Monday, May 31, 2004

SibeliusMusic.com website Expressive Chant Scores

Maggie Hettinger

I just set up a web page on SibeliusMusic.com as a place to post the "standard-notation" versions of chants as I do them.

I'm not sure if that's the way to go, at all, but people seem to want them, and it may help crack the nut. If you visit the site, there's a place to register to be notified every time a new score is published.

Common Sense and Computer Analysis (washingtonpost.com)

Common Sense and Computer Analysis (washingtonpost.com)

I'm always amazed at how people misunderstand computers and computing. We have the most amazing tools at our fingertips, but we don't use them, and maybe don't WANT to use them.

This article begins:
"Irrational paranoia about computer technology threatens to shut down an entire front in the war on terror.

"A prestigious advisory panel has just recommended that the Defense Department get permission from a federal court any time it wants to use computer analysis on its own intelligence files. It would be acceptable, according to the panel, for a human agent to pore over millions of intelligence records looking for al Qaeda suspects who share phone numbers, say, and have traveled to terror haunts in South America. But program a computer to make that same search, declares the advisory committee, and judicial approval is needed, because computer analysis of intelligence databanks allegedly violates 'privacy.'"

The Technology Connection should be required in every school.

Sunday, May 30, 2004

Chant at St. Joe

We sang Spiritus Domini at Preparation of the Gifts of this morning's mass at St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral. We rehearsed carefully beforehand, working for a blended sound, reminding ourselves of the tricky parts. This is the first week working with a new sound system, and, as the choir is miked, I determined that we could sing softly and work for blend rather than volume.

I think we sang well. For some reason my minidisc recorder malfunctioned, and I didn't get the recording at all. (I probably can't blame it on the recorder. Usually it's the "recorder" who has a problem--the traditional "short between the earphones.") Rats.

I hope they ask to do more chant.

Gregorian Chant "Eucharistie': CD-review

Gregorian Chant: CD-review:

From a review by Willy Schuyesman for the CD "Eucharistie."

"The 20-member choir conducted by the charismatic father Gereon van Boesschoten has beautiful voices, and benefits from the fact that its members have had more than 20 years to blend in their voices into the choir sound, resulting in a nice and pleasing homogenous sound.

"And because of these substantial advantages, I find it all the more disappointing that the choir still performs Gregorian chant according to the performance rules of the beginning of the century. Beautiful as that may sound, it is still a pity that they seem not to have heard of Cardine or his capital research into the repertoire: all notes have the same length, an almost mathematical average, with no expressive extras whatsoever on important notes or words. One would have hoped that by now, most singers are aware of the rhythmic subtleties hidden in the neumes and their importance for a right interpretation of the text.

"But as we said, the feast of the Holy Sacrament was fairly recent addition, which means that many of its chants were composed at a time when the rhythmic characteristics had sunk into oblivion under polyphonic pressure. This means that in a number of cases, the choir could get away with a fairly ‘egalitarian’ musical approach. Yet the proper of Mass originated much earlier on, most of the chants featuring in manuscripts dating back to the late 900s, and therefore deserves much more rhythmical attention. In the introit Cibavit eos, for instance, there are a number of occasions (say the two last Alleluias) where we can hear the first note of the quilisma being stressed, whereas semiologists have long discovered that it is the last note of quilismas and scandici that need stressing. Or the gradual Oculi omnium, where every hint of musical build-up in Oculi is simply flattened out by making all the notes the same length. The same happens in the responsory Unus panis, where the solo part clearly demonstrates that this approach simply destroys the structure of the chant."

----------------

So, I'm not the only person looking for more in the chant.

The track Qui manducat is available for download on the link above. It's interesting to me that some of the words are juxtaposed from what I'm accustomed. It's the first time I've run into that.

Saturday, May 29, 2004

Holy Name Band at Corydon

Last night's concert at the bandstand in Corydon, IN was begun by the veterans presenting a flag ceremony, reading the names of all of the county's war dead, and a (21?-)gun salute. It was very effective and there was a large audience in attendance. I hope they do it this way every year.

We played well, too. Must be the end of the season. ;)

Friday, May 28, 2004

To Parishes which must close their schools

(St. Brigid in Vine Grove is closing their elementary school. I've known about this for months. After reading an article in the Record, I decided to send a letter to some of the key people in the parish. Since I'd like to send the same letter to about a zillion parishes, I'll post it here, and maybe someone will use it.)

Dear parish member,

Your parish has been on my mind ever since I heard that the school was going to be closed. As a member of St. Benedict Parish and former teacher at the school, I strongly sympathize with the anxiety and grief that you must be going through. When our school had to close, it was an experience like none other.

I want to share something with you. We had identified our values something like this:

o Membership in an ongoing faith community.
o Pervasive involvement in the church’s liturgy.
o Quality education.
o Religious instruction.
o Parish presence in the traditions and functions of the greater community.

Any parish that can move outside the box just a little and think modularly has all the resources to continue these things. Picture this:

Parents bring children to your parish school each morning. Four days of the week they begin with liturgy (mass or morning prayer), followed by 20 min. activity. The other day they will have about an hour of religious ed program. Then they get on a bus and go to the public school. Parents and volunteers in this religious ed program also volunteer in the public school. Afterschool programs can be made available in your parish building, as well.

For families, school looks very much the same. They bring the children to the parish, maybe pick them up there in the afternoon, and are expected to participate and volunteer as they did before. Whatever skills they have can be utilized within this type of program. The consistent practice of starting each morning with liturgy is better than parishes with schools can offer.

Your neighborhood public school can often equal a Catholic school in quality academics. What you can offer to it is the strong commitment of parent volunteers and who bring their talents and their sense of tradition and direction. If your parish is willing to organize to support the volunteer program in the public school, this presence will still be available to your young parish members in their everyday experience. Other denominations actively support the schools, so the precedents and patterns are there already.

We were not able to do this at St. Benedict. We were not even able to talk about it, mostly because of anger and grief. Our children (and their families) have largely scattered to other Catholic parishes, leaving us without our youth. This is something that should not happen to any parish. So, I’m tossing these ideas your way. According to The Record, the bulk of your students are transferring to public schools, so you could be in a good position to maintain your strong community.

Peace to all of you,

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Chant at St. Joe

We rehearsed Spiritus Domini Wednesday night. I didn't do warmups, but talked thru text and meaning. People were still having trouble with some patterns, esp. the last three alleluias.

Sunday before mass, I want to:
warm up for sound.
ask everyone to listen to the two people beside them and sing in such a way that the three of them blend.
rehearse the last three alleluias
rehearse terrarum, vocis, saecu-(u)-lorum.
Sing more softly than we rehearsed. According to my recording, we don't need to push it at all.
Sing more slowly, and with greater emphasis on diction. T's, th's are totally lost in the big church.

And I was sloppy with my own singing. I need to concentrate on a darker sound. I also need to put my score down, and conduct with two hands. For some reason, I did it all one-handed on Wednesday. ????!!

The choir has a big program for Pentecost, and this is just one piece. We didn't blend as well as before. I guess it's still new enough that we can do what we're concentrating on, but putting it all together is not easy. Also, my conducting is NOT what I want it to be.

Youth choir will sing at all the masses, too. They'll sing "Spirit, Come" as the sequence.

choir Posted by Hello

Amy and cantors Posted by Hello

Amy and choir Posted by Hello

ladies Posted by Hello

St. Joe Youth Choir  Posted by Hello

The choir's Memory CD is named "Sure as the Wind"

1. Thy Word is a Lamp
2. Fly Like a Bird
3. Morning Has Broken
4. For the Beauty of the Earth
5. Alleluia, Sing to Jesus
6. I Will Choose Christ
7. Alleluia Word of God
8. Lord of the Dance
9. Celtic Gloria
10. You Are Mine
11. Sing Out, Earth and Skies
12. Christus factus est
13. With One Voice
14. Spirit, Come
15. Sure As the Wind

The last rehearsal for the school year was a party, of course. Snacks and listening to a CD of their music.

One interesting tidbit. The music was loud, and we were talking, and someone was even playing on the piano. Then Christus factus est came on. Two or three girls jumped up to stand next to the speakers to sing along. Others joined in--maybe half the group. This is the only piece that got that kind of reaction.

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Q & A

I received a really nice email this morning from Louisiana. It asked me some hard questions, and since I just spent the morning trying to compose brief answers, I think I'll just post the letter.

------------------------------------
Dear friend,

So nice to hear from you. What an opportunity you have, to be able to fill a need and possibly have the chance to sing this beautiful music in liturgy.

I firmly believe "If it is liturgy, it is to be sung." We teach that the mass, even when it's celebrated simply, should always have:
A gathering song that involves all the people
A sung/chanted responsorial psalm
A sung gospel acclamation
Sung acclamations to the Eucharistic prayer (Sanctus thru Doxology)
A communion psalm, song or hymn.

I think this pattern would be true for the Tridentine mass as well, don't you? And if you are starting up in a church where people are not accustomed to singing, you wouldn't be bound to the practice of singing the variety of ever-changing liturgy that characterizes a more mature singing situation. I would take advantage of the common psalm approach.

You ask me questions that it would take a book to answer. I'm not an expert, but a seeker. Be aware that my answers are colored by these considerations:

1>Recent research gives us clues to a rich understanding of chant that might be different from current practice. This, combined with knowledge of cognition and social development, takes me to an exciting place. Much of the literature on chant is written without this knowledge.

2>I believe strongly in the chant heritage of the Catholic Church as fundamental to all parish practice, including the renewal of liturgy since Vatican II. So I'm not working to reinstate the Tridentine mass. I want us to connect to our roots in scripture and liturgical music.

3> Now that I've "unlocked" the code, singing chant according to ancient practice is pure pleasure and powerfully meaningful.

Given that introduction, I go to your questions, which were an enjoyable exercise for me this morning. Thank you.

> > 1. Do reliable instructions exist for singing from St. Gall neumes?


First, look at Chant Made Simple by Robert M.Fowells.

The definitive source is supposed to be Gregorian Semiology by Dom Cardine, but I have yet to get my hands on the book. Fr. Columba Kelly, at St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana, has studied this extensively, and he provides many materials in his seminars. I highly recommend his two-week summer seminar at the abbey. (But you have young children, so maybe it should wait.) I don't know how you found me, but I post my experiences to the web at http://randomlight.blogspot.com/ and hope others will add their experience to it.

> > 2. What information do these neumes convey that the square neumes cannot?

Square notes give us pitches. They do not tell us how to sing those pitches.
The first source of HOW to sing is neither the pitches nor the neums, but the text. The chant is an extension of proclaimation of the text, based first and foremost on the natural accent of the words.

The St. Gall neums also record pitches, but not in the sense that we are used to, and we aren't able to read this until we have a lot of experience singing and "know" the forms. The academic resource for this concept is Alberto Turco's "Gregorian Chant" Tones and Modes, Edizioni Torre D'Orfeo, Roma 2003,

All research agrees that Gregorian chant predates the concept of the "beat" in music, and that neither square notes nor neums are intended to imply mensuration (or marking off, counting) of time elements in the music.

The neums DO tell us relationships, including shorter, longer, emphasized, held-out. These relationships are not based on a hypothetical "beat", as we are used to today, but are based on the spoken accents of the text.


> > 3. How do you use these neumes?

I use the neums and the square notation to decode a historically-informed rendition of the chant.

First: translate the Latin text. Even better, know its context(s).

Next: Make sure I know which syllables are accented. Underlining them is not a bad idea. It's surprising how often I "read" modern tonal emphases into the chant and only detect my misunderstanding when I look back and re-emphasize the word syllabication.

Next: sing the piece according to the neums and the square notes. At some point here, I find it helpful to sing solfege. Again, it is a check for mistakes in intonation.

I use these pieces as meditation, so all the above considerations are secondary, but if we plan to teach and share the music, I think all those factors are important.

When I teach chant to choirs, I prefer to give them the text and the St. Gall neums (which I copy onto a sheet). I ALWAYS give them the oral (call-and response, text-and-meaning-based) experience of the chant before I give them notation on paper.

> > 4. How do they lead you to sing square neumes differently?
Every chant recording I can find has an unspoken, often unrecognized commonality, in that the separate square-note pitches are relegated to a measured identity. There is a flow of either steady notes, or a combination of duples and triples.

I don't do this. You would have to hear the recordings and look at my scores to get a feel for the difference. I simply DO what the scholars teach. The recording are on the www.iglou.com/watchmakerpress/chant/ChantIndex.html. I'm posting manuscripts in standard notation at www.SibeliusScores.com.

I'm sure they are not definitive. I do NOT have the years upon years of study that are necessary to decipher each nuance. But they may be the first place that this concept is actually carried out.

> > 6. Who else uses the Graduale Triplex , that you know of?

A Louisville group--Evensong--sings a weekly Compline service at the Chapel at St. Philip. They sing chant with a similar understanding, but their repertoire is more Anglican-based. I should talk to them and find out their resouces.

Who uses it consistently in liturgy? No one in my personal experience. We do not sing (or say) the latin mass. I'm parish Sunday-mass based. We sing chant regularly, but melismatic chant only occasionally.

I'm carefully studying my options for starting a Schola Cantorum St. Joseph Proto-cathedral, but I haven't made the move, yet, so I'll be VERY interested in your experiences. You're invited to post them to www.randomlight.blogspot.com. There are always places for comments. Or if you email to me, I'll post what you send me.

Thank you for an enjoyable morning. Please stay in touch about your experience.

In Christ,
maggie hettinger

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So, basically, I'd like to offer the same invitation to anyone else. If you find it meaningful to explore the treasures of historically-informed chant style, please share your experience--no matter how small.

We are at a nexus. The butterfly's wing can change the world.

Fr. Columba told us that when Dom Moquereau at Solemnes gave out the information that became the "Ward System" of chant in the U.S. American Catholic School systems, he knew that he had not yet unlocked the meanings of his own research. He gave them an approximation that they could use, because they had the funding and wanted to move on it NOW.

I find it interesting that when I teach chant to parish choirs, unlike those who already sing chant extensively, they don't hear the "difference." They say things like: I can hear the sounds of my childhood. I can hear the monks. I can just hear (Father ____).

So, maybe this 40-year hiatus of chant in our church is not totally bad. We get to pick up again with the advantage of expanded knowledge, and without the memories of Sister Mary Holywater beating out with her pointer (or even worse, a "clicker") the thumps and bumps that found their way into the Ward system of learning chant.

I'm excited.


Monday, May 24, 2004

O'Reilly Network: The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It's Bogus [Apr. 18, 2004]

O'Reilly Network: The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It's Bogus [Apr. 18, 2004]

I like Google. I like their attitudes, their capability, and their ability to follow a high-Quality path. They seem to bringing a LOT of people along for the ride. The number of organizations that I see doing THAT, I can count on the fingers of one hand.

I'm trying out GMail.

Sunday, May 23, 2004

New Score: Ascendit Deus

"Ascendit Deus in iubilationem Dominus in voce tubae, alleluia"

I can't believe what I discovered the other day! A piece of chant that's as evocative as a film--big-sky effects, trumpet calls, real jubilation.

It's Ascendit Deus, Offertory for Feast of the Ascension, Graduale Triplex 237.

I am CONSTANTLY being surprised.

It's not what I ever expected to find in Gregorian Chant. Wow. But I didn't make this up. It's really there, in the notation. I hope I can convince a good singer to try it. (Maybe Alan.) I love singing it, but I doubt I could ever pull it off in public. WHAT A PIECE!

I wrote this one up in standard notation. It wasn't as hard as the first two I worked on. It's published on SibeliusMusic.com.


It's listed as:

Ascendit Deus
An expressive chant for singer(s) in a reverberant space.

I'm thrilled with this find. I'll try to record it soon.

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Random

What, in our experience, is actually random?

A card drawn from a deck?
The roll of a die?
An accident on the highway?
A conversation with a stranger on a street corner?
Really? Is it random?

What today was random?

Chant at St. Joe

I went to rehearse Spiritus Domini with the St. Joe choir again tonight. Debbie was rehearsing One Spirit, One Church / Come Holy Ghost when I got there. It was a big sound, with organ, handbells and full choir. We'd practiced the same piece with Youth Choir, and the kids also sing it well.

So, when we started, I quipped that we were shifting from many voices and many instruments to one voice. While people were finding their chant music, we sang sol---->slide down to do (on "lu.") I kept it on one pitch, G to C, which is where we will sing the chant. It was a quick way to make the transition to chant sound.

Using our rehearsal sheet with the words and the St.Gall neums, we reviewed the antiphon. It was a mixture of call and response, short phrases, joining to longer, some solfege explanations. We sang it all the way through several times. It was REALLY exciting that we were doing this in church, and, even though folks aren't really comfortable with singing the whole antiphon thru yet, they ARE comfortable enough to sing strongly and clearly on the phrases as we did them. And we could hear those "sound effects" such as the harmonies that tuck under the ringing repeated tones. And the choir is making a beautiful sound.

After a bit of this, I admitted that I knew they were less-than-comfortable not having "real" music, and I passed out the modern-notation version (see last post). I got some relieved-sounding "thank-you"s as they saw the notes. We sang thru the antiphon from this sheet. I don't know why I only had them do it once, and I wish we'd done it twice. My mistake.

Interesting, although they were happier to have the notes, it completely threw off our phrasing, our style, our accenting and word-emphasis, and it really threw off my conducting. We were seeing individual notes. Still, I should have done it twice. Instead, I reacted by saying, "You have this for reference, so you can remind yourself how it goes, but we'll sing from the neums." And I took us immediately back to the other sheet, and we sang again.

Next week's rehearsal, I plan to return to the words of the text and the translation, moving us off the piece of paper as much as possible for the antiphon, singing the psalm verses and Gloria Patri from the sheet. They should be ready for it all to click. We'll then have one more rehearsal before mass on Pentecost. I think we're ok. First time singing melismatic chant. Pretty good, considering we're boot-strapping all the way.

I LOVE that chant.

Spiritus Domini
Spirit of the Lord fills the whole earth.
replevet (replete. fat, bursting with fullness, brimming over, ever re-filled)
orbem (the orb of our Earth Why is "orb" so pregnant-sounding, so live?)
terrarrum. (Tara. Gaea. Sophia.)
Alleluia!!!

et hoc (and THAT)
quod continet omnia
that which contains all things, directs all things, maintains all things, sustains all things,
alpha and omega--THAT
has knowledge of language,

THAT
understands words
(scientiam habet vocis)

THAT prime mover / BIg Bang
....evolution
..........physics
................biology
......................sociology
...........................dynamic Quality
...................................THAT has VOICE.

Alleluia, Alleluia, ALLELUIA!





Tuesday, May 18, 2004

DVD: Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)


Amazon.com: DVD: Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)


I watched this the other night. (not the DVD, but the video, which I found in a closet I was cleaning.) Fascinating.

This is the Zeferelli version of the story of St. Francis of Assisi, full of heavy-handed imagery, gorgeous costuming and scenery, flower-power music, anti-establishment attitudes, constant references to the (at the time) new mass liturgy.

It was hard to watch. The dialogue and plot felt unbelievably mushy, gushy, trite, and banal.

BUT, it was a strong reminder of the time in which it was made, and this was enlightening. The music was sung by Donavan, who was my favorite singer during those years, and I still liked to hear him again, for all the same reasons.

The movie strongly associates traditional liturgical music with evil, and that's a little hard to take. But again, it's a reminder of WHERE WE WERE at the time, and how much we've learned. Also how much we've forgotten, and why the church has to speak from all our experience, old and new.

The phrases that seem so trite to me now were fresh in '72. The message--down with the pomp, down with music that no one understands, up with the core messages of Jesus, up with personal commitment--these were new to the baby boomers and their parents. The core concepts contained in this film were life-changing. They still are.

As the Buddhists are said to say, "The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon."

Friday, May 14, 2004

Two Expressive Chants for Pentecost in modern notation

I've been working on a modern-notation version of Spiritus Domini and Factus repente. I've uploaded the score to SibeliusMusic.com. The title is Two Expressive Chants for Pentecost

Cover notes:

Rhythm:
This is an attempt to render the highly-expressive Laon and St. Gall neums to familiar notation. Therefore, rhythms are approximate. Bar lines are included so that we can see “pick-up” and leading phrases. THERE IS NO BEAT in Gregorian chant. The rhythm flows around the accented syllables of the words.

The accented syllables are marked by underlines in the scripture text above the music.

To begin to understand the piece, first practice speaking the text with clear accented syllables, then speak it again, broadening the sound to orate (proclaim) the text. Your chanting should be very similar to this oration of the Latin text.

Pitch:
In general, chant is not restricted to any pitch, but can be sung in whatever range suits the singer(s). However, in Spiritus Domini, there is an appropriate pitch that depends on the space in which the chant is sung. Many reverberant churches have a particular pitch that resonates well throughout the building. You can set C (do) of this chant to match that pitch.

The asterisk (*) in the notation points out a pulsing on the reverberant note, which, when let ring, offers a kind of harmony special to chant. The pulsed note sets the worship space ringing, at which point the singer drops to another “part,” tucks in the harmony notes, and then returns to pick up the pulsing, ringing tone and carry on. This effect can be experienced with the words replevit, terrarum, and scientiam.

Factus est repente has its own "special effects." The opening phrase can be sung strongly, starting with the open fifth and leading to the word sonus (sound) which can be echoed thru the church. Notice that the words ubi erant sedentes (whereupon it settles) are set to a drifting, peaceful melody--much like leaves drifting from a tree, or a feather on a breeze. This effect can be sung again in magnalia Dei. I'll leave you to extract your own meaning from that.

The liturgical chant of the Graduale is some of the most meaning-filled, prayerful music I have ever encountered. I encourage you to discover the original sources, and learn to sing from the ancient, expressive, yet simple neums recorded in the Graduale Triplex.


"The Gregorian repertory is a complex world which unites several centuries of musical history. It is in fact a world of astonishing variety which mysteriously approaches nearly delirious enthusiasm as well as the most delicate interior things. It is a paradoxical world where music blooms in silence."
-- the monks of Solesmes
at http://www.solesmes.com/anglais/ang_solesmes.html


"The pure echoes of the chant can touch the hearts and minds of all who are fortunate enough to sing or listen to it. Conceived in humility and expertly and lovingly crafted over centuries, chant is our heritage, and should be allowed to live and breathe as it was intended, in liturgy. It ought not to be relegated to the concert hall where its beauty can be only half realized, as there it can point to no mystery beyond itself."
-- Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker, from the February 2004 issue of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review


One way to bring this music into the Liturgy would be to sing Spiritus Domini as a prelude to the gathering song, and Factus repente after the Communion procession and song.

For more suggestions, see Watchmaker Press Chant Index.


Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.





Thursday, May 13, 2004

Chant at St. Joe

Amy and I held a "recording session" with Youth Choir to make a memory CD for them. They sang Christus factus est (recording here), and I was really pleased at how well they all remembered it. They learn melismatic chant MUCH, MUCH more easily than adults. I think I'll add the recording to the Chant Index.

---------

Rehearsal with the adult choir went well, I thought. We rehearsed Spiritus Domini in church. We:

* touched briefly on how everyone thought Regina Caeli went last Sunday. Comments were positive.
* rehearsed the translation verse, english verses and Gloria Patri, mentioned names of neums, touched on the phrasing of the neums (stronger on the first tone, comparable to singing a two-note slurred passage in modern notation).
* (I had hoped to rehearse the three alleluias of the antiphon, but ran out of time. We have two more rehearsals.
* I sang the antiphon, asked whether they were starting to hear the music in it, starting to see what's notated.

---------
One choir member, Rose, had said something to me Sunday, about "We are used to having notes." Of course, I know that all of us American church musicians (and everyone in general) have let our oral/aural skills atrophy. I'm not trying to make anyone uncomfortable.

I'm convinced, though that "sacrament" has something to do with using our somatic and mimetic cognitive patterns to interact with the somatic and mimetic cultural web. So I'm sticking to an emphasis on oral transmission and imitation.

However, that doesn't mean that as we bootstrap bringing chant into parishes that we can't use all tools available. So, before rehearsal, I had put in some time making a "standard-notation"version of Spiritus Domini. I didn't give it out, though. I might. I might not. It was an interesting exercise for me, and might be conceptually useful, but NOT NOT NOT NOT as a starting point.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days

Well.


I've just read the first book in the "Left Behind" series.

Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (Left Behind No. 1)

It was interesting (and it also was very good at putting me to sleep). The interesting parts are:

1> The exploration of the "born-again" experience. I can relate to this on some levels, but still find the Fundamentalist Christian context very foreign and uncomfortable.

2> The question of How much does this series (and the movement surrounding it) have to do with our President's irrational fixation with Iraq? I've only read the first of this set of novels, but it looks as if the Anti-Christ and his world-government are setting up in Babylon (50 km s. of Baghdad, Iraq), and the characters are all set up to fight his evil influence and replace it with the Kingdom of Jesus.

I thought Bush's fixation had to do with his oil background, but this, crazy as it is, fits the facts better. The man (and how many around him) is living a super-hero religious fantasy. And thousands upon thousands of Iraqi people are dying because of it.

Monday, May 10, 2004

Sunday I conducted St. Joe choir in Regina Caeli at Preparation of the Gifts.

So, you say, what's to conduct? Well, actually, there's a lot. Even though it's not melismatic like the chant in Graduale Triplex, once you've entered the idea that the speech patterns are the source of rhythm in chant, even the hymns are richer, BUT, it takes real work to keep singers from dropping into the sing-songey "I CAN ac-CENT an-Y syl-LAB-ble, CAUSE I DON'T know WHAT it MEANS" singing that we learned as children.

Did I conduct every syllable? Sometimes. Not always. That makes it difficult because unlike measured music, you can't assume beats (and therefore sub-beats) being in a particular position. Without that, how do you differentiate between conducting each syllable and conducting only the accent? Arsis and thesis don't help any. Pitch indication is part of it, but it's not enough.

The choir sang well. Here's the recording. The only real mistake was mine. I asked the organist to play a C drone as we sang, but I didn't choose a good stop (probably not enough treble), because people (depending where they were standing) couldn't hear it, and we dropped a hair. Only a hair, but without the organ, no one would have known. Aah, maybe they didn't anyway.

-----------
Today I'm working today on two things--cleaning up from my Laura's graduation party, and trying to lay out an education program for chant & liturgical music. I'm focusing on three things:

* The suggestions for forming a Lay Apostolate for chant
* Some sessions where several music directors were invited to the Archdiocese of Louisvlle Office of Worship to help evaluate and re-think the Liturgical Music Certification Progam
* Outcome-Based Education, which builds community and works equally well in formal (taught), informal (mentored), or self-directed education.

It's not as easy as I'd first thought it would be. So many angles, but there ought to be a way to make it simple and somehow obvious that it is advantageous to any Catholic parish. Or maybe to any Catholic musician. That's not the same angle, either.

I had a real shock when I Googled "Novus ordo." I have used that phrase to refer to the Latin text of the current mass. (See Novus Ordo text. ) It is a beautiful liturgy belonging to the universal Church. We sang it in Rome with Fr. Sorgie.

I had no idea of the existence of horrible, angry, ugly groups of people who use the same phrase as a code-word to heap invective on all things post-Vatican II. My stomach is still in knots just from looking at some of the web sites. Really ugly.

It's an ugliness that probably prevents us from using the word. So, where I had formulated the objectives as these:

o To encourage the singing of liturgy
o To promote and maintain the learning and singing of Gregorian chant within Catholic parishes
o To facilitate mastery of the fundamental musical skills required by Catholic liturgy and rites, including the Novus ordo Eucharistic liturgy.
o To develop, nourish, and support a lay apostolate formed by the experience of sung prayer

Maybe that third objective will have to be changed to

o To facilitate mastery of the fundamental musical skills required by Catholic liturgy and rites, including Latin as well as English

I'll keep working on it. I'll have to stop now, though. The Holy Name Band is playing at Christopher East nursing home tonight, and I'm not sure where my flute is, even.

Friday, May 07, 2004

Confessions of a Recovering Choir Director: A lay apostolate for chant?

Fascinating concept: A Lay Apostolate for Chant
http://www.cantemusdomino.net/blog/archives/001004.php#001523

Anybody in the Louisville area interested?

Thursday, May 06, 2004

Paul Rex notes an article of which I want to record a few sentences.
(See his blog http://xprex.stblogs.org/archives/014847.html for more.)

"The pure echoes of the chant can touch the hearts and minds of all who are fortunate enough to sing or listen to it. Conceived in humility and expertly and lovingly crafted over centuries, chant is our heritage, and should be allowed to live and breathe as it was intended, in liturgy. It ought not to be relegated to the concert hall where its beauty can be only half realized, as there it can point to no mystery beyond itself."

-- Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker, from the February 2004 issue of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Monday, May 03, 2004

Well, here's a fascinating wake-up for me. I thought nobody else was trying to sing chant in parish churches. Here's an obviously long-running blog with lots of people involved. Guess I'll check it out regularly.

Confessions of a Recovering Choir Director

An Introduction to Gregorian Chant
by Richard L. Crocker says this:

"When a solo voice intones a prayer, or a reading from Scripture, on a reciting pitch, the intonation on a single pitch can result in extreme resonance. The natural ability of the human voice to speak directly to our inner hearing is maximized with intonation and the resonance that it brings. This has a special application in Christian worship: when expressed by a strong clear solo voice, with the resonance reinforced by cathedral reverberation, this kind of intonation can penetrate the listener's heart, seeming to convey the truth of the words of doctrine.

"While a solo voice on a reciting pitch has the power to penetrate the listener's understanding, the sound of a chorus does not so much penetrate as envelop, gathering up the listener into a larger unity. The sound of the whole congregation intoning in unison is like no other musical experience. Unison singing by everyone is not just a 'symbol' of being together, it is an archebype, a primary experience of being together, one of which other experiences may be symbols.

"When psalms are sung this way in a reverberant acoustic space such as a cathedral, the reciting pitch builds up a very great resonance -- especially if the singers find the reciting pitch specific to that building, the particular pitch that resonates most strongly in it. As the sound continues minute after minute, it permeates the whole space and everyone in it. The walls reverberate, the building itself seems to reproduce the tone. Certain medieval churches have this effect to a remarkable degree, and recordings have been made that show an extreme development of the overtones produced by such resonance."


I'm interested in both his description of a performance technique and a primal experience of unity. We experienced the unity at Holy Trinity, where, during Ordinary Time, we chanted the Gloria "a capella" for over a year. We used that simple setting from John Lee's "Congregational Mass" (c) 1970, GIA. #254 in Gather Comprehensive. I wonder if they're still doing it? After I got out of their way, the microphone-hungry Karoke elitists came out in force again, (at least that's what I hear, and I don't ask).

St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral in Bardstown is now working on installing a very expensive sound system that counteracts the reverberation of the church to accommodate the modern Catholic mass. (Several speakers in each pew, and that IS what you need to sing the "Catholic Pop" style effectively in the older churches. I can't knock it too much. I'm an expert at "Catholic Pop" music) I hope that my exploring chant with the St. Joe choirs can help us all understand that the characteristics of that building are not just a disadvantage. I also hope somebody sees the need to put a switch convenient to the choir loft that lets the system be turned OFF.

Back to Crocker, I'm especially interested in that primal communication, that primal experience of unity that he described so well above.

The meanings of the Latin chant are stored in something that predates and is foundational to our Western languages. We probably still have the keys to unlock them, in areas of our cognition that are largely unrecognized, except what is exploited by mass-media advertising. I have no doubt that advertising keys in on the same space. The difference is the message.

I've always wondered to what extent the great prehistoric cave paintings are also associated with reveberant acoustic space.

I just ordered
Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin
and Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin

Maybe I should talk to Barry and Judy (ArchLou Office of Worship) and tell them that I'd like to work with a parish develop a simple mass (Sunday, weekday) that is characterized by vocal music--Gregorian Chant and familiar songs. Just a phone call. Why not make it?