Singing for Pope Benedict XVI

In 2019 the London Oratory Schola — which sings the 6pm Mass at the Oratory Church on Saturday evenings — was invited to Rome to sing at the canonisation of John Henry Newman. During the days we spent in Rome, we sang on a number of occasions, including the canonisation itself. However, the most memorable highlight was a private recital for the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI.

The London Oratory Schola, Fr George Bowen, Charles Cole, Daniel Wright (headmaster) and Dominic Lynch with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

The night before the recital, the Schola gave a concert at the Collegio Urbano, where Newman himself studied. This seminary sends missionary priests into some of the most challenging and even dangerous parts of the world. Its students are a thriving group of young men who are incredibly committed to their faith. After the concert in the college chapel, the forty boys of the Schola were ushered into the large refectory for dinner with over a hundred seminarians. The boys sat amongst the seminarians and some of the stories they learned during the course of the meal were very striking indeed.

I particularly remember two boys telling me later that they had been speaking to a young seminarian whose uncle, a priest, had been sent to Pakistan where he was executed for baptising a Muslim. His nephew was absolutely frank about the fact that it was very likely the same could happen to him when he, too, returned to Pakistan, yet he was absolutely at peace with the path he had chosen. It brought to mind the words of Saint Philip Neri to the newly ordained priests of the English College in Rome as they were sent back to an almost certain death in Tudor England: ‘Salvete Flores Martyrum’ (Hail, flowers of the martyrs).

At the end of dinner, the Rector of the Seminary gave a wonderful speech and invited the Schola Prefect and the Student Prefect of the Seminary to come forward and shake hands together as a sign of friendship between us. He went on to tell the boys that as they had some spare rooms, any of them who wished to remain and begin life as seminarians immediately were most welcome to do so — to much laughter. Finally, he announced to his students that the following day, the boys were going to be singing for Pope Benedict. The words were barely out of his mouth before the seminarians erupted with huge applause and cheering. As we all walked back down the Janiculum to our hotel, I remember one of the Oratory school staff remarking to me “It’s going to be hard to top that experience.”

Walking from the Sistine Courtyard to the Vatican Garden

The following day we arrived at the Porta Sant’Anna, the entrance to the Vatican, and we were led through a courtyard and up a staircase into the imposing San Damaso courtyard, right at the heart of the papal palace. We were asked to wait there for a moment, during which a Swiss guard, in full regalia, came over to the boys and started asking them which football teams they supported. The boys were of course delighted, oblivious to the surreal nature of the scene, as they discussed the merits of Chelsea, Fulham et al with a Swiss Guard in bright blue, yellow and red plumage, complete with halberd in hand. We were then led up to the Sistine courtyard, where the director of the Sistine Choir had very kindly given us permission to use the Sistine vestry to robe in readiness for our recital. Anita Morrison, our vocal trainer, gave the boys a warm-up in the vestry after which we lined up in single file to be led up into the Vatican Gardens. Walking in silence, we climbed the path which wound its way upwards behind St. Peter’s, the sound of Roman traffic and bustling life melting away to be replaced by a beautiful stillness and birds singing in the trees. As we reached the upper part of the garden, I heard excited whispers from the boys behind me as one exclaimed “there he is!“ Looking to my left, at the far end of an avenue, two figures were seated on a bench, one wearing white, unmistakably papal, and the other in black.

The Schola warming up in the Sistine Vestry

As we were a few minutes early, our guide led us past the avenue to the Vatican’s replica of the Lourdes Grotto where we waited for the Pope Emeritus to finish his daily rosary. Moments later we were asked to walk down towards the bench. As we did so, the figure in black, Benedict’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, walked towards me, holding out his hand to greet me with a warm smile, “I am Father George, thank you for coming!” He asked us to line up in front of the bench where Benedict sat looking up with great wide eyes of wonderment. We sang Victoria’s Ave Maria, then Salvator mundi (I) by Tallis.

It is never easy to sing outdoors as there is usually a lack of acoustic or resonance. However, we could feel the sound lifting upwards and carrying far across the garden. I wondered what the tourists high up on the dome of St Peter’s would make of it, as we were out of sight underneath the trees. Benedict turned to Father George Bowen, our school chaplain who was seated beside him, and repeated in wonder “Tutti ragazzi!“, they are all boys, amazed that even the Tenors and Basses were schoolboys, with no professional men. After these two pieces and wary of tiring the Pope Emeritus, I turned to Archbishop Gänswein and asked if we should sing more or draw to a close. Turning to Benedict he said “Holy Father, would you like to give the boys your blessing now?” “No!” came the surprising response, “I want to hear more singing!“ So we sang Byrd’s Haec dies.

The Schola singing for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Afterwards, Pope Benedict blessed us and presented us with medals with his image upon them. Some of us spoke to him, and I took the opportunity to thank him for everything he has done for the liturgy. I was quite taken aback by how tightly he held my hand and the intensity of his gaze. I told him that I had been conductor of the brass for MacMillan’s Tu es Petrus as he entered Westminster Cathedral during his Papal visit in 2010. “Oh yes!” His eyes lit up even more as he recalled the moment, and Archbishop Gänswein leant in, saying, “Of course, we remember that don’t we! What an amazing occasion!”

We bade him farewell and Archbishop Gänswein thanked me once again for bringing the choir. We walked back down the hill, elated, yet with a sense of sublime calm, leaving the small man in white sitting on the bench, gazing out serenely over the garden.

Charles Cole is Director of the London Oratory Schola (www.londonoratoryschola.com) This article was originally published in the February 2023 edition of the London Oratory Parish Magazine.

The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610

Arriving in the San Polo district of Venice, I stand in front of one of the city’s largest churches: Santa Maria Gloriosi, better known as the Frari, named for the Franciscans who constructed it. It is a large brick-built Gothic edifice, and like other tall churches built on Venice’s uncertain foundations, is trussed with enormous wooden beams which span the archways within. Entering into the nave by the west door, I am immediately struck by the vast and imposing marble tombs in the side walls, monuments to great artists such as Titian and Canova. I make directly for a small side chapel in the far left corner. There, under a simple marble slab in the chapel floor, lie the mortal remains of one of Venice’s greatest composers. The tomb is marked with his name and dates alone: Claudio Monteverdi 9 May 1567- 29 November 1643.

On a stand to the side rests a facsimile copy of his most famous work, the 1610 publication of his Mass and Vespers. It is the Vespers which has become most synonymous with Monteverdi’s name, and no wonder, for it contains ninety minutes of the most exciting and brilliant music one could ever hope to hear. My visit to Venice precedes a performance of the Vespers at the London Oratory which I am shortly to conduct involving two choirs: the Schola Cantorum of The London Oratory School and The London Oratory Junior Choir.

Buying a large print of Monteverdi at the gift shop to put on the wall of the Song Room at school, though not quite sure how on earth I will get it home, I set off for St Mark’s. The streets and canals of Venice seem to embody so many of the characteristics found in Monteverdi’s music: variety, splendour, and above all, colour. Walking to the Grand Canal, I take a vaporetto, one of Venice’s large water buses, down to San Marco. Entering the great Byzantine Basilica, amid throngs of tourists, I find myself in the vast cavernous nave. The effect of the marble floor and walls, and the golden mosaics overhead in the rounded recesses of the domes, is totally overwhelming, despite having seen it many times before. Finding a quiet spot in the gallery, I put on my earphones to listen to a famous recording of the Vespers. The crowds of people melt away and I am left seemingly alone in the basilica, listening as the performance, which was recorded here, comes back to life. It is absolutely extraordinary to hear the acoustics on the recording exactly matching the building around me.

There are many reasons why this work is usually the preserve of concert choirs, not least because of the complexity and expense involved in performing it. There is a myriad of professional adult choirs which sing in the major concert halls and tour around the world, none greater with reference to this particular work than the Monteverdi Choir itself, founded and conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, whose 1990 recording I am listening to.

However the performance at the London Oratory will be sung by two liturgical choirs, and more significantly still, it will be sung by childrens’ voices. Readers of New Liturgical Movement will be very familiar with photographs of the beautiful Liturgy which is maintained at the Oratory. However, there is another less visible but nevertheless incredibly important dimension to the work of the Fathers of the Oratory. This is their school, The London Oratory School, founded in 1863, where 1400 young Catholic pupils are educated according to the unique traditions and standards of the Oratory, in the spirit of St Philip Neri. We are truly blessed that these boys receive such an education in their Faith and experience the Liturgy of the Oratory, most especially those in the Schola who sing Mass at the Church every Saturday. In addition the London Oratory Junior Choir for boys and girls at Catholic schools across the capital, sings the 10am Mass at the Oratory on Sundays.

Training boys and girls to sing such music is certainly a challenge, but the truth is that the ceaseless toil and hard work involved with daily rehearsals make the results all the more rewarding. Focused children can achieve pretty much anything, and the higher you set the bar, the more they amaze. In the past year the Schola boys have sung J.S. Bach’s St John Passion, Victoria’s Requiem and most recently a joint performance of the B minor Mass, Bach’s ultimate choral challenge, with Westminster Cathedral Choir. Introducing young Catholic children to this great repertoire is not simply a matter of duty, it’s an incredible privilege too.

The Monteverdi Vespers is a conundrum on many levels. To start with, it is probably better to approach it as being a portfolio of music, some of which is appropriate for use at Vespers, some of which is less so. From a performance perspective, there are many different decisions to be made concerning the order of movements, the allocation of parts, transpositions and keys, to the extent that no two performances are ever likely to be the same. Much has been written about the work, and in particular there is great debate amongst scholars concerning the placement of the Motets, or Sacris concentibus, as to whether they are intended to replace the repeated Antiphons, or follow them, or whether they are in fact simply free-standing Motets for performance outside the context of Vespers.

At our own concert performance on May 6, we will sing the complete work in the order of the original 1610 print, with the seven-part Magnificat. The boys of the Schola, as well as the Junior Choir, will be joined by two outstanding tenor soloists of great distinction, Mark Dobell and Nicholas Mulroy, and accompanied by The English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble. It is always a thrill to work with period instruments, and amongst them will be an Italian seventeenth century triple harp and a theorbo, a long-necked member of the lute family which one is more likely to encounter in renaissance paintings. However music is an art which comes to life, and we can only imagine how close, or not, we come to what Monteverdi heard with his own ears.

Music from the Golden Age of Spain

San Lorenzo de El Escorial

As a chorister at Westminster Cathedral during the 1980s, I was fortunate enough to be involved in a number of recordings of some of the most wonderful liturgical music in the repertoire. A particular highlight was Treasures of the Spanish Renaissance, released by Hyperion in 1985, which included a number of stunning masterpieces from the golden age of Spanish polyphony by three of its greatest masters: Francisco Guerrero, Alonso Lobo and Sebastián de Vivanco. Amongst the choristers, a particular favourite on that recording was Versa est in luctum by Lobo. It is an absolutely remarkable piece of polyphony, a setting of a responsory from the Office of the Dead: ‘My harp is turned to mourning and my music to the voice of those who weep. Spare me, Lord, for my days are as nothing.’ It was a text which seems to have had particular significance to Iberian composers at the time, and indeed the greatest of them all, Tomás Luis de Victoria, included a beautiful setting in his Requiem music for the Dowager Empress Maria who he served as Chaplain at the Monastery of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid. Lobo’s setting was written for the funeral of her brother, Philip II, and there is a definite sense that the composer saved something extra for this commission, attaining new heights of the greatest beauty, achieving something truly worthy of one of the greatest Catholic monarchs.

The Reredos at Toledo Cathedral

This Friday I will be travelling to Spain with my choir, the Schola Cantorum of the London Oratory School, and amongst the Masses and recitals planned, it will be especially wonderful to direct the boys in performances of the Lobo at two places of great significance: the first will be the magnificent Basilica at the Monastery of San Lorenzo at El Escorial. Philip II, for whose funeral it was written, lies in the Royal Mausoleum under the High Altar at El Escorial. He built the magnificent foundation, incorporating a monastery, basilica and palace, in thanksgiving for the Spanish victory at St Quentin in 1557. The battle took place on the Feast Day of St Laurence, 10 August, which is why El Escorial was built in a gridiron layout, in honour of St Laurence’s mode of martyrdom. The king had his own chambers carefully positioned so that he could see the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass from his bed to which he was confined towards the end of his life, through an internal window to the right of the altar. The second performance will be at the magnificent Cathedral in Toledo where Lobo served as Maestro de Capilla. The cathedral's stupendous reredos must be one of the finest in Christendom and simply has to be experienced.

The boys will also be singing music by the Spanish composers Esquivel, Vivanco, Guerrero and Victoria, as well as music by English and Italian composers. You can read more details here, and you can follow their progress through Escorial, Madrid, Segovia, Toledo and Salamanca on Facebook and Twitter. Wish us luck and keep us in your prayers.

The Cappella Giulia's 500th Anniversary 1513-2013

On 19 February 1513 Pope Julius II signed a papal bull in which he constituted the Cappella Giulia, the Choir of St Peter’s, which has been celebrating its 500th anniversary this year. The Vatican Post Office has released a special set of postcards (see images below) featuring some of the most famous of the Choir’s Magisters.

Ruggiero Giovanelli

Prior to 1512, musical arrangements at St Peter’s were very ad hoc, although from 1509 onwards there were signs of attempts to build up the music with a pool of musicians, of somewhat fluid membership, which provided cantors. Pope Julius II wanted a chapel in which the Divine Liturgy would be celebrated beautifully every day. His Cappella Giulia, which was to be his mausoleum, was intended to be part of the new basilica which was being built at the time. His uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, had built the Cappella di Palazzo, better known as the Sistine Chapel, and it was this which undoubtedly provided Pope Julius with the inspiration to build a new chapel with music to rival that of the Sistine.

At the beginning of 1513, Pope Julius was gravely ill. On 19 February, the day before he died, he signed the bull In altissimo militantis Ecclesiæ founding the choir of the Cappella Giulia and making provision in perpetuity for 12 boys and 12 men to sing in the chapel. Specifically, Italians were to be employed, as opposed to the largely French and Spanish musicians who worked in the Sistine. The Pope died the very next day and his mausoleum was never built. It would have been truly pharaonic, with Michelangelo’s Moses being just one of forty statues. In its place today is the Altar of the Chair. The first few years of the choir were turbulent times: there were financial difficulties in the first years, then the sack of Rome in 1527 followed by the reconstruction of the city, and then a plague.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

In 1551, Palestrina was appointed as ‘Magister cantorum’ and he immediately increased the number of cantors in the choir. On his departure in 1554 to the Sistine Choir, Animuccia took over. Palestrina’s time at the Sistine was in fact short-lived as he and a number of the cantors there were asked to leave when the new Pope decided only to employ men in minor orders in the Chapel. As a married man, Palestrina was ineligible. Both Palestrina and Animuccia combined their duties with the Chiesa Nuova, the Roman Oratory, just as the current Magister, Fr Pierre Paul, does today.

Animuccia was a very prolific composer, however most of his huge output was lost in the 1700s when his scores were sold to a shopkeeper near St Peter’s to be used to wrap cheese, the music being considered passé. On Animuccia’s death in 1571, Palestrina returned to the Cappella Giulia where he remained until his own death in 1594. In 1979 the Cappella Giulia ceased for financial reasons, but was reinstated with women sopranos in May 2008.

Ernesto Boezi

In many ways the Cappella Giulia is musically more interesting than the Sistine Choir; whilst the Sistine had a relatively limited library of fixed repertoire, such as the famous Miserere by Allegri, the Magistri of the Cappella Giulia, who were all expected to compose, brought a stylistic diversity coming as they did from a range of different cities. There are over 4000 titles in the Cappella Giulia’s archives which were recently catalogued by Canon Dario Rezza. The entire history of the Cappella Giulia has been recorded in a vast and comprehensive book in two volumes, complete with facsimiles of many of the most important documents. The author, Giancarlo Rostirolla has spent 30 years researching this book which will be available early next year.

The 2013 celebrations began at Mass on the Feast of the Chair of St Peter, and throughout the year a number of choirs have been invited by Fr Pierre Paul to sing with the Cappella Giulia for Sunday Mass in the Basilica. My own choir, the Schola Cantorum of the London Oratory School was the first of these choirs and sang with the Cappella Giulia last February at both Mass and Vespers. The complete list of choirs which have sung this year is as follows:

24 February, Schola Cantorum of the London Oratory School, England

10 March, St. Anne Catholic Church Choir, Houston TX, USA

17 March, St. Gregory the Great Church, Chicago IL, USA

7 April, St. Michael Cathedral Boys Choir, Toronto, Canada

5 May, Tokai Male Choir, Nagoya, Japan

12 May, Choir of St. Vincent de Paul, Huntington Beach CA, USA

30 June, Les Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal, Montréal QC, Canada

7 July, Les Petits Chanteurs de Trois-Rivières, QC, Canada

14 July, Assisi Music Festival Choir, Summit NJ, USA

21 July, St. Colman’s Cathedral Choir, Cobh Co. Cork, Ireland

28 July, Osnabrücker Jugendchor, Germany

18 August, Choeur de la Cathédrale Primatiale de Lyon, France

15 September, Monterey Diocesan Choir, Monterey CA, USA

20 October, St. Andrew Camerata, Edinburgh, Scotland

3 November, Combined choirs of Immaculate Conception Church, Durham NC, USA and St. Mark Church, Wilmington NC, USA

10 November, Saint Andrew Catholic Church, Newtown PA, USA

17 November, Saint John Cantius Parish, Chicago IL, USA

Hanging on the wall of Fr Pierre's office at the Vatican in pride of place is this wonderful photograph of him meeting Pope Benedict XVI.

Choirs of sufficient standard who wish to sing at St Peter’s should contact Fr Pierre Paul directly. 

The London Oratory School's 150th Anniversary Mass at Westminster Cathedral

The London Oratory School marked its 150th anniversary with Pontifical Mass at Westminster Cathedral last Friday. The Cathedral was filled to capacity by all 1400 pupils from the school along with the full staff and guests. The celebrant was Archbishop Vincent Nichols and the deacon was Stefan Kaminski, an old Oratorian. Another former pupil, David Howell, assisted and a number of priests were present, including former pupils of the school and the Fathers of the London Oratory. The music included Mozart's Spatzenmesse, Jubilate Deo by Gabrieli and hymns by Newman and Faber and was sung by the Schola Cantorum of the London Oratory School. A brass octet played in the hymns and the Gabrieli and the organ was played by Peter Stevens, Assistant Master of Music at the Cathedral and Edward Symington, Organ Scholar. [Photos: Paul Flanagan]