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Posted on by Mr. C

Dr. Invigaro says “Don’t use a wrench as a hammer; someone will get hurt.”

You might remember that a few weeks ago I posted on “Dr. Invigaro’s Prescriptive Solemnity” remedy for liturgical situations and choirs. The good doctor contacted me recently with a few comments and questions he’s since received, and a particular one caught my eye.

“Dear Doc Invigaro,

A significant number of my singers in our choir are converts, some who swam the Tiber before we entered the desert, and many over the intervening 40 years. I have noticed as we have deliberately, slowly, “prescriptively” moved towards propers, chant and polyphony that not a few of my singers apparently miss those occasions that the odd spiritual, the rousing gospel tune, the ubiquitous non-catholic anthem or choral song would be programmed. A few have even remarked that we’ve gone all polyphony, all the time. They didn’t seem to be complimenting my programming. Doc, what do I do?”

Dr. Invigaro then left a few suggestions in his memo:

*Eclecticism in programming is neither friend nor foe. It is a tool among others. For example, in my previous advice I reminded folks that if there are folks (among them even clerics) who just can’t abide the imposition of an Offertorio proper into the mix, and thus displacing the notion of the “hymn of the day” which bridges the scripture readings and homily into the Liturgy of the Word…. a well-thought out choral song could present a golden opportunity. For example, in this devotional month of October, or with the upcoming feasts of the Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe, the late Leon Robert’s “CANTICLE OF MARY” could be the pill that fills the bill. It includes congregation, has a solid gravitas to both refrain and melody that could contrast well with other Marian literature. One doesn’t know if it’s incongruous, jarring or uncomplimentary until one tries. This might also work with many other choral and congregational pieces of recent times. John Foley’s “MAY WE PRAISE YOU” or the Mark Haye’s “PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS” comes to mind.

*In larger parishes where the whole “process” of distributing Holy Communion requires a disproportionately longer time period, one of these eclectic selections could follow the Communio and the Communion Processional, and still allow for reflective silence from all after the Tabernacle Veil is shut. I think of pieces by Lazlo Halmos, such as his proper “CANTATE DOMINO,” that wouldn’t function quite as well if it was programmed at its proper location. Or Stainer’s “GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD,” Brahm’s “HOW LOVELY…” or even a setting of “I HEAR MUSIC IN THE AIR” such as arranged by Alice Parker or John Bell.(Consider editing the text of this one.)

*Of course, if there is a “whipping post” for the odd favorite, it will always remain the terra incognita of the recessional. If you absolutely, positively must “throw a bone” to choir malcontents with pieces like “EVERYTIME I FEEL THE SPIRIT,” or “RIDE ON, KING JESUS,” or Wilhousky’s BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC, then this is that time.

One could bridge the time it takes for the celebrant to have made his procession and retreat by a brief organ postlude, and then launch the sonic rockets.

But, these choices cannot be made willy-nilly. As I said, this eclecticism is a tool. Using a specific wrench as a hammer will be injurious, probably to the choir director, the choir, the congregation and worst of all, the integrity of the Liturgy. But if used with precision, might be another tonic to keep your choir members unified and happy.

Sincerely, Dr. Lucious Invigaro”

Well, I don’t know if this addedum protocol might work for you in your program, but I might just consider this as I continue reconfiguring my own bricks. I expect lots of different mileage variances and stalling might result here, there and everywhere.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

The Anatomy of the Committee

Well, it appears that James MacMillan, the great Scottish composer who wrote music for the Papal Masses in the UK, was put through a strangely familiar Hell in order that his music would be sung at liturgy during the Pope’s visit. The setting was commissioned by people who presumed they were in charge, but then the result was intercepted by a committee that judged the work to be unpastoral, difficult to play, too elaborate, and just not in keeping with the spirit of the Summer of Love that ought to last forever.

Anyone and everyone who works within the current Catholic music milieu knows exactly what he is talking about. The power ideology that drives these notorious committees is slipping, which makes them operate every more in secret and with intensifying viciousness. MacMillan, as sophisticated as he is about the world of Catholic music, was completely blindsided by the smears, innuendo, and sheer ruthlessness of the entire event.

Here is his description of the famed but anonymous committee:

Unknown to me the new setting was taken to a “committee” which has controlled the development of liturgical music in Scotland for some time. Their agenda is to pursue the 1970s Americanised solution to the post-Conciliar vernacular liturgy, to the exclusion of more “traditional” possibilities. They have been known for their hostility to Gregorian chant, for example, but have reluctantly had to get in line since the arrival of Benedict XVI. They also have a commitment to the kind of cod-Celticness that owes more to the soundtracks of The Lord of the Rings and Braveheart, than anything remotely authentic. There has also been a suspicion of professionals with this committee, and many serious musicians in the Church in Scotland have felt excluded from their decisions and processes, or have chosen not to become involved in territory which is felt to be hostile.

It became clear that my new setting had not gone down well with this group. The music was felt to be “not pastoral enough” and there were complaints (yes, complaints!) that it needed a competent organist. The director of music for Bellahouston, a priest and amateur composer, whose baby is this committee, was also informing all who would listen, that the music was “un-singable” and “not fit for purpose”. There seemed to be ongoing attempts to have the new setting dropped from the papal liturgy in Glasgow.

He really nails it here with the identifying marks: Americanization, love of dated popular styles, suspicion of talent, hostility to the practical use of chant, a patronizing attitude toward the laity, a perception that (as the old USCCB document Music in Catholic Worship) styles of the preconciliar past have little to offer the needs of the present.

He concludes his brave and deeply honest article with this: “There is a different “sound” to the new setting, which perhaps owes something to my love of chant, traditional hymnody and authentic folk music, and nothing at all to…dumbed-down, sentimental bubble-gum music which has been shoved down our throats for the last few decades in the Catholic Church. And therein might lie the problem.”

You might say that his article is harsh. Well, he was hurt and treated very badly. He decided to speak out against the persistent problem here, because it has caused and continues to cause wreckage in all parts of the English-speaking world. Thanks to MacMillan’s persistence, the good guys won over the bureaucrats here. Note that he had to forgo his fee. Very sad. But thanks to his work and willingness to tell the truth, art and beauty might eventually prevail.

Posted on by Mr. C

A Father Dade Christmas Concert

With full disclosure, our Advent/Christmas Annual Concert title is a misnomer, though it’s meant as a quaint and humble homage to our founder. Though it’s hard to imagine, Christmas music, carols especially, have proven not to be the centerpiece of sacred seasonal concerts of a hundred-years yore.

We have endeavored to reconstruct a facsimile of “American” Roman Catholic music as it was practiced and heard during the years of Fr. Dade’s formation and service in Philadelphia, and what of that repertoire might have eventually emigrated with him to California, Visalia and St. Mary’s. In addition, we have researched period catholic hymnals of the mid to late 19th century for carol texts, Spanish-language “villançicos” and other song forms that would have likely been sung during Fr. Dade’s tenure as Visalia’s pastor.

Virtually the only musical forensic evidence in Fr. Dade’s biography, THE APOSTLE OF THE VALLEY, denotes that “entertainments” that included music and dance benefited the building of the second church building in 1872 and that the parish did have an organist/music teacher for the parish school children. Speculation about exact musical pieces is all that remains from that. However, the book states “, “Music was provided by a quartet who went in a special conveyance from Visalia; they rendered ‘Peter’s Mass in D’ ‘ in a beautiful and impressive manner.”

Thanks be to God, the very pleasant agents of the Library of Congress and the University of Louisville, we were able to locate that very Mass setting and secure copies. Before discussing this work and others, I must also give great appreciation to my colleagues Ed Teixeira (Organist/Director-St. David’s, Richmond CA), Dr. Doug Shadle, (Musicologist at the U. of Lousiville), and Dr. Mike O’Connor, (Musicologist of Palm Beach Atlantic University), for providing veins of sheer gold for me to mine.

The “Peter” of the “Mass in D Major” was composed by Williams Cummings Peters, whose personal history is associated with the great Stephen Foster. Peters was a noted Catholic choir director who also compiled and published a number of catholic hymnals that bore striking resemblance to the forms of denomination hymnals of that era, using the terms “Harmonist” and “Harp,” as in the famed “Sacred Harp” school of shape note singing used for worship and music literacy. Peters’ Mass is grounded in a sort of Hadyn meets Mozart European style. The two movements from the Mass that we will perform are the Gloria (most appropriate as it is the hymn the angels sang to the newborn Christ at His Nativity) and the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God.) The Gloria contains a pastiche of melodic “scenes” which could lightly be called “text painting.”

Another great “find” was an emigrant German Philadelphian composer, Albert RoSewig (b.1846) who had many Victorian-era hymns, carols and motets. The choir will sing my arrangement of his setting of the AVE MARIA, as well as his setting of a Communion motet “O Salutaris Hostia” and another period piece for Christmas.
An amazing piece that we will feature is yet another Philadelphian, J. Remington Fairlamb’s “Great” TE DEUM, a hymn of praise sung at the New Year and at great feast days. This piece is significant in that Fairlamb uses English rather than Latin (unusual for the era) and for some compelling musical harmonic devices that are unique to my ear. Fairlamb was designated by Abraham Lincoln to be a consul to Switzerland as well!

More traditional carols such as “Adeste Fideles” and “What Child is This?” we have located in the “Young Catholic’s Hymnal” circa 1870 that contain verse lyrics that are stunningly different than those we sing today. We will enjoin the audience in the singing of these “discovered” texts.

As mentioned earlier, the choirs will also sing Christmas “villançicos.” These are a hybrid form of European polyphonic motets with native (Nahuatal) folk idioms of the post-conquisition and missionary era in Mexico. They are incredibly beautiful Spanish “carols.” Though there is no evidence that this music was sung in St. Mary’s, there is plenty of evidence they were sung daily across the central coast range in the Franciscan missions in this era.

And we will be joined by our own Gregorian Schola of St. Francis, led by Ralph Colucci, for a selection of Advent, Nativity and Epiphany proper chants that were hopefully sung by the children’s choir in those pioneer times.

We hope the entire Visalia music-loving community will join us at 4pm, December 18th for our “antique” concert celebrating our history.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

The New New Age

Everything Fr. Rutler writes is worth reading but this piece is particularly insightful on the low-grade frenzy concerning the new translation of the Missal. A sample:

Publicly owned corporations are more accountable to their shareholders than tenured bureaucracies, which may explain why it took the Ford Motor Company only two years to cancel its Edsel, and not much longer for Coca Cola to restore its “classic” brand, while the Catholic Church has taken more than a generation of unstopped attrition to try to correct the mistakes of overheated liturgists. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius is now in its sunset repose and the bright young things who seem to be cropping up now all over the place with new information from Fortescue and Ratzinger, may either be the professional mourners for a lost civilization, or the sparks of a looming golden age.

One thing is certain to a pastor: the only parishioners fighting the old battles are old themselves, their felt banners frayed and their guitar strings broken, while a young battalion is rising, with no animus against the atrophied adolescence of their parents, and only eager to engage a real spiritual combat in a culture of death. They usually are ignorant, but bright, for ignorance is not stupidity.

They care little if the Liturgy is in Latin or English or Sanskrit, as long as they are told how to do it, for they were not told. Some critics of the new translations have warned that the changes are too radical, which is radioactively cynical from people who in the 1960’s wantonly dismantled old verities overnight, in their suburbanized version of China’s Cultural Revolution.

Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

A View of the Pope’s Visit from the UK

Submitted by Keith Fraser:

Anyone following the media in the run up to the Holy Father’ s visit to the UK a few weeks ago could be forgiven for believing that the event would go almost unnoticed, except perhaps for the protests. Keith Cardinal O’ Brien talked immediately after the visit of the “ Benedict bounce” in an attempt to articulate the elevated mood of this nation’ s Catholics. Specifically, he was referring to an anticipated increase in vocations but the term captures a mood that has long been an undercurrent that is bubbling to the surface of modern Catholicism, that of an authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council (which the Holy Father terms the “ Hermenutic of Continuity) that seeks inspiration for the future in the liturgical heritage of all of the Councils that went before Vatican 2.

I firmly believe that the Holy Spirit chooses the Pope to answer the problems of the age, and in this Pope we have a spiritual leader who as well as being a theologian is also a fine liturgist and musician with an acute sense of the forces prevailing in the church. For many of my generation (my mid 30’ s for those who are wondering) are anticipating a renewal of the Ordinary Form of mass as more and more musicians begin to write truly edifying music with the encouragement of the Holy Father, their creative flow liberated by the new English translations of the mass that capture the reverence and poetry of the Latin and the resurgent interest in the older forms of liturgy, chant and polyphony by my generation and younger. I am enthused at the prospect of being able to share with my children the musical heritage which is their birthright in a way my generation struggled to find.

This movement (if I can call it that) is finding its roots in the USA where bishops and musicians have started to really capitalise on the opportunities to educate and train singers and choir directors over the internet. There are now literally hundreds of instructional videos and resources for Gregorian Chant on YouTube and Vimeo. The Church Music Society of the US has amassed considerable resources on the Musica Sacra website with the entire Liber Usualis book of chant available to download. The newly formed apostolate of artists and musicians of Corpus Christi Watershed have produced audio and video files of chant spanning the centuries as well as fantastic new psalms and choral music that will suit parishes with even the most modest of resources. And the Choral Public Domain Library has literally thousands of freely available editions of sacred music.

Some may think of all of this as a turning back of the clock or a repudiation of Vatican 2. I don’ t think it is, in fact quite the opposite. Anticipating the sweeping changes to come Pope Paul 6th promulgated a new constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concillium in which it said “ The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.” 25 years after The Council Venerable Pope John Paul the Great said “ If music – instrumental and vocal does not possess the sense of prayer, dignity, and beauty, it precludes entry into the sphere of the sacred and religious” and this statement, I think, should define the way in which we view sacred music marking a departure from the folk tunes, unsingable melodies, saccharine harmonies, and poor theology of so much of what has passed for church music before now. We now have great musicians both at home such as James Macmillan and Gabriel Jackson as well as I the US with Leo Nestor and Kevin Allen who understand the place and role of music in the liturgy and how it should raise our hearts and minds to God, truly present in the Eucharist we are privileged to share.

It’ s ironic that when you watch almost any programme on TV where the storyline revolves around a Catholic church that Gregorian chant is heard somewhere as if to make the point to anyone that hasn’ t quite made the connection, yet the singing of chant in many parishes has been lost for a generation. Recognising that this tradition needs to be built up, Corpus Christi Watershed has simplified many of the propers for the mass to make them accessible to choirs or cantors with limited experience of reading chant notation and they are available in both Latin and English, and I would encourage choir directors across the country to take a look at what is available.

On the feast of Christ the King a small choir will come together in my parish in Olney, Buckinghamshire to sing Byrd’ s mass for 4 voices, some of the ancient chant,
and some modern motets and psalm settings, and I would welcome any volunteers with a desire to join us in this small choir to contact me. The parish and I are truly excited by this, and I hope it is a sure sign of things to come.

Notes to the editor:

1 . The Parish in Olney is Our Lady Help of Christians and St Lawrence and
Sunday mass is celebrated at 1030.

2 . The feast of Christ the King is Sunday 21st November

3 . Resource sites available to choir directors are:
www.cpdl.org The Choral public Domain Library
http://www.ccwatershed.org/ Corpus Christi Watershed
http://musicfortheliturgy.org/ database of chant for the liturgy and modern psalm
compositions
http://www.musicasacra.com/ Church Music Society of the US
http://www.chantcafe.com/ Blog with numerous resources