You are viewing blogs by an individual contributor. / RETURN TO THE BLOG
Whether a Gothic cathedral in France, a rural Norman church in England or a Californian mission church, each one in its own way has the power to lift our eyes in contemplation of the New and Eternal Jerusalem.
In a sense, I understood every word. As a matter of fact, I was beaten over the head by every one of them.
Some day I wouldn’t mind cooking up a good ol’ fashioned Christmas Ball, but 'til then have to content myself with adding a few pounds (or more than a few) in honor of our Lord’s birth.
Children need to see that everything takes second place to your relationship with Christ.
Jeff recently asked if directors take choir pictures and I can’t say I do—but thankfully others did.
It’s an incredibly refreshing and dare I say beautiful movement within the Church today…
We rarely speak of greatness in the Church anymore for fear of driving people away, yet look at all of the men who responded to the call of the priesthood because of the example of Pope St. John Paul II.
Many things have changed over the last quarter of a century in the field of church music and thankfully most of them have been for the better.
Perhaps I am just a Benedictine at heart but I feel the Opus Dei (Work of God) must truly be given pride of place in our personal lives…
Until we start forming our youth in the Church’s treasury of sacred music we will continue contracepting our musical future to death.
Unfortunately my avocation of church musician doesn’t allow me to sidestep the Latin vs. vernacular issue any more than a house painter is able to avoid paint.
I realize it is hard, but perhaps this is the balance we are called to live—truth in charity.
The audition itself is very straight forward and usually takes about 10 minutes, although I know within the first minute if I plan to accept the child into the choir.
If the Holy Mass really is the unbloody sacrifice of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, then the music we use will be radically affected.
I watched in fascination as one of the tenors strained to reach notes obviously out of his range. I had never heard the chest voice forced so high in the male register.
Here we see the result of so much hard work, one of the great Cathedral Choirs of the world!
I can’t imagine my family playing such an intimate role in the ceremonies of Holy Week, but it surely made an awesome impression on the von Trapps.
if St. Augustine was right and “singing belongs to the one who loves,” then it behooves us to once again learn to love and thereby take up the Church’s eternal hymn of praise.
The Psalter, as Esolen notes, is the prayer book of the Church and the Psalms constitute the “foundational poems of Christian praise.”
