I am happy to promote the New England Sacred Music Workshop 2026, offered in conjunction with St Benedict Abbey. The workshop focuses on both chant and polyphony, offering expert tuition for singers, and talks on the connections between sacred music and the liturgy. The setting is beautiful Still River, near Harvard (not to be confused with the less important university of the same name), the site of the abbey, in rural Massachusetts, about 50 miles west of Boston. I have a fondness for this community: when I was on the faculty of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, I regularly attended Mass and Divine Office there, and took groups of students to experience the beautiful, chanted, Latin liturgy. To learn more and register, follow this link.
Here is the information that I received from the organizers:
New England Sacred Music and St. Benedict Abbey are pleased to invite you to a two-and-a-half-day sacred music workshop in beautiful Still River, Massachusetts. This workshop is designed for advanced singers and directors who wish to delve further into neumatic interpretation, and for intermediate singers who are looking to broaden their understanding of the repertoire.
Rehearsals and classes will be taught by faculty with a breadth of experience teaching and directing sacred music in monasteries, cathedrals, and parishes of all sizes. Lauds and Vespers will be chanted each day with the monks. In addition to all of the chant propers, participants will sing several motets at the two Masses: one Friday evening and one on Saturday at noon. Both masses will be at the magnificent St. Cecilia Church in Leominster.
Faculty:
David Hughes (Denver, Colorado): Advanced Chant
Samuel Schmitt (Bridgeport, Connecticut): Refresher Chant
Christopher Berry (St. Patrick’s Seminary, Menlo Park, California): Polyphony
Speakers:
Fr. Leo Camurati, OP (New York, New York)
Fr. Peter Connelly, OSB (St. Benedict Abbey)
Cost:
EARLY BIRD PRICE ( Sep 3 - Sep 21 )
- $200 per participant (Includes all workshop materials and six meals. Does not include lodging.)
REGULAR PRICE ( Sep 21 - Oct 8 )
- $250 per participant (Includes all workshop materials and six meals. Does not include lodging.)
- We are eager to encourage students and parish choirs to attend. To that end, we will offer a generous 50% discount per person for any parish that sends more than five choristers, or any school (secondary or college) that sends more than ten students.
- We are also eager to invite religious and clergy to attend, and are providing a 50% discount for religious and a 25% discount for clergy.
Lodging:
Saint Benedict Abbey is unable to provide lodging for participants. If you are local, we suggest you commute to and from the abbey. Otherwise, the following hotels are in close proximity:
- Please register at the following link: newenglandsacredmusic.org/register
Early Bird registration is now open until September 21 (the feast of St. Matthew)! On September 21, the standard registration price will increase to $250 and will remain open until 5:00PM EST on October 8, one week prior to the workshop. We will accept registration at the door on Thursday, October 15 for $250.
For more details, please visit our Facebook page! We’ll be posting details about the daily schedule and repertoire in the coming days. Be sure to follow us, like the event, and share it with your friends!
Readers may find interesting two recent articles by Trent Beattie concerning the ever-fresh subject of sacred music.
A fun look at what is and is not allowed in Mass...
Is it possible for the love of sacred music to go too far? Comparing the Church’s directives with practical parish realities can often reveal a gap...
It is the duty of the priest to pray the Mass, but it does not follow that he is required to fill “empty spaces” therein with a multiplication of required prayers or the addition of prayers not even called for – no matter how beautiful they might be in themselves.
As silence accompanies the Consecration of the bread and wine, it is fitting to have silence at the consecration of ourselves – that is, when receiving Holy Communion.
Even if a parish choir does not sing vernacular hymns, it can still fall prey to the notion that wall-to-wall singing of some sort must accompany reception of Holy Communion.
Extensive Q&A with Christopher Jasper of the Gregorian Chant Academy
Although someone may agree in principle that we should become more skilled in the Church’s music, there can be real hurdles to overcome in achieving the desired proficiency. Christopher Jasper has created highly popular online courses for success in that realm…
The singers may be very holy and operate with the best of intentions, but if they lack the musical abilities to do the music justice, well, that can be detrimental to those who hear it. It can be distracting or sometimes outright painful to listen to.
On the other hand, when most people, regardless of religion, do hear chant or polyphony sung very well – especially if they hear it live and in a beautiful church – are typically very moved by it and immediately sense the sacrality and transcendence of this kind of music.
I am delighted to announce the release of new sacred music by American composer Andrew Dittman called The Kyrial. The settings are generally familiar melodies from Latin chants of the Ordinary of the Mass (Kyrie, Agnus Dei, Pater noster etc), adapted to the English language, and given an Anglican flavour through four-part harmonies that are evocative of traditional Anglican chant.
Andrew has been choirmaster at The Chapel of the Cross Reformed Episcopal Church since 2013, and composes sacred music for weekly liturgical performance. His work is rooted in traditional forms and sung in English and Latin. He draws on a range of influences, including plainchant, Renaissance and Baroque counterpoint, creating compositions that are both timeless and approachable. Like Paul Jernberg, who composes for the Roman Rite and Roman Hurko, who composes for the Byzantine Rite, Dittman represents a new generation restoring sacred music to its proper place.
Historically, high culture and popular culture were not divided – composers like Mozart and Beethoven drew from a shared cultural font rooted in the sacred, resonating with both aristocracy and ordinary people. To restore this unity, we need fresh creativity in traditional forms of music that is both timeless and speaks to the current age, with sacred music within the liturgy reclaiming its role as the pinnacle of artistic expression. Andrew exemplifies a return to this ideal.
The collection is called The Kyrial and is available on Spotify, Amazon or Pandora. You can also listen to his work on YouTube at youtube.com/@aldittman
We are very glad to share this announcement from the shrine of St Martin of Tours in Louisville, Kentucky, of a new album of sacred music sung by their choir.
The Shrine of St Martin of Tours in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, is known for many blessed things, and especially for the beautiful liturgies celebrated within its walls and the quality of sacred music that resounds there to lift hearts to heaven and glorify God. The sacred music is led by the Choir of St Martin of Tours, a semi-professional choir comprising both volunteers and section leaders.
Thanks to the generosity of a member of the Shrine, this past year the Choir produced their first professionally recorded album, O Great Mystery, featuring several motets for the Advent and Christmas seasons as well as William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices.
The album was recorded in the gorgeous acoustic of the Shrine, which features a six-second reverb. All of the music on the album was carefully prepared over several weeks, and regularly performed for Holy Mass both in the Ordinary Form and in the Extraordinary Form over the Advent and Christmas seasons.
We hope you will consider listening to the album on your preferred streaming service! The links are included below.
Back in November, we shared a report from Dr Emily Meixner on the Schola Cantorum Program for young people which she directs at the Shrine of St Martin of Tours in Louisville, Kentucky. With a view to the upcoming season of Fore-lent, which starts in two weeks, Dr Meixner recently sent us notice of the schola’s recording of a polyphonic version of the Communio for Septuagesima Sunday by Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450 - 1527.) Isaac’s monumental work known as the Choralis Constantinus contains over 375 polyphonic settings of Mass propers from every part of the liturgical year.
The chant melody is heard in long notes sung by the sopranos. The text is taken from Psalm 30, 17-18: “Illumina faciem tuam super servum tuum, et salvum me fac in misericordia tua: Domine, non confundar, quoniam invocavi te. – Show Thy servant the light of thy countenance: and save me for Thy mercy's sake. Lord, let me not be confounded, for I have called upon Thee.”
The Choir of St Martin of Tours consists of both volunteers and paid section leaders and sings weekly for Masses on Sundays and holy days throughout the year, as well as occasionally for monthly Vespers and Compline.
We are grateful to Don Francesco Deffenu, a priest of the Archdiocese of Cagliari (on the Italian island of Sardinia), and a student of the Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra in Rome, for preparing this article, which has been translated and edited by Thomas Neal.
The Servant of God Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val y Zulueta (1865-1930) is remembered as one of the most authoritative and spiritually profound figures of the Church of his time. The most trusted collaborator of Pope St. Pius X, Cardinal Merry del Val served the pope first as his personal secretary and then as Secretary of State. In this role, he assumed a central role in the management of the Roman Curia and in diplomatic relations with heads of state. His life was entirely dedicated to the service of the Holy See, during which he held prestigious positions such as Prefect of the Apostolic Palace, President of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica. Today, his intense personal spirituality is attested by the ongoing process of beatification, which was opened in 1953 at the behest of Pope Pius XII.
A portrait photograph of Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val taken ca. 1905. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)
Alongside his important ecclesiastical and diplomatic commitments, Merry del Val also cultivated a deep passion for sacred music. He experienced first-hand the great musical reform promoted by St. Pius X, author of the famous Motu Proprio Tra le Sollecitudini (1903) and founder of the Scuola Superiore di Musica Sacra (now the Pontificio istituto di musica sacra) in 1910. In his memoirs, he vividly recounted the Pontiff’s love for sacred music:
When new musical compositions were presented to [St. Pius X] for approval, he carefully examined the score and more than once, in my presence, hummed the melody that he read at first sight with the greatest ease, beating time with his hand as he read, then giving his opinion on the merit and style of the music.
This direct contact with the musical sensibility of St. Pius X profoundly shaped the Cardinal’s tastes, inspiring him to dedicate himself with genuine enthusiasm and refined sensitivity to the composition of sacred music.
Surprisingly, despite being immersed in correspondence with Heads of State, in the government of the Curia and in personal assistance to the Pontiff, Merry del Val found time to compose numerous pieces of liturgical music. His hymns and motets — including settings of the Veni Creator, Te Joseph, Ave Maris Stella, Ave Regina Coelorum, O Salutaris Hostia, Tantum Ergo, Panis Angelicus, and Audivi vocem de caelo — provide an extraordinary testimony to his faith, and to his spiritual and artistic sensitivity. The manuscript scores are now preserved in the Archives of the Cappella Giulia and at the Pontifical Spanish College of San José in Rome.
In recent years, the Cardinal’s musical legacy has been rediscovered and enhanced thanks to the work of Monsignor Pablo Colino, Canon and Maestro Emeritus of the Cappella Giulia of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Colino has undertaken an extensive study of Merry del Val’s compositions, culminating in the recording of a CD with the Choir of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, released in 2005 and entitled Raffaele Merry Del Val & Lorenzo Perosi - Inni, mottetti e canzoni, which has helped raise awareness of this repertoire and demonstrate both its beauty and historical importance.
Recently, on November 12, 2025, on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Merry del Val’s episcopal consecration, a commemorative concert was held in Rome at the Spanish National Church. Presided over by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State to His Holiness, the event paid tribute to the figure and spiritual legacy of Merry del Val. The choir of Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli (the Spanish national church), directed by Fabjola Lekaj, performed his sacred compositions, offering a rare opportunity to rediscover the Cardinal’s artistic dimension and underline the contemporaneity and lasting value of his ecclesial, spiritual, and artistic testimony.
We are glad to share this report from Dr Emily Meixner on the Schola Cantorum Program for young people which she directs at the Shrine of St Martin of Tours in Louisville, Kentucky.
The Shrine of St. Martin of Tours in downtown Louisville, Kentucky is known for its historic architecture, 24-hour perpetual adoration chapel, and for the two early Christian martyrs enshrined beneath its side altars. It is also known for its dedication to beautiful liturgy and sacred music. Mindful of the teachings of Sacrosanctum Concilium (Paragraphs 112-115), the Shrine founded the Schola Cantorum program in the fall of 2016 as a means of preserving and fostering the Church’s vast treasury of sacred music in the local Catholic community. In its first year the Schola program was small but mighty, comprising 7 students; since that time, it has thrived and grown, filling the choir loft, and currently boasting 27 students ranging in age from 7 to 15.
The Schola program primarily assists the liturgical needs of the Shrine, meeting weekly on Wednesday afternoons during the school year to learn healthy singing techniques and a variety of forms of sacred music, ranging from Gregorian Chant to Anglican Chant, as well as traditional hymnody and polyphonic motets. The Schola primarily sings for Sunday Mass and Vespers at the Shrine multiple times a year (roughly three events in the fall and three in the spring), as well as occasional events outside of the Shrine, including a recital of organ music and Gregorian chant co-sponsored by the Louisville Chapter of the American Guild of Organists in October 2024, and a fall concert for the residents at the Wesley Manor Retirement Home in 2019. The Schola also has an annual tradition of chanting Compline at the historic Cave Hill Cemetery during the month of November, a time when the Church encourages the faithful to pray for the souls in Purgatory.
In 2022, the program was expanded to include an advanced Schola, which meets for rehearsals on Saturdays in addition to Wednesdays. The advanced students are those within the broader Schola program who have progressed in their singing and reading abilities to be able to sing more complex Gregorian chants and polyphonic motets, with the expectation that this will better prepare them to eventually join the ranks of the Choir of St. Martin’s. The advanced students prepare and sing for additional liturgical events at the Shrine, particularly monthly Vespers. Recent accomplishments include singing Maurice Duruflé’s Ubi Caritas, Elizabeth Poston’s Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Magnificat from The Short Service in C.
Fall of 2026 will mark the 10 year anniversary of the Schola Program’s founding. In the past nine years, the program has served 70 children and 32 families in the Louisville area. Upcoming events include singing for the Vigil Mass on Christmas Eve, Vespers for the Feast of the Annunciation, and their debut singing a Missa Cantata at the Sunday celebration of the Extraordinary Form Mass.
Thanks to Abbot Mark of St Benedict Abbey for notifying me of this workshop. When I lived in nearby New Hampshire and taught at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, I would regularly visit to participate in both Mass (in Latin) and the Liturgy of the Hours, often taking students with me. The abbey is situated in beautiful rural Massachusetts, an hour away from Boston and close to the small town of Harvard - which is not to be confused with the university!
The program focuses on Gregorian chant, but also includes sessions on organ improvisation on chant themes and polyphony. You can read the details of the event on the following Facebook page:
Since its founding, The Saint Hildegard Project has been dedicated to promoting sacred music through both education and performance. Based in South Bend, Indiana (where the University of Notre Dame is located), the ensemble has steadily grown, expanding its choir and reaching new audiences with the beauty of the Church’s musical tradition.
The Project has offered music for distinguished occasions, including a 2024 performance at Holy Cross College for Cardinal Gerhard Müller, preceding his Mind & Heart lecture.
This year, the ensemble released its first album, In Te Speravi, now available on both Spotify and Apple Music. Audio recordings and samples of the group’s work can be found via their website.
Looking ahead, the choir is preparing for its Fall schedule with an upcoming concert on Sunday, October 12, which will feature music from the Spanish tradition. For more information about the Project, upcoming concerts, and recordings, please visit hildegardproject.org and follow them on Instagram.
On the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, the Magnificat antiphon at Second Vespers is borrowed from the Byzantine Rite, in which it is sung as the troparion at the Divine Liturgy. Here is the Greek original, the Latin translation used in the Roman Divine Office, and an English translation.
Nativitas tua, Dei Genitrix Virgo, gaudium annuntiavit universo mundo: ex te enim ortus est sol justitiae, Christus Deus noster: qui solvens maledictionem, dedit benedictionem, et confundens mortem, donavit nobis vitam sempiternam.
Thy birth, O Virgin Mother of God, proclaimed joy to the whole world; for from Thee arose the sun of righteousness, Christ our God; who released us from the curse, and gave us blessing; and confounding death, He granted us eternal life.
Here is a polyphonic setting of the Latin version by Palestrina.
And another by the Polish composer Bartłomiej Pękiel (died ca. 1670).
The Greek version of the tropar:
And the Church Slavonic:
Рождество Твое Богородице Дево, радость возвѣсти всей вселеннѣй: изъ Тебѣ бо возсїѧ Солнце правды Христосъ Богъ нашъ, и разрушивъ клѧтву, даде благословенїе, и оупразднивъ смерть, дарова намъ животъ вѣчный.
In this article, “Life Teen” should be understood not only as the program known by this name, but also as representative of a certain mentality that can be found in many programs—some officially named, others nameless, local, and spontaneous.
A friend of mine wrote to me as follows.
Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,
What are your thoughts on the Life Teen phenomenon? Often priests will bring in this program because they say they’ve had success with this outreach to youth, who are “energized” through a youth Mass. They might even admit that the Catholicism preached in Life Teen and the youth Masses is dumbed down, but they say, if the young people are going more often to Confession and Adoration, it must be somewhat a good thing.
One wonders if what’s going on is that most young people have experienced very poor liturgy, so anything different seems like an improvement to them. Plus, if they are required to go to Mass for Confirmation prep (as is the case in many places), their attendance cannot be chalked up as a sign of approval.
Nevertheless, is there long-term fruit from Life Teen? Do these young people stay in the Church after high school? Life Teen has been around for a while, but the huge number of young people leaving the Church seems to keep climbing. If this program was so successful, shouldn’t that exodus at least be leveling off? So maybe young people are involved, but then fall away.
At a meeting with the parish team, we got into a conversation about “externals” that can be changed and adapted with the times, so I brought up the issue of communion in the hand vs. kneeling to receive on the tongue to make the case that form and content cannot be separated so easily—that, when certain forms or externals are removed, the truth of the faith can be obscured. The priest, however, insisted that it’s only a matter of the heart and said he couldn’t imagine anything more reverent than receiving Jesus in the hand (!). At this point, I realized that we see Catholicism in a fundamentally different way, though I was already sensing that.
The difficulty that I’m having is that he supports things like Adoration (he wants to try to establish perpetual Adoration), he talks about helping people know Jesus, and about teaching the lost. I certainly can’t be opposed to those things! It’d be one thing if he just didn’t care. But he’s passionate about restoring the faith in our area. Also, I can’t discount the success he’s had at other places.
However, traditional liturgy is not a priority for him. He speaks a lot about the liturgy, but he’s more focused on it being “meaningful and uplifting.” He prefers the contemporary church music. To my mind, this is fundamentally misguided, but in parishes he’s been at, numbers have improved. What do you make of all of this?
Sincerely, A Youth Minister
Here was my reply.
All of what you describe is familiar to me, and not least because I went to many retreats in high school that anticipated the Life Teen phenomenon. It is the “new paradigm” of liturgy: somewhat informal, upbeat, very contemporary, like the evangelical Protestants, but with some Catholic flavoring added: devotion to the Virgin Mary, Adoration, Stations. Of course, such Catholic elements are good, but they have been ripped from their proper theological and liturgical context and are now free-floating constellations of devotion. We should not be quick to think that a priest has the right idea about what he’s doing just because he follows the Catechism and wants to encourage “good things.”
Let me begin with Adoration. I am passionately devoted to Adoration. But... it has a proper context and can in fact be abused. On this topic, the best thing to read is a pair of articles by Joseph Shaw (here and here).
As for Life Teen, where to begin? First, the history of its founder cannot inspire confidence. Beyond that, I think one needs to question the general assumption that “youth want contemporary things and it’s the Church’s job to give it to them.” An old article at NLM does a great job dismantling that, but it’s a theme many, many authors have returned to (see John Mac Ghlionn’s “Traditional Catholicism, the new ‘cool’ for young Americans”).
Fr Christopher Smith does a thorough job refuting the “praise & worship” musical genre typical of this movement (here and here; cf. this too). I have addressed this topic at some length in my book Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence: Three Gifts of God for Liturgy and for Life. Samuel Gregg offers keen insights in “A Church drowning in sentimentalism.” The assumption at work is that the reality of an encounter can be measured by its emotional impact. The stronger your emotions, the more real your experience was. There is some truth to this. A great musical or dramatic performance will produce strong emotions. Falling in love (eros) is the most perfect example.
But placing an equal sign between reality and feeling, experience and emotion, is part of the legacy of Romanticism, not a self-evident proposition or a truth that can be demonstrated. In fact, it flies in the face of most of humanity’s assumptions through the ages. The romantics were understandably reacting against rationalism, which had made the opposite error by equating reality with idea, or experience with rational consciousness. Rationalism’s account of the human person was too cerebral, too “thin”; it viewed man as if he were a disembodied mind gazing out indifferently on a world of truth. Romanticism’s reactionary account was too corporeal and sensual, too “thick”; it viewed man as if he were a bundle of emotions ready to catch fire. I wrote about this codependency between rationalism and romanticism here.
In spite of the external glitz, Life Teen and most of these rock-it-up adolescent movements, including the charismatics, have a fairly poor track record. Those who get involved mostly either mature into something else or wander away. I don’t have stats to back it up but I hear it so often from clergy and music ministers and people around the country that I consider it to have at least anecdotal value. Many of the criticisms made about charismatics apply exactly to Life Teen and similar programs: see “Confusion about Graces: A Catholic Critique of the Charismatic Movement” and “Why Charismatic Catholics Should Love the Traditional Latin Mass.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, there’s a lot of Life Teen-critical material out there by now, if you search the internet; and there is an equal amount bearing witness to the unexpected attraction of tradition for youths.
Lastly, you brought up communion in the hand. This is truly one of the most wicked abuses that has ever been introduced into the Church’s worship. The practice had gone away for 1,000 years due to an increased sense of reverence; suddenly bringing it back, and in a Calvinist form, sent the contrary message. The best short article on the topic would be this one: “Debunking the myth that today’s Communion in the hand revives an ancient custom.”
Keep on learning. Your instincts and intuitions are right on.
Contemporary Sacred Music by the Texas-based Composer Andrew Dittman
Today, there is a stark divide between high culture (often confined to a small, educated elite) and popular culture, which appeals broadly but lacks the depth of traditional artistic forms. We see this pattern of the separation of high and pop culture in art, music, architecture and literature, and are so used to the idea that it is easy to imagine this it has always been so.
On the one hand, you have what now passes for high culture, which is typically so ugly and inaccessible that to be able to appreciate it, you need years of education at a modern university to remove your good taste and common sense (which is the primary purpose of a modern education). On the other hand, you have a popular culture that is accessible and can sometimes be beautiful, but is limited by its scope and the ambition of what it aims to communicate. As a result, it is often also base and crude.
Historically, however, this was not always the case. Dickens and Shakespeare had mass appeal, for example, and the music of composers such as Mozart and Beethoven resonated as much with the aristocracy and the educated as with the ordinary people, drawing from a shared cultural font, which is the sacred. Even for music that had no obvious religious or sacred connections, the forms of the mundane were derived from, and hence point back to, the forms that dominated the sacred music of the time. If we believe that it is good for all to appreciate and participate in the highest expressions of human creativity and beauty (and I do), then it becomes desirable to eliminate the gap. Some seek to do this by artificially elevating the place of pop culture to that of the sacred, by, for example, using the forms of pop music in church. This is the movement that brings guitar-strumming folk bands and rap into the choir loft.
I prefer another approach, which is to encourage a fresh creativity in traditional forms of music, in order to restore a high culture that is noble, accessible, beautiful, and universally cherished. For this to be simultaneously popular and elevating, it must both be of its time so that it speaks to the people of the current age, and conform to tradition. If this is ever to happen, sacred music within the liturgy must reclaim its role as the pinnacle of artistic expression, so that it can be once again the natural driving force for all contemporary music.
It is encouraging to see composers in the present age responding to the challenge by choosing to base themselves in churches and compose for the choirs, much as Haydn or Bach did in their day. They craft music that serves worship while aspiring to artistic excellence. I think of figures such as Paul Jernberg, who composes for the Roman Rite, and Roman Hurko, who composes for the Byzantine Rite.
On a recent trip to Dallas, Texas, the music of composer Andrew Dittman was brought to my attention, and he is another who exemplifies this vision. As choirmaster at The Chapel of the Cross Reformed Episcopal Church since 2013, Dittman composes sacred music for weekly liturgical performances, rooted in traditional forms and sung in English and Latin. His work draws on a range of influences, including plainchant, Renaissance and Baroque counterpoint, creating compositions that are both timeless and approachable.
Below are examples of his sacred music from his YouTube channel, highlighting choral performances of his compositions set to both English and Latin, and including harmonised settings of the plainsong chants of the Ordinary of Mass, taken from the Latin and adapted to English:
First is a setting for the text of Psalm 131 (130), text in Latin:
The next two are adaptations of the plainchant Ordinaries to the English translation, which are then harmonised.
And a setting of the Collect of the Fourth Sunday after Trinity Sunday:
It was St Augustine who, in his Confessions, described the beauty of God as ‘ever ancient, ever new’ to describe the divine presence as encompassing all time in an eternal present moment (and which I quote above). He also famously said that those who sing their prayers pray twice! So with that in mind, and aided by the music of Andrew Dittman, let us pray…
The following is based on a real letter. Dear Friend,
I’m sorry to hear that you’re experiencing some “ups and downs” with regard to the liturgy there, though it’s hardly surprising in a way. Your diocese is not well known for liturgical propriety or taste, and, beyond that, priests mostly have control over how the liturgy goes, which is why we end up with a lot of messes and relatively few triumphs. Once you grasp the essential problem of the optionitis of the new rite, you can then see clearly why the challenge of agreement on what to sing and when arises in such acute form. Very few clergy are well-trained nowadays in sacred music, and they often have a hard time understanding why (to take one notorious example) one would wish to use a Gradual instead of a responsorial psalm. They are just used to what they’re used to, and other things seem odd. This is the power of custom at work, and even bad custom, unfortunately, feels like, and is treated like, law.
You asked me how I ever got to the point of being able to sing so much chant at the place where I used to direct music. It was rather remarkable how things worked out. When I was first hired, I was in a position to convince the pastor—then a conservative who was open to Ratzingerian ideas—that Mass should be as “reverent” and “traditional” as possible. We wrote up a guide that we followed almost without deviation. There was also always a desire for a strong choir; and once people heard what the choir was capable of, they simply wanted that beauty to continue. Both my friends and my enemies would probably say that I kept a stranglehold on the program and fought hard against innovation or change, except when it was change in a more traditional direction.
In the end, as you know, I was too traditional for the place, especially under the dominance of new and more “progressive” (in reality, regressive: “Back to the ’70s!”) leadership, and so my tenure came to an end—but not before eleven good years had passed.
The use of Propers at daily Mass is certainly very exceptional in the Novus Ordo Missae [NOM] world. The place you pointed to as a model happens to be one of the few places on the planet where the Graduale Romanum is more commonly used than a hymnal.
Moreover, one must grasp—this is crucial—that the mentality of Catholics about daily Mass is very much a “low Mass” one. They want to get in and get out in a half-hour or so if possible. To my mind, this worked well enough when you had the real low Mass—a quiet, peaceful, contemplative Mass said by the priest and servers, with no music. But with the NOM’s near constant flow of words, a daily Mass can be a painfully didactic and unedifying experience; the chant, I found, helps a lot to dissipate that feeling and to elevate the worship, and it is possible to sing the Ordinary and Propers without Mass taking longer than about 40 minutes, provided the preaching does not carry on. Still, you have to understand that you are working from a baseline assumption of no music for weekdays, so every piece you add, no matter how beautiful or fitting, is already a step beyond that, and likely to be experienced, at least by some, as an unwelcome imposition.
The various Gregorian antiphons are, in keeping with the NOM’s character, optional. That is why no one can ever say “they must be sung,” even on Sundays or Holy Days. One can try to make a “hermeneutic of continuity” argument that they should be sung, that it’s better to do so, more fitting, but at the end of the day, they are as optional as the day is long. And options often facilitate the attitude: do what’s quickest, or even skip it altogether.
In the music program I used to direct, we did the Propers because, at the time, I was firmly convinced of the need for (and the possibility of) liturgical harmony between the old and new forms of the Mass, and others there were willing to accept my view because they liked the results. In the old Mass, in contrast, degrees of solemnity, and thus, required items of music, are hard-wired into the liturgy: you cannot do a High Mass or Solemn Mass without singing everything that must be sung. In the new Mass, solemnity is a subjective concept that is made up of a lot of accidental elements, which, again, can make navigating the waters quite a challenge.
Arguments for singing the antiphons at daily Mass are not difficult to come by (read this, this, and this), but you have to be prepared for pushback. One of the most disappointing aspect of fallen human nature is that a convincing argument, even an unanswerable argument, may still not be enough to shift someone to your position. That’s because people work by prejudice, sentiment, habit, instinct, laziness, fear, and a hundred other factors.
You asked me for recommended reading on the history and theology of the liturgy in our times, since your own education in Catholic institutions was deficient in this area. Don’t feel too badly; there is almost nowhere in the world where liturgy is studied from a traditional point of view, or even much at all, outside of traditionalist seminaries. Most degree programs are thoroughly in the grip of the “spirit of Vatican II” paradigm, and even when they are not, any serious or systematic critique of the liturgical revolution is verboten. Having and studying the following texts will constitute a profitable introductory course:
Ratzinger. A masterpiece—and the fact that it was globally attacked by progressives shows that he was very much on target.
Reid. A bit of heavy lifting but nothing is better on the concept of what development is and looks like and doesn’t look like.
Chiron. The perfect biography of a figure one must know about. Also lots of twentieth-century liturgical history.
Fiedrowicz. This book is essential reading on the history and theology of the liturgy. Just magnificent. And don’t skip the footnotes.
Shaw. Eminently practical and thorough, with copious sources of documentation. Indispensable for background of all kinds.
Mosebach. The masterpiece on the question of liturgy as art-form and the necessary aesthetic requirements of it.
That should be plenty to keep you busy. Be patient, do your best, and make time for the Byzantine liturgy you have in your neighborhood. It will teach you much.
On Friday, February 14th, the feast of Saint Valentine, Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Grand Rapids, MI welcomed Gesualdo Six from London to sing a choral meditation and Mass for the parish's yearlong Palestrina500 festival.
The choral meditation consisted of:
Palestrina: Litaniae de Beata Virgine Maria a6
Antoine Brumel: Sub tuum praesidium
Josquin des Prez: O Virgo prudentissima
Johannes Ockeghem: Intemerata Dei mater
Antoine de Févin: Nesciens mater
Jean Mouton: Ave Maria, virgo serena
Josquin des Prez: Nymphes des bois / Requiem aeternam
Costanzo Festa: Quis dabit oculis
Jean L’Héritier: Sub tuum praesidium
The Mass featured the Missa Sine Nomine, as well as Palestrina’s setting of the antiphon Cantabo Domino and the Sicut Cervus.
Sacred Heart’s pastor, Fr. Ron Floyd celebrated the Missa cantata. Here’s a recap video:
And some photos:
On Tuesday, March 25th, the Solemnity of the Annunciation, Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Grand Rapids, MI welcomed The Hope College Chapel Choir, of Holland, MI.
The choral meditation consisted of all music by living composers, with chanted psalms from that evening’s Vespers between each piece by the Men’s Schola of Sacred Heart:
Hear Our Cry, O Lord by Ben Krause O Radiant Dawn by James MacMillan Halo My Path by Josh Rodriguez Set me as a Seal by Margaret Burk O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen Tota pulchra es by Jonathan Bading
The Mass featured Palestrina’s Missa Brevis as well as his Jesu Rex Admirabilis, and again, the Sicut Cervus.
The series continues this Friday, April 25th, when Sacred Heart will welcome the world famous Tallis Scholars from the UK, who will be singing an hour long choral meditation at 5:00pm (*note time change) and the Missa Papae Marcelli at 7pm - a work that will acquire all the more poignancy from the moment in the Church’s life in which it will be sung.
For the full schedule of Palestrina500 events, go to palestrina500.org.
Os Justi Press is pleased to announce a pair of new releases. First, in the “Studies in Catholic Tradition” series, we have Dr. Patrick John Brill’s The Great Sacred Music Reform of Pope St. Pius X: The Genesis, Interpretation, and Implementation of the Motu Proprio “Tra le Sollecitudini” Professional singer and choir conductor Dr. Andrew Childs sums it up well: “Dr. Patrick Brill provides thorough and much-needed support for what many traditional-minded Catholics have long known or at least suspected: that St. Pius X’s 1903 motu proprio Tra le Sollectitudini still provides the surest guide for the restoration of Catholic sacred music. Part I of this book provides a detailed commentary on the motu proprio, enlightening for amateur and expert alike, while Part II examines the document’s fate from the time of Pius to today, looking at its canonical force and status, positive efforts of implementation, and the neglect it has suffered since Vatican II. As tradition continues to make crucial gains, it will be books like this that serve as practical guides for restoration.” The new president of the Church Music Association of America, Fr. Robert C. Pasley, concurs: “Despite the sorry state of music in the Church today, the official documents of the Church still clearly proclaim that Gregorian chant has ‘first place’ (principem locum) in the liturgy. St. Pius X’s motu proprio is the definitive teaching on this subject. Brill’s book is valuable for Church musicians, an immersion in the fundamentals… A fascinating and important read.” Music director Jonathan Bading, the coordinator of the massive Palestrina500festival in Grand Rapids, Michigan, adds: “St. Pius X’s motu proprio on sacred music is the bravest, loftiest, most exhaustive attempt ever to protect and promulgate the precious musical riches of our Roman Rite. Brill’s work particularly shines by placing this great document in its tumultuous historic context and by thoroughly dismissing the naysayers who attempt to water down the urgency of this holy pope’s directives.” Dr. Edward Schaefer, musicologist and president of the Collegium Sanctorum Angelorum notes the timeliness of Brill's study: “Even though they met with certain challenges, these reforms [of Pius X] supported both the twentieth-century revival of chant and a renewed sensitivity to the importance of music in the liturgy…. Patrick Brill’s study comes at an opportune moment, when Catholics are increasingly rejecting the banality of much of today’s ‘church music.’ Brill’s work conveniently gathers into a slim volume the historical context of Pius X’s reforms, the reforms themselves, their implementation, and the place of these reforms in a Church rediscovering tradition.It will be a standard resource.”
Lastly, music professor and author Susan Treacy points to its practicality:
“An indispensable volume for every Catholic—musician or not—who wants to understand the sacred music of the Church.… Provides a detailed exegesis and history of Pius X’s 1903 motu proprio on sacred music Tra le Sollecitudini, as well as the subsequent history of Catholic liturgical music through the aftermath of Vatican II.… Also offers a plan to help pastors and musicians restore sacred music in today’s Catholic parishes, according to the evergreen reforms of St. Pius X.”
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The second new release is in a rather different vein: a collection of essays around the theme of the state of Catholicism on the African continent.
The familiar claim that Catholicism is booming in Africa—that it is the one continent where the Second Vatican Council has yielded abundant good fruits—does not square with available data and descriptions, as we discover in the late George Neumayr’s articles on Ivory Coast, a Nigerian Catholic’s analysis of harmful inculturation inflicted on Africans by racially stereotyping European liturgists, Claudio Salvucci’s questioning of the Zaire Use on the basis of Congolese history, and Peter Kwasniewski’s evaluation of the evangelical potency of preconciliar faith, life, and worship. In Africa as elsewhere, traditional Catholicism conquered whole populations and fostered immense cultural creativity. Under the new ecclesiology, new ecumenism, and new liturgy of progressive Western intellectuals, ever-larger numbers are falling away to Protestant sects and deracinating secularism.
What readers are saying:
“Accessible and informative, this agile volume…questions much of the received wisdom about the alleged ‘success’ of the Catholic Church in Africa in the last few decades… Will introduce the reader to an ecclesial reality far more problematic and fractured than the naively optimistic portrayals often found in Catholic publications… An important critique of simplistic accounts of liturgical inculturation.” —Thomas Cattoi, PhD, Angelicum, Rome
“Serves as a welcome corrective foray into a fraudulent historiography…based on eurocentric ideological preoccupations.” —Michael Kakooza, PhD, Eastern Africa
“The entirety of this book, brimming with intelligent observations and illustrated with unknown and appealing historical examples, will trigger conversations that should not be postponed.” —Fr. Federico Highton, PhD, ThD; co-founder of two sub-Saharan parishes
“As a priest celebrating the traditional Latin Mass in East Africa for twenty years, I appreciate your collective work. The Catholic Faith has been damaged by the new spirit of this council in Africa like everywhere else, even if the consequences are not of the same magnitude (yet).” —Rev. Christophe Nouveau, Kampala, Uganda
146 pages, full color, in paperback, hardcover, or ebook.
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Both books are available directly from the publisher:
Brill on Pius X | paperback $14.95 | hardcover $21.95 | ebook $9.95
On Monday, January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany, the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Grand Rapids, Michigan, welcomed Schola Antiqua of Chicago to sing a choral meditation and Mass for the second major event of the parish’s Palestrina500 festival, a year-long celebration in honor of the fifth centennial of the great composer’s birth.
The choral meditation consisted of the following works by Palestrina:
Hostis Herodes impie
Stella quam viderant
Magnificat on the 4th tone
Ave Maris Stella
Vergine Bella
Vergine Chiara
Miserere, Mei Deus
Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary M à 6
Sicut Cervus
as well as a Spanish carol by Guerrero, Me fe, vengo de Belén.
The Mass featured the Missa Alma Redemptoris Mater, as well as Palestrina’s setting of the Offertory antiphon Reges Tharsis, and his equal voice setting of the aforementioned Marian antiphon.
On Friday, February 14, Sacred Heart will welcome The Gesualdo Six, who will sing an hour long choral meditation at 5:30pm, and the Missa Sine Nomine for the feast of St. Valentine at 7pm. For the full schedule of Palestrina500 events, go to palestrina500.org.
Call for Participation - A Special Issue of Sacred Music Journal, Dedicated to Dr. William Mahrt
The editorial team of the Church Music Association of America’s journal Sacred Music will dedicate the upcoming first issue of 2025 to the life and work of its recently deceased editor, Dr. William Mahrt. Submissions from readers are welcome, and may be of a varied nature:
Short stories about Dr. Mahrt, his teaching, scholarship, or life
Articles about a particular aspect of Dr. Mahrt’s life or work
Articles dedicated to Dr. Mahrt about any topic suitable for the journal, though not necessarily citing his work.
The length may range from 500 words to 6,000. Submissions must follow the journal’s style sheet, available here. Submissions must be made as a Word document, with embedded footnotes (if applicable) via email to: submissions@musicasacra.com.
Our thanks to Mr Thomas Neal for sharing with NLM this summary and assessment of a lecture given by the well-known Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan last October at Oxford University, where Mr Neal lives, and serves as the Director of Music at New College School.
On Monday 28 October, the pre-eminent Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan gave one of the 2024 Oakeshott Lectures at the University of Oxford. Formerly named after the philosopher, writer, and critic Sir Roger Scruton (1944-2020), this annual series of free public lectures now honours the legacy of the philosopher and political theorist Michael Oakeshott (1901-90) by inviting eminent public intellectuals to speak on topics of “civilisational importance”. The lectures are held in Oxford’s historic Sheldonian Theatre.
MacMillan is well-known in the UK and internationally as a formidable champion of Catholic music, both in the liturgy and on the concert platform. Almost without exception, his symphonies, operas, and choral works have explored Catholic subjects, and he has also written a large corpus of music for the Novus Ordo liturgy. Through his organisation Musica Sacra Scotland, and his work as Director of Music at St. Columba’s Church, Maryhill, Glasgow, he has consistently advocated for wider use of Gregorian chant in the modern Roman Rite while also proposing new paths for contemporary liturgical music. At the same time, he is a long-standing patron of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. His artistic credo was summed up in a series of interviews recently featured on this site.
In his Oakeshott lecture, titled “Music and the Sacred in Antiquity and Modernity,” MacMillan sought to outline the historical and technical influences of plainchant—and ‘the sacred’ more broadly—on the development of Western art music. He began by observing that, despite the tide of secularisation and the collapse of cultural Christianity, the twentieth century produced some of history’s most profoundly religious composers. Indeed, he proposed that “the spiritual inspirations behind the great composers, past and present, continued and grew through the twentieth century.” One of the aims of his lecture, then, was to chart how “the multifaceted search for the sacred has been manifest in music’s journey through modernity.” This is an extraordinarily important observation, but one that has not yet featured in the standard narratives of twentieth-century music.
MacMillan emphasised the role of the sacred in the lives and works of three of the century’s greatest musical modernists: Igor Stravinsky, Francis Poulenc, and Oliver Messiaen. He made a powerful argument for considering Poulenc’s opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1956) as one of the most important works of sacred music in the twentieth century. In retelling the beautiful and tragic history of the martyrs of Compiègne (told through the lens of an adaptation of Georges Bernanos’ 1949 novel), Poulenc invited his public to reconsider the ‘founding myth’ of the French republic: here is the revolution in all its violence, cruelty, and brutality. It is indeed extraordinary to think that an opera composed and first performed in the mid-1950s—a cornerstone of musical modernism, and one of the most beloved and frequently-performed operas of the last century—should have in its climactic scene an impassioned setting of the Salve Regina, sung while the innocent religious are led to the guillotine.
Throughout his career, MacMillan has undertaken a careful scrutiny of Catholicism’s musical and spiritual heritages. This “quest for the sacred” (as he put it) has led him to embrace what he calls “Christianity’s most fundamental musical origins”: the ancient liturgical chant of the West. In the second part of his lecture, he attempted an overview of the role that plainchant has played in art music since apostolic times. After sketching the connections between Jewish liturgical music and the chants of the early Church (in which he quoted extensively from the writings of NLM publisher William Mahrt), MacMillan attempted to draw a direct connection between plainchant and certain masterworks of medieval and early modern Europe: the Messe de Nostre Dame composed sometime before 1365 by Guillaume de Machaut (1300-77); the sacred music of Michael Haydn (1737-1806); and the Romantic modality of the sacred choral music of Anton Bruckner (1824-96).
MacMillan concluded by reflecting on why plainchant is regarded as the fundamentum of Western art music, and why it is described as the paradigm of sacred music.
“There is holiness in the sound of this music. And music is an intrinsic part of the projection of sacredness in the liturgy. […] It does this in two ways. First, by setting the texts of the liturgy to singing [… and secondly,] it provides the entire liturgy [with] an elevated tone of voice that conveys its special character […]”
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I enjoyed this lecture very much, but nevertheless went away with several unanswered questions that concern the first principles of sacred music.
First: I would have liked to hear MacMillan draw out the connections between the two parts of his lecture. While there were certainly some modern composers whose “search for the sacred” did not lead them to reach for the Liber Usualis, there are many others for whom their initial exposure to plainchant was a defining moment in their artistic development. Countless twentieth-century composers were inspired by and even quoted plainchant in their works, usually to invoke a sense of the sacred. Gregorian modes and melodies among the primary Western influences on the music of Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Ottorino Respighi, Benjamin Britten, and Gustav Holst—to mention only the most recognisable names. Britten, for example, made extensive use of plainchant in his opera Curlew River as a structural device and a source for thematic and motivic material; while other direct quotations can be found in works such as the Ceremony of Carols and the children’s opera Noye’s Fludde.
Composers of the French school made extensive use of plainchant themes (particularly in their liturgical music) including Maurice Duruflé, Charles Tournemire, Marcel Dupré, and Jean Langlais. And no one could deny the importance of both Western and Eastern liturgical chant to postmodernist composers such as Arvo Pärt, John Tavener, and Henryk Górecki. It would have served MacMillan’s purposes well to have acknowledged this rich tradition of twentieth-century composers who took inspiration from plainchant. It would also have been interesting to hear how plainchant has directly influenced his own development as a composer and specifically in works such as his percussion concerto Veni, veni Emmanuel (1992), Gaudeamus in loci pace (1998) for solo organ, or The Strathclyde Motets (2005).
But while these composers—and many others besides—have quoted plainchant melodies in their works, we do not yet have a definitive answer about whether (and, if so, how and why) such stylistic tropes work on the listener to communicate a sense of the sacred. If we are to adopt as broad a definition of ‘sacred music’ as MacMillan proposes, then what really differentiates the use of plainchant melodies in, say, the four chant paraphrase masses of Josquin des Prez (c.1450-1521) from the use of the Lamentation tone in Franz Josef Haydn’s Symphony no.26 (composed in the late 1760s)? How does the quotation of the plainchant hymn Pange lingua in Holst’s The Hymn of Jesus (Op.37, 1919) compare with Duruflé’s use of the Gregorian Mass for the Dead in his Messe de Requiem (Op.9, 1947)? It would be still more difficult to differentiate between Duruflé’s motet Ubi caritas, clearly intended for liturgical use, and the countless imitations by contemporary composers intended for concert performance (Ola Gjeilo, Paul Mealor, Morten Lauridsen, et al.)—yet they are all based on the same plainchant melody. For a comprehensive understanding of plainchant and sacred music through the centuries, we must chart not only its continuity but the constantly shifting expressions and changing meanings. I do not think it is possible to compare Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame with the modal colourings of Bruckner’s choral music: they may make use of similar material, perhaps sometimes even using similar techniques, but one cannot say they were working with the same intentions or aesthetic aims in mind.
I would like to make one final observation. MacMillan made an excellent argument for considering some ‘art’ music as sacred, but we must also consider that in our century the process can work both ways: sacred music is not necessarily considered sacred by all consumers. Today, it is rare indeed for listeners to encounter sacred music in the context for which it was originally composed. Most people are far more likely to hear plainchant or polyphony on their smartphone or in a live concert than in its original liturgical or devotional context. Even the context of ‘live’ performances has changed: in countries such as the UK, you are more likely to encounter a polyphonic Mass by Palestrina, Lassus, or Byrd in a Protestant cathedral service than in the traditional Latin Mass for which it was originally intended. While this does not necessarily mean that people no longer associate, say, Renaissance polyphony with the sacred per se, the separation of this music from its original cultural, doctrinal, and ceremonial meanings does inevitably affect how the music is received and understood in the new performance contexts of our time. Some might argue that music that was once described as ‘sacred’ now has such a broad aesthetic appeal to a non-religious audience that older definitions have become redundant. Yet it seems equally plausible that the sacred character (read: timelessness, antiquity, otherness) of the music is a large part of its appeal to most listeners—even, or perhaps especially, in our secularised age.
There are no easy answers to these questions; I certainly would have liked to have heard MacMillan’s views. He gave an engaging and thoroughly thought-provoking lecture, which I recommend to all NLM readers. It would be great to see others take up the various stands of this lecture and explore them in greater depth.
