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Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Interview with Paul Ford

Composer Paul Ford, who works with the Liturgical Press, has long been an advocate of using the propers of the Mass as the basis of ritual song. His new collection pushes the paradigm of unaccompanied, vocal singing of the propers to new areas that includes ordinary chants, dialogues, and all the propers of the Mass, to be sung in unison or parts. He graciously agreed to an interview this morning.

You can see samples of the new collection here

Composer Paul Ford is interviewed by Jeffrey Tucker of the ChantCafe.com from Church Music Association of Amer on Vimeo.

Posted on by Mr. C

“Majesty” as a cure for the litmusic doldrums?

Over at INSIDECATHOLIC commentator “Mena” offers:

Also standing in the way of this one is the complacency of parishioners, and the multi-generational conflict about subjecting the the Mass to the whims of “progress.” I can’t be the only Catholic under 35 (or 45, 55, 65…) who questions the wisdom of the the hippie generation’s imprint on liturgy. A little majesty now and then is a good thing.

As a parish Director of Music for just now over four decades, I think Mena’s spot on with one observation, and wants to be overly compensated on the other side of that reality and equation. Complacency is not merely a symptom of the Church’s liturgical dis-ease, it has metasticized its way into the mindset of the vast majority of all the “stakeholders,” office ministers and lay faithful alike. The institutional mechanisms that have grafted convenience to obligation, such as entitlements to pulp missal subscriptions and the consumerist result of assured obsolecense guaranteeing a passive demand that private publishers, not the Church, are happy to maintain.
Priest/Celebrants also daily wrestle with routine as they perceive it, rather than office and opportunity, and many of them retreat to insulation from “community” even if they’re lucky to have vicars sharing a rectory. The old insulations, destructive behaviors or addictions, are too dangerous. So many of them manage to create “make work” daily lives like their secular counterpart CEO/CFO’s, checking out trends, reports, presiding over endless meetings, surfing the web and installing “clipboard management” modes of parish plant management. I mean no disrespect here; this is what the post-conciliar church has demanded of them.

To me the notion that the fruits of the VII reform were sour, and thus is causal to liturgical malaise is a red herring. The problem isn’t the “form” of the rite, but it’s perfunctory, un-prepared and cultic bassackwardness performance by people who spend far less time preparing than the poor soul with a guitar and six chords who rehearses weekly, and still can’t get it right.

Sure, there’s no majesty in this desolation. But the cure isn’t necessarily found through complaint, convenience or complacency. And majesty, alone, is a short term remedy.

The real path to healing our rites is a return by all to foundational humility.

That is already present in the Roman Graduals and Missals, in our own native musical forms. And the Church clearly teaches that adherence to the uniquely humble and supremely confident song is to be found in the chanted Psalter and ordinaries. What language is used is secondary protocol.

So, I’m wary of any discussions that have, as an underlying agenda, a commerce-interest. Whether this is manifested by the banal but popular forms, or the faux-majesty of tympani and trumpet motets and Masses that are trotted out at papal Masses of all stripes, the disease persists and remedy furthers itself away.

Whether one can credibly, in true humility, lead the singing of James Moore’s “Taste and See” without the fake inculturated trappings, or chants “Gustate et videte” with precision and beauty, is what matters in the liturgical vineyard.

I don’t see a lot of humility present in many quarters of modern culture, including the sacral. People should really take into consideration that what and how they sing at worship is, literally, singing for their very lives.

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

Holy Monday in Seville


Fr Luke made a very profound point yesterday as we watched procession after procession in the Cathedral of Seville on Palm Sunday night. As priests, we are so used to being the ones who guide others spiritually, who tell others to have faith, that we forget that we have to be led as well. It was a pious thought, but we were able to put into practice today.
Don Pedro let us observe the processions very much as outsiders yesterday. This morning he said, “OK, so today we are going to do the processions my way.” As an Anglo-Saxon, I have always seen gate-crashing as a particular form of rudeness. I could never imagine just walking around in and out of processions like I owned Seville. But, lucky for us, Don Pedro does not have any of that Victoria reserve, and so we spent most of the day winding our way through one procession after another, and most of that time directly in front of the floats. Not only did no one consider the native son and his two American friends as interlopers, we were always guided to the spot where we needed to be.
Of course, directly in front of the floats you have Spanish army officers in their black plastic hats, servers in their albs and dalmatics, precentors of the confraternities with sticks they know how to use to keep order, and lots of people. There is perpetual motion, and even when the precentor uses the silver knocker to signal a stop, the stop is less a period than a comma, a brief pause in an other wise endless undulation of bodies.
How could there not be accidents? Men carrying literally tons of precious metal, sixteenth-century statues, velvet cloths, candles and flowers in abundance. What could go wrong? Everything! But it doesn’t. How? These processions are not choreographed with the precision of military ceremonies; they are as natural as the Sevillians are natural.
During the procession today of the Condemnation of Christ by Caiaphas and Annas, I began to see why nothing ever goes wrong. Trust. As a priest, I say I trust in God, I tell others to trust in God, but deep down inside I am as much of a pragmatic cynic as anyone else. How do you walk backwards in and through hundreds of people when there is a two ton float coming at you with men underneath it who can’t see what is in front of you? The costoleros who carry the floats are practically blindfolded and do their work in the hot, sweaty undercroft of the float. Their only instructions are given by the loud banging of the knocker. It is all instinct and obedience. For those in the light of day participating in the procession, everyone guides each other by hands, arms and elbows as the procession moves its way as one united motion.
This procession is different than many processions, because at certain points, the costoleros in unison not only jump high in the air, but they move as rapidly as 36 men holding two tons on their backs can move. The effect is one that I can only akin to the most majestic waves of the ocean, where sea foam is replaced by silver filigree and salt spray by velvet and lace. And the thousands of people that are in the procession all have to trust each other and work together as a team, all in instinct to the need for survival and obedience to the knocker. And as we three priests were right in front of the float, we more than anyone else had to trust the men who had our back, quite literally.
And so the dance began: tons of metal and statue rising up and down rolling forward like the crashing waves on the seashore, and the masses of people going with it like so many perfect surfers. But what we saw from our vantage point was not the azure sky or the reddening afternoon sun. At one crest of the wave it was the resigned face of the Savior, then a slave holding on his back the Law, another time Annas looking confused and bewildered. The music was a plaintive soliloquy of loss, pain and sorrow, and as I let myself be moved physically in this incredibly trusting way, I was able to surrender my own self-will to the obedience of the motion initiated by the Christ in whose honour this dance was held. Had I stood motionless, or tried to do my own thing, I would have been crushed, and would have imperiled other people’s lives. But I resigned my own will to the nature of the thing, and as such experienced a movement, bodily and spiritually, which lifted me beyond myself to trust in the LORD and my fellow men.
I nearly almost fainted from the beauty of it all, and that’s not being overly dramatic. It was that powerful. And when we finished the procession, we realized that we had traversed half of the city center of Seville in what seemed like a moment. But for Don Pedro the Indefatigible, we had other Prcoessions to participate in, each time as close as the first.
We followed Christ El Cautivo, bound in ropes and clothed in the purple livery of mock royalty. We followed the Betrayal of Christ by a Judas who was inches away from the kiss that sent the Prince of Peace to the Cross. We followed the Blessed Mother under her several titles and in her manifold dress as she followed her Son, pierced with a sorrow none of us can ever imagine. All the while, the music alternated between the minor Passion symphonies of the mysteries of Christ and the prophetic notes of joy that accompanied the Lady of Sorrows as she grieved for the pain of her Son while basking in the faith in his Resurrection to come.
Back in the parish of Moron, preparations were underway for the village’s Spy Wednesday procession. Thousands of dollars of flowers arrived from all over Europe as the men who would be disguised under robes unloaded and prepared them and the thousands of dollars of candles that would go on the one float they were preparing. It made me wonder. How on earth could a small village afford all of this? There were no wealthy Sevillian patrons of the aristocracy who could underwrite the thousands of dollars that went into making one float, much less the thousands of floats that floated all over Andalucia every Holy Week. And none of that compared at all with the inestimable value of the floats themselves.
My question was answered. We went to another village called El Coronil where a team of grandmothers were working overtime making pestinas, fried pastries soaked in honey, lemon and sesame fabulousness, as some wag called it. We knocked on the door and were ushered into the Kitchen that Makes Millions, a modest kitchenette in someone’s home where the abuelitas of El Coronil make this delicious pastry.
At first it seems odd to make pastries of this lavishness during Holy Week. I thought they must be for Easter. But in Seville, penance during Semana Santa does not apply to food. According to venerable custom, anyone in Seville who participates in the processions is exempt from fast and abstinence during Holy Week. The anxiously awaited fax from the Archbishop’s Palace arrived on Don Pedro’s IPhone granting those who participate a dispensation from fasting and abstinence on Good Friday.
So are the Spaniards weaklings who just can’t fast one day of the year? Are they really that pathetic? Actually, the immense physical exertion that those who participate in the procession, particularly the costoleros and the penitents, endure, is so great that they must eat big and healthy meals with lots of protein and carbs to manage. The bodily penance that they endure is more than anyone can imagine, and, in order to do the penance, they have to eat.
This is where we see the wisdom of Mother Church even in her laws on fast and abstinence, and how she adapts herself to unique situations all over the world. It also gives a unique character to the ascetical life of Seville’s Holy Week. The Manichean, Jansenistic, Puritanical tendency that stalks Catholicism from time to time tends to want to whitewash, denude and hyperperfect everything in a Pelagian attempt to use soulless penance to channel grace. Thank God for Seville and its Baroque piety, which destroys that heresy. For this spirituality, penance is done in an extreme way amidst a sumptuous and sensual display that delights the senses and moves the heart. Just as in the Incarnation, Divinity charges mortal flesh with the grandeur of God, during Holy Week, mortified flesh and bone meets a Christ whose real human suffering is retold in a display of beauty, chant and light.
As the day went on and the procession continued, silence descended upon the city. As one procession after another prepared for the Procession of the Cross, silence reigned. We were entering into a place where words and sound could do nothing. There was only the Cross, and that to end the evening. The silence of the tomb came down as so many droplets of dew from the heavens, bringing Seville to serenity.
But, the Blessed Virgin of the Waters was not far behind. And so, the silence was unexpectedly broken by a band out of nowhere, as joyful notes poured forth into a torrent of expectation for what would come on Easter Sunday. The great wood and copper doors of the Cathedral were closed shut and Seville had an early night at 1am.
Check out my bad photos at the Picasa Web linked in the first article, Semana Santa en Sevilla.

https://picasaweb.google.com/117938431262711129585/SemanaSantaSevilla?authkey=Gv1sRgCNXMnI3eo9a8iAE#

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

A Missal for the Choir

Fr. Christopher Smith wrote an outstanding article about the strange way in which the Roman Rite has become Balkanized in a single town, with different understandings prevailing at each parish. It is even true within single parishes, where we find everything from a Gregorian chant Mass to a rock-bad Mass, each marketed to a separate demographic.

There is an even stranger problem that affects every single Mass, one that has little precedent in the history of the ritual. The problem is that the the printed materials for the celebrant are hardly ever seen by the choir. The choir’s materials are hardly ever seen by the celebrant. The people in the pews have a different set, and there is yet another set for readers who handle the prayers of the faithful. The patchwork comes together in the end, more or less, but there are important pieces missed along the way.

A good example comes in Holy Week this year. The Sacramentary contains many chants that the choir know nothing about. Missalettes and planning guides do not have them. They are there for the priest but the priest is not designated to sing them. As a result, they do not get sung at all. Nor is the director of music in a position to assist the celebrant with his chants. Choir leaders figure that all they need to know is in their planning guide and the Missalette. But when you actually compared the two resources, you get a picture of a different ritual.

In fact, I would venture a guess that most people involved in a conventional parish music program have never opened a Sacramentary, much less follow what is going on in there week to week. They don’t have to. Nor do most priests bother to look at the planning guides that the choir uses to provide music for the liturgy. They are pretty much in the dark as to why the choir sings what it sings. The problem is further complicated by the differences that are embedded in the Sacramentary versus the Gradual itself.

It is helpful to contrast this what the old Mass. The Roman Missal (there was no separate Letionary) contained all the words said at the Mass. The Roman Gradual had the same words insofar as they are to be sung. The Liber Usualis was a useful compendium that allowed the singers to see exactly what was being done. The customized versions for the celebrant added the detailed rubrics that pertained to the celebrant but otherwise. Laypeople could use the Liber or any handheld Missal that was the same except that it added notes that pertained to the laity.

In other words, everyone was on the same page, so to speak.

I’ve been very critical of the current Sacramentary but in the balance, it is a better musical resource for ritual music than the Missalettes. The trouble is that hardly anyone other than the priest really saw this music. A knowledgeable choir director once told me that my own parish is the only one has had ever hear of that actually used the music in the Sacramentary for ritual music for the congregation. It is not great, but it is good, and much better than you find elsewhere.

Will this strange situation change with the new translation? Certainly the Bishops and ICEL are hoping for a change. This is why they are requiring that the chants from the Missal itself be printed in all musical resources in the pew. And the chants are not to be re-rendered in a new rhythm but printed exactly as they appear in the Missal itself.

This is a huge step. The people, the priest, and the people will have all the same basic music for the Mass. This will tie together a major loose end at currently exists in the liturgical structure.

Even so, there are limits to the mandate. There Missal will contain many chants that are not likely to be printed in the pew editions or the choir editions. The danger here is that they will go unsung and unknown.

Now to the action item. Pastors should purchase an additional Missal just for the loft or the choir room. It should be there on a stand for easy access. It should be maintained so that the ribbons mark the day. Choir directors and organists should be encouraged to look at the liturgical text every day or every week so that they will know what is coming and what the options are.

Choir directors should be encourage to look critically at the material from the major publishers to make sure that their resources are not leaving out important information or critical music.

It will also help if the choir director can see what the priest sees, and thereby be in a position to encourage singing from the sanctuary. The director can point out to the pastor that such and such passage can be beautiful sung, and then demonstrate how easy it is. This will help break down the communication barriers that currently exist.

This one simple step will take us a long way to re-integrating the loft and the sanctuary, which is essential to putting the Roman ritual back together again.

Many companies are printing new Missals. The most elaborate versions can cost up to $500 but there are smaller versions with less elaborate bindings that are extremely affordable. This should be part of the parish budget. If it is not, someone in the parish should volunteer to pay the bill to make this happen.

Again, this seems like an unlikely change to advance the reform of the reform, but the small step of providing and using a new Roman Missal in the choir room can do a great deal of good.

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

Semana Santa en Sevilla


I knew I was not in America anymore when on the night before Palm Sunday we walked into a bar in Moron de la Frontera. The bar belonged to the Confraternity of Loreto, and the men and their sons were all abuzz, for the next day would begin once again the most famous celebration annual celebration of Holy Week: Semana Santa in Seville. The men were comparing the knots that had developed on the backside of their necks after years of carrying floats called pasos in these celebrations. And the young boys looked up to their fathers and the day that they too would carry in their bodies the sign of the Passion they celebrate in such a sumptuous manner.

Two Americans, Fr Luke Melcher of Louisiana, and I, went to visit our friend Don Pedro, who is Chaplain to the American Air Force Base in Moron as well as pastor of two parishes outside of Seville. This Palm Sunday morning I celebrated the Mass in the parish of Moron for the community there, and after Mass we began the great adventure Semana Santa in Seville.

I had heard of the world-famous celebrations of Holy Week before. I had seen the pictures on the Internet and Youtube videos. But nothing would prepare me for what really is the largest Catholic block party in the world. Of course, before we could begin, we had to have lunch in the one of the chic quarters of cosmopolitan Seville and plan out our day.

Good thing there is a IPhone App for Semana Santa in Seville. But we also had the ABC Newspaper’s several sheet spread timetable to choose which processions we would follow. As we drove into the city, we were listening to the ESPN of Religion, a running commentary on the radio of every moment of every procession. Of course, having as our guide one of the most well-connected young priests in Spain was like having an all-access pass to be up close and personal with this amazing religious event.

In the early afternoon, we were able to work our way to the area around the famous Cathedral with its imposing belltower, the Giralda. To say that it was crowded does not begin to describe it. But on this incredibly hot afternoon, what struck me was how everyone was dressed. Nowhere in all of my travels through the Americas and Europe have I ever seen such a large number of snazzily and preppily dressed people. I don’t know if the indomitable blogger of the Sartorialist has ever been to Semana Santa, but he has no idea what he is missing!

Every procession follows a similar pattern. The first float depicts a mystery during the events of the Passion. The statue compositions rest upon wooden or silver and gold tables and often weigh up to two tons. Beneath them are from 36 to 56 men who carry the float. Each float has an elaborately carved knocker. A precentor uses the knocker to give instructions to the litter-bearers, who are hidden beneath the float by richly embroidered velvet cloths. Water boys occasionally steal under the floats to bring these men something to hydrate them. The famous penitents, in their distinctive robes and hoods, process in full anonymity. Behind the float depicting the mystery of Christ is a band, always playing a hymn in a minor key. Not far behind are more penitents. Many carry silver staffs, crosses, or the Rule of the Confraternity that sponsors that procession, often a book itself encased in silver.

Each procession also has another float with a statue of the Blessed Virgin, under a canopy, often of fine silver filigree work. Each canopy as eight or ten poles, and tassels of precious metal. Around the Blessed Virgin is a forest of candles as well as wax flowers as well as real flowers. The interesting thing about these floats is that everything is in motion. While the candlesticks, poles, and vases are all attached, they are attached in such a way that the entire float moves graciously and there is a peculiar sound of metal in perpetual motion. Acolytes with crucifix and torches are vested in dalmatics of velvet and couched gold embroidery over handmade lace albs, and are accompanied by several thurifers with so many charcoals in their censers I still do not know they did not melt every thurible in Andalucia. Following the Marian float would be another band, playing lively music in a major key.

The music for the procession that the bands use dates mostly from the 19th century, and not a small portion of it sounds suspiciously Puccini-inspired. Occasionally from a balcony a Spanish VIP with a stentorian voice would intone a saeta, a haunting Arabic-sounding serenade to the Blessed Virgin.

While this is the general procedure for a procession, it is important to understand that at any given time, day or night, for an entire week, there are several elaborate processions going on at the same time. As Our Lord of Victories, triumphant in his resignation to the chalice of suffering was making His way in front of us, behind us He was also marching triumphantly into Jerusalem as two processions skirted opposite ends of the plaza.

One of the most edifying things was the comportment of the faithful. Extraordinarily well-dressed young men and women climbed on top of anything that could give them a better view and kept a reverent silence when the floats passed, and the Sign of the Cross was reverently made. In some of the processions, those who processed walk backwards as a sign of reverence to Our LORD and Our Lady.

After several hours of watching processions under the blazing Andalucian sun, we stopped into Starbucks (America, America everywhere) for cold Frapuccinos. By this point, around 9pm, I was ready for a liter of sangria and bed. But the night had just begun.

We went to the Cathedral where the Confraternity that Don Pedro’s family has belonged to since time immemorial, La Estrella (Stella Maris), was beginning its procession. He was avidly looking for his brother, but how do you find your brother when he is dressed in a robe and a hood along with thousands upon thousands of other penitents? But they did find each other, and so Fr Luke and I gazed upon the delightful scene of two brothers, one a priest and the other penitent, chatting in the nave of the Cathedral, one shrouded in anonymity and the other in his clerics, taking part in a ritual that existed centuries before Christopher Columbus, who awaits the Resurrection of the Body in the Cathedral of Seville, ever thought of a voyage of discovery.

We spent several hours in the Cathedral, working our way through the endless files of people in procession. The Archbishop of Seville and his Auxiliary were seated in a makeshift throne room in a side chapel where we were granted a brief but warm audience. But one of the most emotional scenes of the day was when the Archbishop rushed to one of the floats, and went under it and knelt before the men who carried it. With those poor men who had been carrying the float through the streets of Seville for hours he prayed. He asked them to pray with him for vocations to the priesthood, for holy priests to shepherd the flock of Christ. He prayed for World Youth Day, for young people. He begged their prayers and prayed with them. Fortified by the blessing of their shepherd, at the sound of the knocker, the men in unison jumped as high as they could in the air and the procession began once again.

The greatest honour of the day was to accompany this procession through the streets of Seville, rather than being mere spectators. We saw so many tears of gratitude, prayer, and repentance. We saw so many acts of kindness to the penitents and the float-bearers. And what an edifying thing to see among the hooded throngs barefoot children walking through the streets with candles taller than they were, all meditating in their own way on the Passion of Christ.

It was quite the introduction to Holy Week. It is now after 3am. The streets of Seville are still thronged with worshippers, and they are still at it. They are predicting rain this week, but as absolutely exhausted as I am (and I can only imagine those who carried the floats or walked barefoot through the streets in procession), I am praying ad repellendam tempestates. I do not want to miss a minute of this extraordinarily Catholic manifestation of faith.

As one float passed by of Christ silent before the unjust judgment of Pilate, I was moved to pray for the Church, for her priests, for those who have been abused, for those who have been accused falsely, for all of those who do not have a voice. Somehow the prayer that comes from meditation over a scene like that seems so much useful than the angry words, political machinations and ideological battles which ruin our lives in society and the Church.

Something like Semana Santa is not strictly liturgical. It does not correspond to historical-critical interpretations of Scripture. It is impervious to the politically correct mindset of those who would force reforms on the Church hardly consonant with Catholic tradition. It is folkloric, but it is not pagan. It is a massive movement of humanity in dialogue with the power of the narrative of the Passion of Christ. A movement which brings tears to the eyes, which are tears of joy, repentance, fatigue, and wonder.

The world needs Semana Santa. The world needs Semana Santa because in Seville at least, people recognize their own fragility and limitations in a dramatic way. But they recognize even more that there is Victory in the Blood of Jesus, and they call down the power of that Blood upon them and the whole world in prayer, penance and works of mercy. I can hardly think of a better way to live Holy Week than that.

Check out my PicasaWeb Album of Semana Santa pictures I will be updating ALL WEEK LONG!