Chant Café

Whenever I teach children Gregorian chant, I make a point of mentioning that back when I was their age, there was no one to teach me how to sing Gregorian chant. Their eyes widen: to these privileged few, having chant teachers is something to take for granted.

In an ideal world, every Catholic child could say the same.

Gregorian chant is native territory for children. It’s simple rather than harmonic–nothing but one melodic line. It’s beautiful. Every once in a while I will hear an absence of singing, and look over to catch one of my students looking off into the distance, absorbed in contemplation. And, it is united to the sacred text, with a power to speak to the Christian soul the song of salvation.

I suggest to the children that maybe when they grow up, they can teach chant too.

For those who would like to pass on this art to children, there is an opportunity to learn from an expert. Under the patronage of the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship, Mary Ann Carr Wilson will be presenting a four-day workshop that trains music teachers and choir directors to conduct chant camps.

A chant camp is a multi-day learning experience, something like a choir rehearsal, and something like a musical Vacation Bible School. This intensive learning experience, which includes plenty of recreational time as well, is a way to instantly form a children’s choir for a parish or school.

Putting on a Chant Camp, or any week-long event, is a daunting prospect, which is why this workshop is such a brilliant idea. Mary Ann, who has masterminded chant camps in several cities for nearly a decade, will teach people how to hold these revolutionary events in their own settings.

Children remember everything. The other day I saw a child whom I’d last taught a year ago, and he began singing this Alleluia for me–and then we sang it together. Just like the Church should be.

From Commonweal (!!)

Archbishop Chaput turns over his weekly column to a college-age Catholic, to hear about his experience of living a life of faith.

It’s in listening to God with the ears of our hearts that we’re given the opportunity to say yes to God’s call. It’s by our personal yes that we embark on our own “decisive missions” — our vocations — and it’s our mission that makes life with Christ such a wonderful pursuit to be shared with others. This is how authentic, nurturing Catholic community is built, and this is how, with renewed focus and zeal on the part of the Church, young people can claim their faith and set off on faith’s great adventure.

More here.

After the Angelus

Dear brothers and sisters,
I would like once again to bring to the beloved Korean people a particular thought in friendship and prayer. The talks that will take place in the coming days in Singapore can contribute to the development of a positive path, which will ensure a peaceful future for the Korean Peninsula and for the whole world. This is why we pray to the Lord. Together, let us pray to Our Lady, Queen of Korea, to accompany these talks.
[“Ave Maria…”]

–Pope Francis, today.

The Korean peninsula expresses its unity in a simple but hauntingly beautiful song of longing, the Arirang.

Musician Randolph Nichols offers reflections on a work of art that depicts the Kingship of Christ among the lowly:

A year ago this Corpus Christi Sunday I listened to Fr. Michael Kerper, pastor of St. Patrick’s Church in Nashua, NH, develop his homily around a painting of the Irish artist Aloysius O’Kelly (1853-1936). Until that moment I was unaware that Ireland had produced any prominent painters. I suppose one can be forgiven that lapse given that O’Kelly’s work in question, “Mass in a Connemara Cabin” (1883) – the only painting of an Irish subject ever to be exhibited at a prestigious Paris salon – vanished at the end of the nineteenth century and remained missing for a century before turning up in a rectory in Edinburgh. That painting now resides in the National Gallery of Ireland.

“Mass in a Connemara Cabin” by Aloysius O’Kelly (1883)

As a painter, O’Kelly doesn’t demonstrate any of the breakthrough developments of his more famous contemporaries like Monet, Manet, or Degas and the religious subject of the aforementioned painting was by then out of fashion. There is something about “Mass in a Connemara Cabin,” however, that compels. It successfully captures the mood and atmosphere of a particular time, place and people and the viewer senses the religious, political and economic repression without having to know the details of 19th-century Irish life.

Looking closely at the painting, many factors come into play: the claustrophobic feel of enclosure, the women’s well-worn yet evocative shawls and scarves, the kneeling bodies directed toward the focal point – the young white-clad priest (even the cupboard dishware leans toward him); and of course, there is that dramatic gesture of the woman in the lower right corner.

As its title suggests, the painting reflects the deep piety of parishioners crowded into someone’s home as a young priest says Mass. Others see more, particularly since the priest seems to be giving the final blessing and that Aloysius O’Kelly and his family were steeped in revolutionary politics. His three brothers were Fenians and his sister married into the family of James Stephens, founder of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. After the failed Rising of 1867 two of the artist’s brothers were exiled to New York and during this period Aloysius moved to Paris to begin studying at the École des Beaux-Arts.

After O’Kelly returned to Ireland in the early 1880s, he began to visually capture the bleak existence of working class people on the west coast during very turbulent times. Against the backdrop of the struggle between tenants and landlords, the celebration of Mass was often a precursor to social and political gatherings. The significance of O’Kelly’s Mass may not be the Mass itself but what comes after, the unseen but anticipated.

However you read this painting, I find painful irony contrasting recent events in Ireland with this scene of devotion from the early 1880s.

Come on over to my blog at Sacred miscellany and enjoy this thoughtful arrangement by Eriks Esenvalds.

Subscribe to my blog or try to come by regularly if you like. Always a cappella and always sacred!

Wishing you all the best! Mary Jane

There is still some time and still some places available for singers who want to have a ripping good time singing chant and polyphony, networking and hanging out with lovers of sacred liturgical music, working with some of the “best of the block” in the field, and taking their own skills and experience up to another level.

From June 25 to June 30, 2018, there will be beautiful music at the lakeside campus of Loyola University, with  Masses celebrated in the Madonna della Strada chapel. Extraordinary Form, Ordinary Form, Latin and English, and now Spanish! Head over to the CMAA website and see all the opportunities to sing music you love.

If you’re a beginner at singing, fear not! The basics of chant are taught and there is a special choir to introduce you to the intricacies of polyphony. There’s no “karaoke choir” here. Instead you have a chance to work on skills with a welcoming community. Everyone was a beginner once upon a time; the best of us remember it!

Put the kitchen remodel on hold, see if the car won’t hold out one more year, whatever! Come to Chicago and discover the joy of great liturgical music that YOU are a part of.

Your spirits will be lifted and your faith strengthened. What more do you want?

See you at Loyola in June!