Who would have thought that something as forbidding, obscure, and seemingly incomprehensible as chant notation could become accessible – and easy – in a virtual classroom? Centuries ago you would have had to travel for days, over hill and dale to some far flung, mountain top monastery to learn it. A hundred years ago, if you were fortunate enough to be able to read at all, you might have been able to get your hand on a book or two or learn something about the chant at Mass or school. These days a handful of people are learning about the chant at Mass, and some are attending workshops and classes, but for most, and this includes the majority of parish musicians, the strange squiggles and symbols remain one of the great Catholic mysteries. I’ve been teaching a basic course in Gregorian notation for the past couple of weeks…and things are going well! Some technical glitches can be expected…and there have been a few. The first time out my microphone wasn’t working at all. Let me be more clear: my microphone worked fine, but the software that was trying to access it could not find it. So, before the next time out, I switched computers. (The lesson learned there was: use a Mac if at all possible.) The last time out there were some echo problems, and after consulting with the software developers, we realized it is a hardware problem. It’s best if students turn their mics off locally. Otherwise the virtual classroom becomes a vast echo chamber…which, despite what it may sound like, is not the ideal acoustic for an online class dealing with chant reading specifics. I’ve also learned that even though teaching is teaching, every venue presents its own challenges. In the case of the online classroom, even if the hardware problems are sorted out, there is still a lot of admin that a teacher has to be on top of in order to get things going and keep them going. I have to make sure all of my slides and Youtubes are uploaded and functional. I have to be up to speed on all of the gizmos and buttons on my screen, and proficient at clicking and dragging things where I want them to be, etc. And students do, too, because they’re looking at almost the same interface as I am. Then there are the students themselves…I almost have to take a virtual roll call to see if they are all there. And there are the differences in student personalities, just like in a physical classroom: some are chatty and want to be up front, or in this case, on air; others don’t want to be seen or heard…like those that sit in the back of a classroom. They don’t give their real names and hover somewhere in the dark…you don’t really know if they are there or not…it’s an odd feeling! 
But it is terribly gratifying and teaching is, as always, a joy. I’ve gotten some great feedback so far, and I’ve scheduled more classes for the coming days and weeks. Everything from the basic course, to a second installment of the basic course, to courses on Gregorian modes. And this can all be learned while you’re sitting at home with your cat on your lap! No coach rides or long trudges through muddy fields in hand-sewn shoes; and, imagine, tonsure haircuts are not required. Specifics about upcoming courses can be found here.
Some Musical Moments at the Inaguration
Choral Communion Propers by Richard Clark
And they are free.
Guido Marini, The Suffering Servant
Andrew Haines is the editor of Ethika Politika. He offers some very interesting reflections on the current liturgical moment.
Excerpt:
There is the illuminating observation by Chesterton that what St. Benedict stored up, St. Francis saw as his mission to scatter about. The work of storing up and of sowing are very different ones. The first entails arduous, long labor: gathering a full crop into the barns for safe keeping is no light task. The second, scattering, is perhaps lighter work; though it requires significantly greater risk, since an entire season’s hopes are pinned on the irreversible distribution of a very limited and valuable supply of seeds.
The pain I experience with seeing the new pope’s liturgies is probably more the result of his intense joy at all other times. I sense acutely that my desire to serve is much thinner than my affection for a beautiful Mass. And I’m aware that the joy I know is possible through a sacramental encounter with the Lord is not often enough reflected in my life with family and with others.
The absolute wrong response, here, is to cast off the sacred liturgy as something overblown and impractical. However, fostering an affection for the liturgy in se is hardly enough, either. I don’t believe those are the only two options on the table; but determining what other concrete options do exist is not, perhaps, as easy as we’d like to think.
In caelesti collegio: A hymn for St. Francis of Assisi
This 15th century Office hymn honoring St. Francis of Assisi focuses on the saint’s likeness to Christ, to the point of bearing Christ’s wounds in the stigmata.
Christ is the exemplar of all the choirs of saints. He is the prince of martyrs, the Sent One who rules the college of apostles, the Prince of virgins. And following Christ, according to this hymn, St. Francis is an honorary member of a number of saintly choirs. He and his brothers were like apostles. He is a martyr by desire. Although not a priest, he is one with the confessors, and with the virgins, he follows after Christ wherever He goes.
Perhaps some will enjoy meditating on this text rather than Make Me a Channel of Your Peace. A worthy modern text is Randall DeBruyn’s rendering of St. Francis’ great prayer at the Portiuncula, In Perfect Charity.
St. Francis shines in glorious light
among the heav’nly college bright,
for by a grace of special kind
Christ’s marks are on St. Francis signed.
He lived with friends in poverty,
an apostolic company,
and bears the cross that signals peace,
the covenant that shall not cease.
A martyr by desire, he bears
the cross of Christ, whose sign he wears,
so in the heav’ns Christ makes him be
one with the martyr’s company.
He always bore the cross of Christ.
Through abstinence he sacrificed.
So with confessors now he reigns
and with them their reward he gains.
In gleaming robes as white as snow
he follows where Christ’s footsteps go,
and joys in chastity’s great prize
in angel choirs above the skies.
O Father, Son, and Spirit, by
The wounds of Francis purify
Your servants who these gifts implore
Forever and forevermore.
What We Sang Before Jesus Christ Is Ris’n Today
Ever wonder what Roman Catholics sang on Easter mornings during the centuries before Charles Wesley appeared on the scene? Here is my translation of Aurora lucis rutilat, a 5th century Lauds hymn for Eastertide from the Liturgy of the Hours. Like many Office hymns, this text is written in Ambrosian, or Long Meter (iambic).
Office hymns are not shy about using words like “triumph” and “victory.” They often begin by setting a scene of cosmic dimensions, an exultation of praise that involves not only earth, but includes the natural world and the citizens of heaven.
Ultimately, there will be a victory, a direct result of Christ’s victory on that Easter morning.
The light of dawn is reddening,
The heaven’s morning praises spring,
The earth exults: “The morning! Hail!”
While hell’s sad dwellers groan and wail.
Our King, the victor in the strife,
When death was smashed apart by life,
Has trampled hell triumphantly
And captive led captivity.
The Lord, whose barricade of stone
The soldiers kept sharp eyes upon
In vict’ry conquers through that gate
And rises forth in pomp and state.
“The Lord is risen from the dead!”
The splendid angel loudly said.
And hell is evermore left free
To grumble in its misery.
Be this our thought through all life’s days,
Our Easter joy, our Paschal praise:
The grace in which we are reborn
Was won in triumph on that morn.
Jesus, to You let glory rise,
Who vanquished death and won the prize;
With Father and the Spirit blest,
Be endless ages’ praise addressed.
A note on the new Pope and LIturgy
From Dom Charles Gilman, o.s.b.
Abbey of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, Canada“The Lord said to Francis, “Rebuild my house which as you see has fallen in ruin.”
Dear friends,
Did you see the Mass of Inauguration today and read the full homily.? The liturgy was beautiful (in Latin), the music superb and the homily first class (and somewhat shorter than his predecessors). It would not surprise me in the least that he will keep Monsignor Marini (the papal Master of Ceremonies) on board. The Pope is not a singer. So he does the right thing by not trying. At same time he is a very recollected and prayerful celebrant.
I can not imagine that he will not carry on the Reform of the Reform of the liturgy. It just won’t be as spikey as some had hoped, thereby making it more accessible to the whole Church.
One can already see that doctrinally and spiritually he is very much part of the hermeneutic of continuity in terms of the appropriation and understanding of Vatican II.
As for Pope Benedict ,he has given us a treasury of Theological, Spiritual, and Liturgical riches in his writings and personal example that will nourish the Church for a long time to come.
The homage that Pope Francis paid to him at the beginning of his homily today was truly touching.I share these thoughts with you as a monk of the Solesmes Congregation and a child of the Oxford and Anglo-Catholic movements. Is not Pope Francis’ passion for the poor just that intense living out of the implications of the Incarnation “with all of its enormous consequences” so dear to Dom Guéranger and the great Anglo-Catholic slum priests of the 19th and 20th centuries centuries?
Bishop Frank Weston of Zanzibar was the great hero of the Anglo-Catholic movement in the early 20th century. He gave a now famous speech at the Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1923 at the Albert Hall in London entitled Our Present Duty. These are his concluding words. The photo of Cardinal Bergoglio says the rest.
“But I say to you, and I say it to you with all the earnestness that I have, that if you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to come out from before your Tabernacle and walk, with Christ mystically present in you, out into the streets of this country, and find the same Jesus in the people of your cities and your villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.
Now mark that—this is the Gospel truth. If you are prepared to say that the Anglo-Catholic is at perfect liberty to rake in all the money he can get no matter what the wages are that are paid, no matter what the conditions are under which people work; if you say that the Anglo-Catholic has a right to hold his peace while his fellow citizens are living in hovels below the levels of the streets, this I say to you, that you do not yet know the Lord Jesus in his Sacrament. You have begun with the Christ of Bethlehem, you have gone on to know something of the Christ of Calvary—but the Christ of the Sacrament, not yet. Oh brethren! if only you listen to-night your movement is going to sweep England. If you listen. I am not talking economics, I do not understand them. I am not talking politics, I do not understand them. I am talking the Gospel, and I say to you this: If you are Christians then your Jesus is one and the same: Jesus on the Throne of his glory, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus received into your hearts in Communion, Jesus with you mystically as you pray, and Jesus enthroned in the hearts and bodies of his brothers and sisters up and down this country. And it is folly—it is madness—to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children. It cannot be done.
There then, as I conceive it, is your present duty; and I beg you, brethren, as you love the Lord Jesus, consider that it is at least possible that this is the new light that the Congress was to bring to us. You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have begun to get your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet..”