Some Music for your Epiphany
In honor of the day, however, I thought I’d repost the video I put together for Epiphany a couple years ago. I first encountered this classic orchestration of We Three Kings by Eugene Ormandy when I was a child, watching my dad give the annual Christmas Star Show up at the Griffith Observatory. Since the recording is hard to find, and there too it the music provided background to a montage of artistic representations of the Three Kings, I took the liberty of putting together a YouTube video for the occasion.
Occupy WallStreet As Described By Rush
No, not Limbaugh, not that Rush. You know – Rush.
I had to drive cross-state yesterday on a sales call, so I grabbed some CD’s to play, and one was Gold, by Rush – a compilation of their biggest hits. The Trees struck an appropriate chord.
At the very least, you’ve got some Neil Peart percussive excellence to jump-start your morning… Continue reading
Fred Steiner, Requiescat in Pace
Fred Steiner died today. Not a household name, but you have probably heard his music, as he composed the music for many hit TV shows, perhaps most notably for Perry Mason. A very young Don McClarey loved the Perry Mason show. It had no influence on my decision to become an attorney, that option didn’t occur to me until my Senior year in college when I decided that I would rather not work for a living, but it was enjoyable and memorable entertainment. Continue reading
Gather Us In, A Bad Song Is Playing
A reader writes into Fr. Z to ask why Gregorian Chant is to be preferred at Mass to hymns like “Gather Us In” which the reader, a newly minted Catholic, happens to like. Fr. Z responds here, and the commenters also chime in with responses that hit the mark.
Fr. Z writes:
As a preamble, music for liturgical worship is not a mere add on or decoration. It is liturgical worship. Therefore the texts used should be sacred texts. The texts of those ditties mentioned in the question are not sacred, liturgical texts. They are not the prayer of the Church.
He then discusses the quality of the hymns under discussion. This is a more subjective argument. After all, there are people who think the hymns located in the Gather hymnal are quite extraordinary. I question the sanity of such people, but that’s neither here nor there. This is a country that consistently puts American Idol at the top of the ratings, so I’m obviously a bit out of the loop with my musical tastes.
Besides, even non banal hymns seem out of place in our liturgy. On Holy Thursday I attended Mass at St. Mathew’s Cathedral. As always, it was a beautiful, reverent, and yes, Novus Ordo liturgy. I don’t remember the entrance hymn. It was a nice hymn – something more fitting than one of the turds from the Gather hymnal. And yet there was something a bit off. It was a fairly upbeat hymn, and as Cardinal Wuerl incensed the altar it just felt jarring. Here is this solemn moment marking the beginning of the Triduum, and the accompanying music just does not fit what is happening up there in the sanctuary. It’s the sort of thing that just snaps you out of the moment, and that’s the problem.
The liturgy is prayer, not entertainment. The reason that these hymns are generally inappropriate, no matter the quality, is that they simply don’t fit in with what’s supposed to be happening. Instead of amplifying our prayers they drown them out. That’s why I find the incessant need to have some kind of music playing at all times whenever there is more than five seconds of silence so frustrating. You’ve all probably heard organists vamp when the hymn ends before the Priest has reached the sanctuary, or after Communion when not all have returned to their places. Why can’t he or she just let silence reign for a few minutes? Why is there such a need for constant noise, especially when it does not fit in appropriately with that moment in the liturgy?
Lament of the Three Marys
“Lament of the Three Marys”, by Iarla Ó Lionáird.
(If you enjoy this, I heartily recommend his solo album The Seven Steps to Mercy
Vitali's Chaconne played by Sarah Chang
In keeping with the weekend music tradition on American Catholic:
Something Big Is On The Move At The Houston Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart
[Updates at the bottom of this article]
Parishioners and friends are helping history arrive at the Galveston-Houston Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. The arrival of the long awaited Pasi Organ Builders Opus 19 organ marks the commencement of its installation.
This past Monday morning, the first of two large moving trucks rode into downtown Houston and pulled onto the driveway of the Co-Cathedral. Soon thereafter, members of the parish and friends began offloading thousands of pounds of handmade organ components into the magnificent Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of the Archdiocese of Galveston Houston.
Since its consecration and Mass of Dedication on April 2, 2008, the Co-Cathedral community has been worshiping accompanied by a digital organ, piano and other instruments. Beginning in the Fall of 2010, the Co-Cathedral will begin offering and expressing praise, thanks, contrition, and petition to God with this magnificent new organ.
Martin Pasi and his team at Pasi Organ Builders of Roy, Washington, have been constructing this grand organ since Fall 2006. Thousands of custom, hand-made wood and metal parts will be installed and tuned over the next nine months for an estimated in-service date of mid October 2010.
With one of two trucks unloaded, the Parish celebrated the regular daily mass at 12:10, offered by Daniel Cardinal DiNardo and Rector of the Cathedral, The Very Reverend Lawrence Jozwiak. After Mass, the Cardinal officiated at a special blessing ceremony for the organ pipes and their installers.
The Pasi installers will have the important job of installing 5499 hand made pipes, 25,000 linear feet of lumber and 11 tons of tin, lead, pipeworks and mechanical action within two 45 foot tall cabinets aside the grand Resurrection Window in the Choir Loft.
The complete specifications for this grand organ list 75 different stops, 4 manuals or keyboards, and 104 different sets of pipes or ranks, varying in size from as small as ½ inch and as long as 32 feet. A rarity today, the Opus 19 Organ also features a free reed stop Clarinette.
The second truck was unloaded Tuesday.
Story written by Greg Haas, Mosaicist & Founder, Studio D’Oro LLC, Houston.
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For more information visit www.studiodoro.com
Cross-posted over at CVSTOS FIDEI.
Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on the Theme by Thomas Tallis
Many of my favorite pieces of music I associate with the night sky. This is because my father, who was throughout my life a planetarium director, often used his favorite pieces of music as background during planetarium shows. Being the oldest, I frequently had the chance to tag along to planetarium shows, and sit under the dome, listening to my father’s voice. And so now, when I hear something like Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on the Theme by Thomas Tallis I find myself thinking of the constellations, and I also find myself oddly misty about the eyes.
How God Saved My Soul Through Music
I was inspired to transfer my brain goo to the computer screen over the last couple of hours. Here are the results. Here’s to a more fruitful discussion.
I haven’t talked extensively about why I rejected atheistic communism and made my way back to Catholicism. There were a number of reasons; being shown the logical and moral bankruptcy of materialism, the corruption I personally witnessed in the movement, the fact that I could never bring myself to really embrace any of the tenants of the cultural agenda, and so on. The idea of fighting for anything in a universe that did not, and could not care about the outcome of human events could no longer captivate me. I suppose some people are able to convince themselves of the possibility, even the certainty, of “goodness” in a reality that owes nothing to consciousness and will; to me, such a belief, no matter how comforting, would be a lie. And I cannot live a lie.
Celtic Woman Singing Little Drummer Boy
Little Drummer Boy is one of my favorite Christmas songs of all time and I surprisingly stumbled across the Celtic Woman version of this song. Celtic Woman is an all-female musical ensemble which I came across on YouTube earlier this year and they are delightfully good!
This version of the popular Christmas song has Gregorian chant in it, I’m not sure who scored this, but it works very well with Celtic Woman’s version of Little Drummer Boy.
Here is the original music by the Harry Simeone Chorale:
And finally here is the Vienna Boys Choir rendition of this song:
My favorite line of the song is “then He smiled at me“.
Gets me every time.
Long live Christ the King!
Have a blessed Christmas.
Pange Lingua Gloriosi
Composed by Saint Thomas Aquinas for the Office of Corpus Christi (see CORPUS CHRISTI, FEAST OF). Including the last stanza (which borrows the words “Genitori Genitoque”—Procedenti ab utroque, Compar” from the first two strophes of the second sequence of Adam of St. Victor for Pentecost) the hymn comprises six stanzas appearing in the manuscripts
Pange, lingua, gloriosi corporis mysterium,
Sanguinisque pretiosi quem in mundi pretium
Fructus ventris generosi Rex effudit gentium.
Written in accentual rhythm, it imitates the triumphant march of the hymn of Fortunatus, and like it is divided in the Roman Breviary into stanzas of six lines whose alternating triple rhyming is declared by Pimont to be a new feature in medieval hymnody. In the Roman Breviary the hymn is assigned to both Vespers, but of old the Church of Salisbury placed it in Matins, that of Toulouse in First Vespers only, that of Saint-Germain- des-Prés at Second Vespers only, and that of Strasburg at Compline. It is sung in the procession to the repository on Holy Thursday and also in the procession of Corpus Christi and in that of the Forty Hours’ Adoration.[1]
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[1] (1911). Pange Lingua Gloriosi. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved September 3, 2009 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11441c.htm
Note: For more information click here.
Your Love Is Strong
A song for a Sunday afternoon:
Stars and Stripes Forever
Something for the weekend. Let’s start getting in the mood for the Fourth with a little Sousa. Stars and Stripes Forever performed by Vladimir Horowitz in 1945.
Christ Jesus Victor
Something for the weekend. To Jesus Christ, Our Sovereign King. The hymn was written by a German-American priest, Father Martin Hellriegel, in 1941, specifically to rebut the claims of the Third Reich with the eternal message of Christ. Here is a great essay with the story behind the hymn. I find this comforting. Evil often has its hour in the sun, to strut and parade, but, inevitably, Christ is always the final victor.
Downtown
Something for the weekend. The endlessly talented Petula Clark singing Downtown. This song got a huge amount of play in the mid-Sixties, and I enjoyed it immensely as a child. Not great music, but certainly fun music.
Now compare and contrast with this recent version by Emma Bunton:
Myself, I prefer the older, less Spicey version, but perhaps I am mistaken?
Easy on the Ears, Easy on the Eyes
While we’re discussing classical music and objective beauty, it is perhaps time to address the phenomenon of the “babe violinist”. No, I’m not talking about some kind of Vanessa Mae type with an electric violin and a wet t-shirt. I’m talking about women with real God-given gifts, musical and otherwise.
My own personal favorite is Hilary Hahn, here playing Franz Schubert’s Der Erlkonig:
This is a perfect show-off piece, which allows you to hear just how good Ms. Hahn is. Her albums with Vaughn Williams’ The Lark Ascending and her various Bach performances are all worth hearing.
Jupiter and Jollity
Something for the weekend. Gustav Holst’s Jupiter, the bringer of jollity, my favorite part of The Planets. Some things become so popular that we tend to take them for granted. I am afraid that is what has happened to some degree with The Planets. It is a magnificent piece of music and places Holst in the top ten list of composers of all time in my estimation.
Serious Musicians
Since the blog has, of late, become the site of intense discussions on the quality of rock versus classical music, I think it’s important that I as a classical music partisan take a music appreciation moment and recognize that while rock may in some ways be a limited genre compared to classical music, it is none the less capable of evoking deep and powerful human emotions, and many rock musicians are in fact very talented and deeply influenced by the classical masters:
It's. Only. A. Rock. Band.
Ok, so I liked their latest album as much as anybody else — but what is it that causes U2′s fans to indulge in such theological embellishment? — Consider America magazine’s Tom Beaudoin:
Mad Men
Mad Men is an American Movie Classics (AMC) television drama series is set in the early 1960s at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on New York City’s Madison Avenue. The show centers on Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm), a high-level advertising executive, and the people in his life in and out of the office. It also depicts the changing social mores of 1960s America. Mad Men has received wide critical acclaim, particularly for its historical authenticity and visual style. Mad Men is the advertising term for people in the industry that work on Madison Avenue, ie, Madison Avenue Men shortened to Mad Men.
The Hot Asphalt
Something for the weekend. For a wonder I am posting an Irish song about something other than rebellion against the British! The incomparable Wolfe Tones singing The Hot Asphalt. I trust this song will be appreciated by all who have ever worked on a road crew or who have ever had a family member who worked on a road crew. It is tough work, necessary work, and, until this song, unsung work. Here is another set of lyrics for the song.
Battle Cries of Freedom
Something for the weekend. The Battle Cry of Freedom was a popular song North and South during the Civil War. Of course, they sang different lyrics to the song. The Union version was such a favorite among the Union troops, that President Lincoln, in a letter to George F. Root, the composer, wrote: “You have done more than a hundred generals and a thousand orators. If you could not shoulder a musket in defense of your country, you certainly have served her through your songs.”
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