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Views from the Choir Loft

Chant Behind Bars

Fr. David Friel · December 1, 2013

ACK IN 2008 AND 2009, I spent a lot of time in prison. I was not an inmate, but a visitor assisting the full-time chaplain. My visits were part of my seminary’s apostolate program, designed to give us pastoral experiences of all kinds. This was one of my favorite apostolate assignments, and it was one that gave me many memories and grand stories.

Prisons are not beautiful places. In this particular facility, the walls were uniformly painted with an unremarkable shade of off-white. Long corridors bled into more long corridors, without any flourish or attempt to break up the architectural monotony. The sparse windows were narrow and filthy. The pitiful library was stocked with dusty law codes and worn dime novels. The air was stale, and it perpetually smelled of abandoned laundry. None of the common categories of art & beauty were present in this jail: painting, architecture, fashion, literature.

Except for music. With daily religious services and choir practice three times a week, the prison chapel was often filled with the melodious praise of keyboard and voices. Only a few weeks into the apostolate, I had learned all the words to Blessed Assurance and It Is Well With My Soul—the house favorites. The hymns could be heard some distance down the hall, too, which seemed somewhat to irritate the guards. Was choir practice simply an excuse to get out of the cellblock for an hour? Maybe for some, but I don’t think that was the motivation for most of the choir members. They seemed genuinely to want to praise God.

It can be hard to keep faith in a space that it so adverse to the aesthetic, so devoid of decoration, so bereft of beauty. Despite the barrenness of the place, though, there was still beauty to behold in that correctional facility. As I like to say, I met many very good people in prison. The beauty was in the inmates.

There was a strong Catholic outreach to this prison. In addition to regular visits from a priest, the prison allowed weekly visits from a few laymen from the local parish. These men were members of the Militia Immaculata, and they would lead the rosary and a Bible study every Thursday morning.

The thought never occurred to me at the time, but would it be possible to form a chant schola in prison? There was no shortage of inmates ready to join the choir. I’ll bet they would respond to the invitation to try chant. Chant is basic. Chant is universal. Chant requires nothing but a human voice. It may be the perfect music for prisoners.

The experience of beauty is rehabilitating. I believe that the converse is also true: the privation of beauty is debilitating. Shouldn’t civil authorities, then, want to inject some beauty into the otherwise sterile prison environment? If the purpose of “correctional facilities” is truly rehabilitation, what could be more rehabilitating than beautiful music?

More and more sacred musicians are promoting chant at their home parishes and cathedrals. What if we also volunteered our time to lead a primitive schola in our local prison? Doing so could serve as a grassroots way to promote chant while improving the quality of life for those so often forgotten by the outside world.

Prisons are not beautiful places. Chant, however, is beautiful no matter where it is sung. And, as Prince Myshkin observes in Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, “Beauty will save the world.” Introducing chant to prisoners might not save the whole world, but might it not save a soul or two?

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Beauty, Gregorian Chant, Propers Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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Fr. David Friel

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel served as Parochial Vicar at St. Anselm Parish in Northeast Philly. He is currently a doctoral candidate in liturgical theology at The Catholic University of America.—(Read full biography).

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Quick Thoughts

Can You Spare 33 Seconds?

Here’s an audio excerpt (33 seconds) of a setting for Kyrie VIII which was recorded live last Sunday at our parish in Los Angeles. The setting (“Missa de Angelis”) is by composer Richard Rice, and you can download the free PDF if you click here and scroll to the bottom. I think Richard’s composition is marvelous. I missed a few notes on the organ, but I’ll get them right next time.

—Jeff Ostrowski
5 April 2021 • When Girls Sing

Covid restrictions here in California are still extremely severe—switching “two weeks to flatten the curve” into “two years to flatten the curve.” Since 2020, we’ve had police breaking into our church to check if everyone is wearing a mask…even when only 5-6 people are present! But we were allowed to have a small percentage of our singers back on Easter Sunday, and here is their live recording of the ancient Catholic hymn for Eastertide: Ad Cenam Agni Providi. The girls were so very excited to sing again—you can hear it in their voices!

—Jeff Ostrowski
29 March 2021 • FEEDBACK

“E.S.” in North Dakota writes: “I just wanted to take a moment to say THANK YOU for all the hard work you have put—and continue to put—into your wonderful website. In the past two years, my parish has moved from a little house basement into a brand new church and gone from a few families receiving Low Masses twice a month to several families (and many individuals) receiving Mass every Sunday, two Saturdays a month, and every Holy Day. Our priest has been incorporating more and more High Masses and various ceremonies into our lives, which has made my job as a huge newbie choir master very trying and complicated. CCWatershed has been an invaluable resource in helping me get on my feet and know what to do!!! Thank you more than I can express! May God bless you abundantly and assist you in your work and daily lives!”

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

The Sacrifice is celebrated with many solemn rites, none of which should be deemed useless or superfluous. On the contrary, all of them tend to display the majesty of this august sacrifice, and to excite the faithful, when beholding these saving mysteries, to contemplate the divine things which lie concealed in the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

— Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566)

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