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Posted on by Keith Fraser

Steven First after Christe

Perhaps because in the UK the 26th December is a bank holiday, that like this year sometimes falls on a Sunday and liturgically then becomes the 2nd Sunday of Christmas, the celebration of the feast of St Steven has fallen largely into disuse.

In medieval times it was a feast of some significance , especially in continental Europe, yet surprisingly there is little music dedicated to the feast. Of the pieces I am most familiar with are masses composed by the English composers Ludford and Sheppard. Of the first composer, Missa Stephanum Lapidaverunt, is one of his festival masses, and a wonder to listen to but with a 12 minute long Gloria and at times almost impenitrable polyphony of 10 parts hardly practical. Sheppard’s mass is perhaps more accessible in as much as the movements are around 4 minutes a piece, and therefore more liturgically useful and textually audible.

Sheppard’s other work to accompany the feast is the motet Steven First After Christe, a piece of contrafractum. For those unfamiliar with contrafractum, they are compositions often considered parts of a longer piece, which was often sung antinphonally and the contrafrtactum itself is the verse to which the response is sung, and many of them are the only parts that have survived becauyse they stand as short mnotets in their own right. Usually composed for 3 voices, it would likely have been written in a time signature refered to as “Perfect Time” and indicated not with the usual 3/3 time signature but by a small circle next to the key signature. All of this use fo the “3” of course was a reference to the Trinity, hence the allegory with perfection and continuity.

Steven First After Christe of course refers to the proximity of the feast to Christmas Day, but also has the double meaning of the signifcance of the feast in some territories, and it would be nice to see it once again be a feast of porominance.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Reflections on Whether Gregorian Chant Is Pastoral

This morning at Mass, at a very mainstream parish packed with visitors from all places around the country, the entrance song was Puer Natus Est, from the Graduale Romanum. It was sung by two women’s voice alone, without any accompaniment. They sang the antiphon, the Psalm, Gloria Patri, and the antiphon again. The procession of the celebrant and servers took place during this time, along with the incensing of the altar. An amazing stillness settled over the entire place, to the point that one sensed not a single muscle movement from among the hundreds of people in the congregation.

To be sure, this is not entirely what people might have expected. The usual fare is a familiar carol, perhaps gussied up with trumpets and flutes and various other things played by the musicians who mysteriously emerge to be featured at these splashy holiday events, and then vanish once it is over.

This is did not happen this Christmas. Instead, what the people  heard was woven into the fabric of the Mass as thoroughly as the celebrant’s part. As just as the people do not say everything with the celebrant, they did not sing with the schola; they stood and listened instead.

But did they participate? Most certainly. The environment and the music itself nearly compels it. How so? A floating chant this beautiful, and yet strangely minimalist in this world filled with incredible noise and racket at every turn, does not provide the complete experience with its notes or words alone. It is so pure, so comparatively sparse, even stark but full of movement, and where? It is moving toward something and upwards to something not found outside these walls. The chant’s very remoteness elicits something from within us, drawing on our hearts and minds and asking us to provide something to complete the picture.

And what is that something? It is a prayer. That prayer can be for something very personal, for something or someone that has been causing us pain. It could be about terrible things we’ve done or opportunities we’ve missed to do good. It could be a prayer of thanks for the wonderful blessings that surround us. It might be even more vague: perhaps just a sense of having some connection to the transcendent for the first time in a very long time. It gives us a sense of peace and safety even in times of turmoil.

The chant lasts a surprisingly long period of time but somehow not long enough, because this peace we feel is luxurious. It feels right, perhaps not at first but after a few minutes as time itself begins to fade in importance. The discomfort we felt at the outset, when we heard those initial notes that seemed so isolated, has given way to comfort and a realize we are surrounded. We are now used to the sound of still voices singing one line and we realize that there is only one place and one activity that provides us with this sense of transcendence. We have entered the presence of holy things. God is with us. Christmas is not just a history; it is a reality and this reality is being lived in the liturgy.

We don’t sing chant only because it is what is being asked of us; we sing chant because the liturgy loves it and the faith loves it and because it is, speaking from the purely pastoral point of view, exactly what we need and want. Hearing it and experiencing it is a challenge and it does ask something from everyone; and that something is the humility to listen to the Word and to dare to allow our hearts to be changed.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Benedict XVI on the Gloria

“Saint Luke does not say that the angels sang. He states quite soberly: the heavenly host praised God and said: “Glory to God in the highest” (Lk 2:13f.). But men have always known that the speech of angels is different from human speech, and that above all on this night of joyful proclamation it was in song that they extolled God’s heavenly glory. So this angelic song has been recognized from the earliest days as music proceeding from God, indeed, as an invitation to join in the singing with hearts filled with joy at the fact that we are loved by God. Cantare amantis est, says Saint Augustine: singing belongs to one who loves. Thus, down the centuries, the angels’ song has again and again become a song of love and joy, a song of those who love. At this hour, full of thankfulness, we join in the singing of all the centuries, singing that unites heaven and earth, angels and men. Yes, indeed, we praise you for your glory. We praise you for your love. Grant that we may join with you in love more and more and thus become people of peace. Amen.” —Pope Benedict XVI, Homily at Christmas Missa in Nocte, 24 December 2010

H/T cantare amantis est

Posted on by Mr. C

I Love My Choirs

We’ve had quite a week out here in the Central Valley of California. Not everyone would regard our once parched and now deluged farmlands as having been the result of “rorate caeli,” but I tend to see His handiwork in all things. At our parish, from a week ago to now as I type, the students of our parochial school performed the annual Christmas Musical twice, our Festival Choir presented a concert “commissioned” by our pastor to commemorate the 150th anniversary of our parish, and we had one helluva rollicking final rehearsal last night before tomorrow night’s Midnight Mass.

And, as it should always be, the magic of what choirs are and do, was omnipresent in last night’s rehearsal which prompts me to post this reflection. The fulfillment and joy of what choirs do at performance testifies to the beauty and grace of God’s creation and creatures and that it is offered back to Him in the form of a gift to His people is a most natural endeavor. But, who we really are is the essence of rehearsal, a pilgrim band.

For my friend RedCat I will try to keep this as direct and concise as how one lovingly strokes the downy spine of a beloved pet. (Spoiler! I fail miserably at the attempt.)

I love the kids I teach. They seem to love me. (I know they actually do love me, but I’m wired to wonder why and how that happens?) The wee ones, my youngest grandson in Pre-K among them, singing Appalachian carols like “Hurry On,” “Dear Little Stranger,” and “I Wonder as I Wander” with precision and abandon holding hands! There is no rose of such virtue. The elementary grades carrying the heavy water of singing the musical numbers in two parts while the middle school kids, especially the boys, whose voices are all over the map, give more than credible and sometimes tenderly resigned efforts. Make no mistake, they sing as a choir, in tune, legato, not English boychoir blend, but blended pleasingly to the ear.

I’ve heard plenty of school “choirs” over the last two decades where not a shred of melody could be found in the tattersall mess, and my kids ain’t one of those choirs. And then, we have my 8th grade Bell Choir kids- with precious little rehearsal time amongst their fall semester duties, undaunted by a new arrangement (mine) of the Ukranian Bell Carol, getting those running eighth note scales which none of their predecessors could aspire to master. These young men and women tortured me as sixth/seventh grade Einsteins/Lady GaGas, and this year, with Malmarks in hand, they don’t ever want the weekly bell rehearsal to end. They sigh “Just one more time, Mr. C” like a mantra every week.

Then there are our schola/ensemble singers who come together for Festival Choir concerts and Midnight Mass. Many of them go back 17 years with Wendy and I, and some pre-date our taking direction of the programs at the parish. They have put up with me and my perfectionist tendencies (that’s stating the case lightly, actually) week after week, year after year. We’ve read and sung the gamut lo these many seasons. This year, with the kind help of MOC and DS (two fine musicologists over at MSF) we took upon the task of honoring civil war and Victorian era American composers’ works. Composers such as Albert RoSewig, whose work was later disavowed (understandably, truth be told) by another Philadelphian, Nicolai Montani. And portions of a classical Mass by J. Cummings Peters that had all too brief moments of brilliance amid many more measures of warmed over Hadyn or Schubert. I added villancicos (as opposed to the Serra Mission hymns along the coastal El Camino Real) and Mexican carols that were so idiosyncratic as they were compelling in beauty and rhythm! The concert was a success.

But I love my choir ever more so after last night’s rehearsal for Christmas Mass. Some of them mentioned their disinclination to repeat the “antique” concert before Midnight Mass and I concurred. So I had gone back and reviewed past programs and pulled out folders of Marenzio, Praetorius, Holst, different versions of the plainsong “Puer natus..” and so forth, and we gleefully read through each of them heartily, with mirth and occasional mischief. And under the enamored and forgiving ear and eye of the Big Elf, democracy ruled the roost and we declared ourselves ready for Christmas! I love my choirs. I don’t wonder after so many years of wandering why we can confidently navigate Marenzio’s “Hodie…” after two or three sing-throughs.

Oh, I do rehearse any blemishes, rest assured. But they’ve become so few and far between after so long. After all, Luca and Michael and Gustav are fast friends whom we don’t visit often enough. And when they show up, we hug them as if they were “engeleinen mit eselein.” And at night’s end, one of my altos who’s resistence to square notes is well documented, offered up that she was glad we chose the plainsong version of “Puer natus…” with the broadest smile of one who’s surprised herself with that realization!

One of our number is a young person, who should be a senior in high school. She was in the 8th grade my first year at the parochial school after public school retirement. She was the brightest and the best of that class. In her frosh year, something neurologically devastating attacked her brain and whole person. Her condition was dire enough to require months of hospitalization at one of our premier university’s medical centers. Constant and profound prayers from our whole school and parish community also attended many different diagnoses and medical regimens over, at least, a year’s time. She stable-ized sufficiently to return home to her family, but her world seems forever changed. But she always loved to sing and we brought her into the parish music program to be a home and haven. This precious child of God might never return to whatever constitutes a normal life. We witnessed another former student undergo a similar malady roughly during the same period who has recovered fully. But, this beautiful, angelic-smiled girl takes her place next to Wendy and gives her all week after week. That (Dr. Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens) is my proof of a loving God.

I write this partially as an antidote to the now polluted discussions at our sister blog forum, at Pray Tell and Catholic Sensibility over what could have presented a golden opportunity for us to collaborate and push through our entrenched ideologies and biases. What was that all about anyway? An assemblage of words, sounds, phonemes intended to honor the Mother of God? And we, pastors and leaders of our own flocks, slavishly held onto our own precious staffs and territories, and collaboration, not to mention peace and harmony disintegrated and the scaffolding for a possible tapestry of joy was literally dismantled.

But, I primarily write this to remind myself that none of what we conjure and consume here, there and everywhere in our encamped blogs, no primer, no Kyriale, no historical tome, no new hymn, no old hymn, nothing that we can express with these alphabetical symbols, is greater than love.

We know how Jesus responded to the interrogation of the Pharisees, who intended to tongue tie the Lord of Lords by asking Him to qualify and quantify the commands of God. And I do love God above all else. But didn’t my Lord deliver one kick-butt rejoinder to their prideful arrogance?

Love one another….as

“Cantare amantis est.”

And in that spirit, I’ll finish with a great axiom by the bard Stephen Stills: “If you can’t be with the One you love, love the one you’re with, love the one you’re with.“