"Why Praise and Worship Music is Praise, But Not Worship."

Fr. Christopher Smith hits a home run with his excellent article posted on Chant Cafe.  While you're there, check out his many other well-written articles.

The first time I ever went to a Life Teen Mass I was sixteen years old. It was New Years’ Eve and I thought, instead of going downtown with my pagan friends, I should be a good Catholic boy and ring in the New Year with Jesus. The parish that had the Life Teen Mass was not mine, but I went anyway. Everyone had been telling me that there were lots of people my age, who were serious about their faith, and that it would be a Spirit-filled time. Some of my friends were going to be there, too, so what could be better?

But as soon as the Mass started, I felt like I had stepped into a no-man’s land suspended between Catholicism and some vague form of Protestantism that I as a convert had never seen before. It wasn’t that the music was strange to me. I grew up with contemporary Christian music around the house and listened to it on the radio (when I wasn’t listening to classical music or Latin dance music). So I knew the songs. The church was full of high schoolers and Baby Boomers and they all seemed to know and love each other.

But as the Mass unfolded, I kept noticing things that I knew very well were not in the rubrics, those pesky little red directions in the Missal that tell us how to celebrate the Mass properly. The Life Teen coordinators had decided that they would modify the Mass to make it fit whatever they deemed necessary to get the kids involved. And so there was dancing, hand-holding, and music that had nothing to do with the actual texts of the Mass. But then, it was time for the Eucharistic Prayer. The celebrant invited all the kids to come around the altar. As the church was quite full, this was rather cumbersome and also pointless. But everyone stood up and made their way as through a mosh pit (I am showing my age, now!) to get closer to the altar. I stayed behind in the last pew. And of course, the celebrant thought that I was too shy to come up and so he encouraged me, from the altar, to join the kids. I had had enough, and so I yelled from the back pew, “No, sorry, Father, I’m a Catholic, I don’t do that kind of thing,” and pulled out a rosary and knelt to pray it as I watched the Eucharistic Prayer degenerate into something eerily similar to the ecstatic cults we had studied about in Ancient Greek History.

Not only did I never go back to a Life Teen Mass, I started the next Sunday to go to the Orthodox Church. There I felt like I was worshipping God and not having earnest adults try and fail to make religion relevant to me by assuming I was too young or stupid to understand real worship. It was fifteen years before I ever had to participate in anything similar ever again. By this time, I was a priest and I had been asked to preside over a Holy Hour for young people. The youth minister in this particular parish was very sensitive to the fact that Praise and Worship was not my thing, and she warned me ahead of time.
As I knelt there in front of the Blessed Sacrament, I realized something. The same people were doing the music who were doing it fifteen years before. It was the same music, the same songs that I made fun of when I was the age of the kids who were in the pews behind me. How relevant is that? But this time the kids who were there just seemed bored. I asked them afterwards what they thought of it, and one young man said, “Well, that was ok, I guess. When are we having another Latin Mass, Father?”

Of all of my friends from high school who were Life Teeners, not one of them is a practicing Catholic anymore. Will the kids today who are raised on a diet of Praise and Worship continue to practice the Faith when they are no longer of that age middle-aged people in the Church want to cater to? I don’t know. But my experience has brought me to reflect on why Praise and Worship Music is not appropriate for the liturgy:

1. P&W music assumes that praise is worship.
All of us are called to lift our hearts, minds and voices to God in prayer. A particular type of prayer is praise, when we recognize God’s goodness, holiness and mercy by our own actions of praise. Praise has always been accompanied by music. Praise has always been something that takes place on an individual or small group level. It is often spontaneous and takes the form of culturally relevant symbols and forms. Praise is something common to all Christians and to many other religions.

Worship is indeed a type of praise, and music is an integral part of it. But the sacred liturgy is the public prayer of the Church, a corporate worship by which baptized Catholics enter into a Mystery which is not of their making. Being a corporate action, it is governed by law and tradition so as to preserve its unity throughout the world and its fidelity to the Message revealed by God. Worship is a Christian act of the baptized gathered by bonds of communion with the visible institutional Church.

P&W music actually identifies worship with praise, by grafting the freer and more individualistic nature of praise onto the communal prayer of the Church’s worship.

2. P&W music assumes that worship is principally something we do.
Martin Luther defined the Mass as a sacrifice of praise. It is something we render to God. The Council of Trent solemnly defined against Luther that the Mass is a true sacrifice. The Mass is the re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Christ to His Father on Calvary in the Holy Spirit. The Mass is something that Jesus does, the Redemption, the fruits of which are shared with us in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Worship is not Praise, but Sacrifice and Sacrament. Worship is something that Jesus Christ brings about in us through His self-offering to the Father.

P&W music reduces the Mass to a sacrifice of praise that we offer to God. Even when P&W proponents assent to the teaching of the Church on the Mass, it is as an abstract truth of faith. In the concrete, our sacrifice of praise is grafted onto that Sacrifice of Redemption. It overlooks the fact that it is the Sacrifice of Redemption that is the highest Praise to the Trinity, and that our participation in it is not by what we do, but by who we are as baptized Christians in the life of grace.

3. P&W music assumes as its first principle relevance.
P&W recognizes that music is important in the Church’s worship. But it also posits that music must “reach people where they are.” It must be relevant to those who hear it. Relevance, however, is an ambiguous notion. What is relevant to me may not be relevant to someone else, and so P&W introduces into the liturgy an element of subjectivism based on human concerns.

Often P&W is directed at an ostensibly missionary effort. The idea is that, if people find the music at Mass attractive or relevant, they might be brought into a deeper relationship with God. Yet, faith is a gift that comes from God, not from us. P&W attempts to clear the way for divine action, as if relevance could accomplish that.

4. P&W music assumes as its second principle the active participation of a certain age group
P&W essentially views active participation as everyone doing, singing and feeling a certain way about God when at Mass. The music is a means to produce an end. It also sees the absence of young people at church, and argues that, if the music at Mass were more like what young people like in their normal lives, they might be opened up to a more abundant life. Thus, P&W is designed often by middle-aged people with little or no theological, liturgical or musical background to coax teenagers and college-age kids with a similar background into a theological, liturgical and musical milieu. That milieu reduces the liturgy to a man-made act of praise engineered to produce an apostolic result.

5. P&W music self-consciously divides the Church into age and taste groups
P&W music is principally designed based on an abstract idea of what young people like. It often reflects more the trends of the past that were germane to P&W participants’ adolescence than it does the actual relevant trends of current adolescents.
It also tends to disparage the Church’s musical tradition by claiming that it is too difficult, elegant, or irrelevant to teens. For them, P&W is a grassroots, democratic, egalitarian, music relevant to youth. In contrast, the Church’s musical tradition is often painted as theatrical, aristocratic music for old people in concert halls.

By selectively choosing the abstract notion of youth and what is relevant to it as a criterion for liturgical music, P&W effectively divides the Church according to what is arbitrarily considered to be youthful and not youthful. It also argues that different “styles” are fine for the liturgy. This introduces into the liturgy the ambiguous notion of style and taste as a principle by which the liturgy and its music should be conducted.

6. P&W music subverts Biblical and liturgical texts during the Mass
The Roman Missal contains antiphons for the Entrance and Communion which are normally biblical texts. The Roman Gradual, which is still the Church’s only official source of music for Mass, contains antiphons for the Offertory as well as for the Interlectionary Chants. These together are known as the Proper of the Mass. The Missal and Gradual also contain official texts for the Ordinary of the Mass, for the Kyrie, Gloria, Creed, Sanctus and Agnus Dei.

P&W bypasses the first and preferred option that the Church’s liturgical law mandates for music at Mass, namely the Proper and Ordinary of the Mass as contained in the Church’s liturgical and musical books. It substitutes hymns, which have never been part of the Roman Mass, or paraphrases or re-workings of the Ordinary. If a biblical text is used, it often has little or nothing to do with the texts appointed by the Church in the Missal or Gradual.

In doing so, P&W sets up a situation in which people do not sing the Mass (i.e., the texts contained in the Missal and Gradual), but they sing at Mass songs chosen by the impoverished criterion that those songs “kind of go along with the readings or the theme of the day.” P&W divorces the music of the Mass from the Mass and substitutes in its place texts that are not or only barely Biblical or liturgical.

7. P&W music assumes that there can be a core of orthodox Catholic teaching independent of the Church’s liturgical law and tradition
Many P&W proponents assume that, as long as they continue to believe in what the Church teaches in the Catechism about faith and morals, that the liturgy can be adapted to how they think such a teaching should be incarnate in song. There are some who would never think of denying an article of the Creed or promoting immoral actions condemned by the Magisterium. But the same proponents see the liturgy as another sphere. Any appeal to liturgical law or tradition is rejected according to the principles of relevance and active participation of youth.

Orthodoxy is then separated from Orthopraxis, right belief is separated from right worship. The Church’s power to speak on faith and morals is upheld even as the Church’s power to safeguard the liturgy through rubrics, laws and traditions is dismissed as man-made legalism. In doing so, P&W promotes an attitude of passive, or even sometimes active, resistance to the hierarchy’s duty to safeguard the sacral character of the rites of the Church. The impression is created that there is such a thing as right belief, but that the idea of right worship is contrary to the Spirit of the Gospel.

This creates problems of communion between priests and their people when a priest attempts to reform the liturgy in any given place to bring it into line with the Church’s liturgical law and tradition.

8. P&W music consciously manipulates the emotions so as to produce a catharsis seen as necessary for spiritual conversion
Conversion is seen principally as a dramatic emotional event accompanied by strong feelings. Recognizing that music can stimulate feelings, P&W seeks to produce liturgical events which will bring out the feelings that could in turn bring about the emotional catharsis seen as necessary to conversion. The way the liturgy is planned and the music developed is done so with an eye to aiding this conversion process.

Yet, this is not what conversion really is. Conversion is the formation of the conscience under the grace of the Holy Spirit to inform the intellect and strengthen the will to live the supernatural life of the virtues in union with Christ. Although emotions are involved in the life-long pilgrimage of conversion, their deliberate manipulation, even for an ostensible good end, is abusive. It sees the human subject not as ready for the response to a divine call, but as something to be primed for an experience. In reality, the life of grace brought about by conversion is not an experience at the level of the emotions, but a movement of the soul over and above those emotions.

9. P&W music confuses transcendence with feeling.
The deliberate manipulation of the emotions by P&W often produces an excess of sentiment. The very strength of that feeling can induce some to think that such an event is the work of the transcendent God in them. Musical forms which truly are transcendent, in that they disengage from the emotional and bring the person above their emotions, such as Gregorian chant, are rejected because they do not necessarily cause an emotional event, which is seen as proof of divine action.

The constant spiritual tradition of the Church has taught to distrust feelings and to prize the transcendent holiness of God. It also teaches that human manipulation of other people’s intellects and wills is a violation against the freedom of the human person. When done in the name of God, it is also a violation of God’s sovereignty over the intellect and will of man, as it replaces the free action of God in the soul with a gimmick to make that action in theory possible.

10. P&W music denies the force of liturgical and musical law in the Church in favour of arbitrary and individualist interpretations of worship
P&W, in making relevance and a reduced notion of participation the fundamental principles for engineering liturgical/emotional events geared towards emotional catharsis taken for conversion, ignores liturgical and musical law in the Church when it contradicts its goal. Often the greatest proponents of P&W have never read the pertinent documents of the Church’s Magisterium about liturgy and music, or they read them within a hermeneutic of rupture.

Liturgical and musical law seeks to safeguard the unity, purity and clarity of the Church’s corporate worship. P&W offers other criteria for how the Church should worship. First, it subsumes true liturgical worship under the rubric of praise. Second, those who are in charge of the praise often engineer the rites and music according to principles alien to those that govern the Church’s liturgical and musical law. Third, the opinion of individuals, small groups and committees, often uninformed by a wider theological, liturgical and musical education, is preferred to the Church’s theological, liturgical and musical heritage which is found in the Church’s documents and the Missal and Gradual.

11. P&W music prizes immediacy of comprehension and artistic ease over the many-layered meaning of the liturgy and artistic excellence.
P&W prefers simple music that anyone can understand or participate in easily. It also prefers what can be sung or played with a minimum of practice, instruction, or talent. Its levels out the many-layered meaning of the liturgy to that which is most readily accessible, and denies access to the infinite riches in the Church’s liturgical life.

A constant diet of P&W throughout the liturgical year separates people from the Church’s actual liturgical prayer as found in the Missal and Gradual. It also denies them access to the art form produced by the Church herself, Gregorian chant, and to the transcendence to which it points. It also gives the impression that the Church is not serious about serious music. The idea of excellence in liturgical motion, sound, and sight and that the Church is a patron of the highest forms of such expression, is dismissed in favour of what is easiest. In doing so, P&W does not inspire youth and older people to plumb the riches of the Roman liturgy and music.

That is a lot to take in, I know. I am also sure that many of my P&W loving friends will take issue with some of what I have written here. But it is important that those involved in the Church’s ministry remember the following:

1. The Church’s musical and liturgical tradition is an integral part of worship, and not a fancy addition.
2. While Praise is a high form of individual and small group prayer, it is not Worship as the Church understands the corporate public prayer of the Liturgy.
3. Worship is not principally something that we do: it is the self-offering of Jesus Christ to the Father in the Holy Spirit, the fruits of which are received in Holy Communion. Worship is Sacrifice and Sacrament, not Praise.
4. Relevance is irrelevant to a liturgy which seeks to bring man outside of space and time to the Eternal.
5. Participation in the liturgy is principally interior, by the union of the soul with the Christ who celebrates the liturgy. Any externalizations of that interior participation are meaningless unless that interior participation is there.
6. The Church’s treasury of sacred music is not the province of one social-economic, age, cultural, or even religious group. It is the common patrimony of humanity and history.
7. The Church must sing the Mass, i.e., the biblical and liturgical texts contained in the Missal and Gradual, and not sing at Mass man-made songs, if it is to be the corporate Worship of the Church and not just Praise designed by a select group of people.
8. Orthodox Catholic teaching on faith and morals must always be accompanied by respect for the Church’s liturgical and musical teaching and laws.
9. The deliberate intention to manipulate human emotions to produce a religious effect is abusive, insincere, and disrespectful of God’s power to bring about conversion in the hearts of man.
10. While music does affect the emotions, sacred music must always be careful to prefer the transcendent holiness of God over the immanent emotional needs of man.
11. The Church’s treasury of sacred music inspires and requires the highest attention to artistic excellence. It is also an unfathomable gift to the Church, and must be presented to the faithful so that they may enjoy that rich gift.

Do I think that P&W has a place in the life of the Church? Of course I do. It is praise, it is prayer, it does get people lifting their minds and hearts to God. There is obviously a place for that in the Church. But that is not Worship, and the communal prayer of the liturgy, by which God unites Himself with us, must be allowed to be itself. We should not be so cynical as to think that our Catholic people are too young (or old), too stupid (or overly-educated), and too spiritually weak (or indifferent) to pray the Church’s liturgy as it is indicated in the Missal and Gradual. The music of the Church’s tradition is the Church’s own gift to mankind. Let’s pray the Mass, let’s sing the Mass as worship. Then our praise will be worthy of the Spirit’s breath, because Christ through His Mystical Body will sing the Father’s praise in us

Dealing with Frustration

This brilliant essay by Jeffrey Tucker warrants a reposting, so here it is:

Mostly I write with a sense of optimism about our liturgical future. There are so many wonderful signs: Summorum, the new English Missal, the formation of thousands of scholas, a new generation of priests who “get it” as regards the liturgy, growing support from Rome, as well as cultural change at the heart of Catholic life. All of these are fantastic, and I'm deeply grateful to be alive to see it all happening.

And yet, nearly every day I receive notes from people who are still despairing because their own local parish offers nothing that resembles the sights and sounds of Catholicism. There is no chant, the hymns are embarrassing, the musicians and liturgy directors are clueless, the pastor does nothing or is part of the problem, and every week brings another teeth-gritting moment. Many are at their wit's end.

We should all be sympathetic to their plight. In fact, it is not unreasonable to presume that this is the norm in the overwhelming majority of parishes. It is hard to be optimistic when all the good trends are an abstraction while the bad trends date very far back in history and are the only present reality you experience week to week.

Long experience tells me that a person's attitude toward the state of affairs in the Catholic Church is determined by their own experience on the ground level. For this reason, it's a good idea not to dismiss anyone's perspective on what the real problems and solutions are; one never knows for sure how we might act and believe if we walked in another's shoes. And truly, it was not that many years ago when I dreaded going to Mass because the music was so offensive. It made me so mad that it would take until Thursday to get over it, and the whole process would start again on Sunday. These were dark times.


And yet consider this. Even if parish situations are terrible today, the knowledge that change is happening elsewhere can really lift the spirits. What if this were 1966 or so? In these years, most parishes were more or less peaceful but a terrible storm was building right outside the window. For many decades after, we saw very but decline. Standards not only fell but were destroyed. The rules and norms that governed liturgical life for centuries were suddenly thrown out and replaced by improvisation and a near-universal touch/feely ethos.

To be a priest or serious musician in those times was more than a struggle. It was a daily occasion for despair. These were people who had adopted liturgy as their lifetime vocation – and there is only one life. During the whole of their lives, they saw nothing but decline and face little but attacks.

We often hear caricatures of crabby traditionalists who could do nothing during all this time but mutter and complain, but we should be loath to condemn them for this. They were put through a trial most of us can't even imagine. When they looked at a crucifix, they could identify, and this fact was made all the worse by the reality that their torment seem to be happening at the hands of the Church they had embraced as their true love.

Many in this generation just left. The heros are the people who stuck it out and prepared the way for the current reform. They saw the need to offer a model, to teach and train. They consoled themselves with the hope that some future generation would reap the benefits, all while knowing that they were not likely to see the fruit of their efforts in their lifetimes.

There are hundreds of such people, but let me just mention two that serve as great inspirations to me. The first is Msgr. Richard Schuler, who stood virtually alone in the United States standing for high quality music in his parish (St. Agnes in St. Paul, MN) and never relented in singing the propers of the Mass. It was treated terribly and widely regarded as the last of a dying breed. He kept the Church Music Association of America going despite having no money and very little help. He was a dreamer and an idealist but mostly he had that rare thing: faith that beauty and truth would eventually carry the day. He was ordained in a time of peace and stability in the Church but ended up fighting every day of his life against the trends of his time. But he never gave in, and always did the best that he could with what he had. We all owe him a huge debt.

Another case in point is the legendary chant director Mary Berry of the U.K. Upheaval also defined her life and she had to reinvent even her own vocation in order to survive. But thanks to amazing tenacity and a great deal of creativity, she managed to teach and inspire several generations of students. She did more than that: she entrenched chant (Latin and English) as part of the musical scene during a period in which it might otherwise have disappeared. She was the most generous person, happy to lead anyone to the beauty of liturgical chant. And when she was asked about her struggles, she would always demur and change the subject over to hopeful things. When people would attempt to drag her into controversies, battles, and internecine splits she would refuse. She had a light in front of her that she followed always, and that light was that of Christ. And you know what? The Catholic world is filled with her students today – students not only of music but students of life who have replicated her example. Some of them are in very high positions in Church today, helping to bring reform with gentleness and a loving and generous spirit.

What both of these great people had in common was the willingness to take up a cause themselves, regardless of what people around them or in the press said about them. Grousing and complaining was not their way. Their lives were light, not heat. They love the work. It was the source of their joy. They knew what they had to do and they did it, even though they received few if any personal accolades for their work. This is humility. This is a form of piety. And this is something that we should all hope to emulate. And look what they have left! It's incredible how the life of one man and one woman can make such a difference in this world. And consistently with the poetic drama of the Christian faith itself, their glory as individuals is only obvious to us and to the world after their deaths.

To be surrounded entirely by decline is a very difficult way to live a life. Despair is a universal human temptation. We should avoid it, refuse it. But how much easier should it be for us in our time than it was for them in their time? If Msgr Schuler could build up a world world-class music program in one parish that became a light to the world, and if Mary Berry could teach thousands and leave behind generations of brilliantly trained scholars and singers, and do all of this in the 1970s and 1980s (!) surely there are things we can all do right where we are. This is the task of our generation. It is our calling. And looking back at the past, we should realize that it is a much lighter burden than theirs.

I too would love to see change sooner rather than later. We've waited decades and decades for this. In this time, great men and women have lived hard lives and died before the reform came. Let's let them be our inspirations as we go forward in our own times to do what we must.

View Jeffrey's original post at The Chant Cafe.

The Big Colloquium Post

First of all, I apologize for the scatteredness of this post. (Microsoft Word is telling me that “scatteredness” is not a word, but it should be.)

Although I’d been excited for months about the prospect of finally getting to attend the Sacred Music Colloquium, after wishing to for at last three years, the truth is that as the time drew near, I began to dread it. What if no one would talk to me? What if I was in an accident on the way there? (Pittsburgh/Allegheny County traffic is notoriously bad.) What if my roommate snored and I didn’t sleep the entire week? Etc. ad nauseum.

I left home at 6:30 a.m. Monday and drove to Columbus, where I would catch a ride with a person from that diocese, who intended to leave at 8:30 a.m. Despite missing an exit, I still arrived in time.

We arrived in Pittsburgh around noon, and proceeded to check in to the dorm. I’d wondered why he wanted to leave so early, considering official check-in was 2-5 p.m., with the opening talk given at 5 p.m. The truth was soon revealed; he’d assumed the first talk was at 1:30 – the same schedule as the chant intensive the week before. Sigh. So after wasting a few hours, I registered and held up a wall. Then I held up another wall. Soon, I saw another attendee holding up my first wall, so I went over and introduced myself; ultimately, Jennifer from Cleveland and I hung out quite a bit with each other through the week.

 View of downtown from a Duquesne walkway

Often, if I saw someone alone, I’d go up and introduce myself. Sometimes the person appreciated having someone to converse with, and other times it was clear that the person preferred to just be alone.

My roommate, Bernadette, was awesome and I loved her right away. She’s retired from the Army, has a Master’s in Music Education, is a composer, and sells rosaries on her website.

The schedule each day was grueling:
7 a.m.: Morning Prayer
7:30 a.m.: Breakfast
8:15-8:45 a.m.: Chant Rehearsal
10:00-11:00: Morning Breakout Session
11:30-12:30: Lunch
1:00 – 2:30 p.m.: Polyphony Rehearsal
3:00 p.m.: Mass
4:45-6:00 p.m.: Afternoon Breakout Session
6:15 – 8:00 p.m.: Dinner and Lecture
8:00 or so to 9:30 or so: Variable
9:30 or so: Night Prayer

The Duquesne Campus is quite hilly, so exercise, naturally, was to be had whether or not one wanted it. I for one was grateful for it.

There were five chant groups and five polyphonic groups to choose from. I chose the beginning chant and a polyphony group that would perform the Tallis Missa Brevis. Scott Turkington, who is the new organist and choirmaster at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Charleston, South Carolina, led the beginning chant group. Scott is a fantastic teacher, and I hope to attend the Chant Intensive next year at which Scott is the sole teacher. He also has a very unusual manner, with such a pleasant personality that he could scold without hurting feelings. I cannot say the same for my polyphony instructor, who seemed to be perpetually angry. The highlights of my group singing were on Friday, when our chant group sang the Communion Antiphon, which happened to be the Qui vult (LOVE IT), and on Sunday, when the polyphony group (which was much smaller than on Wednesday) sang Bruckner’s Vexilla Regis.

This is merely a cool top of building, and has nothing to do with this post.

A major highlight of the week was a series of lectures given by Fr. Mark Kirby, O.S.B. of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His first lecture should not be missed. He brought people to tears with his words, and he was a joyful, almost angelic priest who seemed to float instead of walk.

Morning (Lauds) and Evening (Compline) prayer, held at the campus chapel, were simply lovely, and the best way ever to begin and end the day. Men (Epistle side, on the right facing the altar) and women (Gospel side, on the left) were separated, and sang alternate psalm verses to avoid chanting in octaves.

Duquesne chapel in the background

Masses, both Ordinary and Extraordinary Form, were held at the beautiful Church of the Epiphany, adjacent to the campus.

 Church of the Epiphany

I learned that when singing two consecutive Communion Antiphon verses, the incipit is omitted from the second verse, and one should start directly on the reciting tone. Oops! I’ll make that change immediately. I also was given a chart that should make it easier to learn new chants; “perfect pitch”- combined with always associating “Do” with “C”, makes chant life very difficult.

One other person from this diocese was attending the Colloquium, and the two of us compared notes about our respective musical situations. Revealing the contents of our conversations would be saying too much!

Although the colloquium is billed as being ‘for everybody’, I think that’s not quite the case; beginners are likely to be quite frustrated because there is a level of knowledge that is assumed by the conductors. And there were some TRUE beginners there who didn’t know the most basic things about reading music. And believe it or not, there were a few there with no sense of pitch. Happily, their voices were drowned out by good singers.

I’m not sure I would attend the Colloquium again. If it’s held in Pittsburgh in the future, I’ll definitely travel up with the fam to attend some of the beautiful liturgies. Since the lectures are recorded by attendees and put online, I can learn from them free of charge. One of my hopes was to learn more about directing and conducting a choir, but that was not a focus of the week. It was a pleasure, though, to observe two conductors in particular (Buchholz and Brouwers) who are internationally well-known for good reason. I do hope, however, to attend the Chant Intensive next summer.

 I skipped out early on the last organ breakout session to get shots of the Allegheny County Courthouse in downtown Pittsburgh.  The stores all appear to close at 3 p.m. on Saturdays, so the city looks deserted.

There were many obviously holy people there, and it made me wonder if it’s easier to be outwardly Catholic at a Catholic university in a Catholic city. And it made me sad, too, because I want to be that way, and I fear that I’m not. I know that I’m not.

The bonus of the colloquium is its retreat value. The beauty of the music and the liturgies lead one straight to God, if one allows it, because that’s what true beauty does: it points heavenward.

The organ recital by the diminutive Isabelle Demers was fantastic. She’s a wonderful, charismatic performer.

I arrived home around 6:30 p.m. Sunday evening, exhausted and happy to be back with the fam. I’ve been processing some of the things I’ve learned, and wondering how best to implement some positive changes at the vigil Mass, all with Father’s permission, of course. I’d like the guys to chant the Introit as a prelude, and I just ordered a set of gorgeous Eucharistic motets by Kevin Allen. Other changes are a little more sensitive, so stay tuned for more news.

Only One Week until the Sacred Music Colloquium!

Mary is excited AND nervous. What fun it will be! Perhaps I'll post everyday (if there's time) about the awesome and cool events, and the spectacular liturgies (which are open to the public, of course.)

Coincidentally, the Organ Historical Society is having its convention THE SAME WEEK in Pittsburgh, and colloquium attendees may attend the OHS organ recitals free of charge. Fantastic!

Sacred Music Colloquium 2009 documentary

SACRED, BEAUTIFUL, & UNIVERSAL: Colloquium XIX from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.