Wednesday, May 27, 2020

The Top 5 Misconceptions about Music at Mass, and more!

We’re drawing a very productive month at Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast to a close, and we hope you’ll find the fruits of our labors edifying and enjoyable. Check out the topics and recordings of our episodes below, including the recordings from the 4-part webinar on chanting monastic vespers (the fourth part of which featured NLM’s own Gregory DiPippo).

Click on the titles of episodes below for the links to the YouTube versions, or click on the embedded players for the audio-only source files.


What are the top five things that people don’t understand when it comes to sacred music? In this first part of a two-part episode, we take time to give a substantive response to what many Catholics might not know or don’t get right about music for the sacred liturgy. We look at liturgical and philosophical principles that have been fleshed out through the centuries as the Church has guided musicians in building up the treasury of sacred music, and spend some time on insights from Church documents.




Are you looking for an authentically Catholic curriculum and method for teaching music to children? Something that’s practical, fun, and helps children to grow in love of the Church’s sacred music? This bonus episode looks at the history of the development of the Ward method, its underlying educational principles, its place in Catholic education, and the experience both of those who learn to teach with the method, as well as that of children who learn music using the method. Our guest is Mr. Kevin Collins, an NYC actor and father.



SE02 EP16 – “Lord, Teach Us to Pray”: The Spiritual Fruits of Obedience in Matters Liturgical – with Dom Alcuin Reid, OSB

On this episode, we discuss matters of liturgical formation, both for musicians, as well as for those we serve. Dom Alcuin Reid is the founding Prior of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France, and a liturgical scholar of international renown. His principle work, The Organic Development of the Liturgy (Ignatius Press, 2005) carries a preface by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

Dom Alcuin’s Address at the 2019 Sacred Music Colloquium is available here.




Franz Liszt, haunted by the spectre of God’s grace, was never able to fully shake off his Catholic faith. Our guest, Dr. Jay Hershberger, the president of the American Liszt Society, shares with us a Catholic portrait of the pianist and composer’s life, highlighting his story of conversion, his later years in fervent practice of his faith, his compositions about various Catholic topics and music for the liturgy, and even about his non-musical writings about the theological issues of the day.





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