equal, majesty.
    All glory to the Trinity. Amen.

    Posted on by Mary Jane Ballou

    The Congregations Gets It!

    I recently had a conversation with a church musician friend about her parish.  She is a Protestant cantor in a Catholic church.  At one point she exclaimed, “I don’t know what’s the matter with most of those people.  They sing all the Mass parts, but they won’t touch the hymnals.”

    Lacking time for a detailed review of liturgy and history, I just said, “It’s a Catholic thing.”  I guess I’ll catch her up later on the integral role of the ordinary parts of the Mass.