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Views from the Choir Loft

Sacred Music as an Emotional Experience

Andrew Leung · August 6, 2015

CTL Emotional Sacred Music AVE YOU EVER gotten emotional after listening to a piece of church music? Or have you had someone in the congregation come up to you after Mass to tell you how they were touch by your music? During the summer, my choirs take a break from singing and the cantors take up the responsibility of leading the singing at Mass. Two of my youngest and best cantors sang at Mass this past Sunday. Because of the limited voices and John’s Gospel on the “Bread from Heaven”, I picked César Franck’s Panis Angelicus as the communion motet at the principle Mass. The two ladies sang a duet and did an absolutely beautiful job with it. After Mass, I got many compliments from parishioners. Many told me that the piece was very touching and a few people actually cried. Is that supposed to be the result of good church music?

St. Augustine mentioned about the danger of music being just “pleasures of the flesh” in the Confessions. I think liturgical music is not about “feeling good” nor “being touched”, but it is a form of prayer. Even though sometimes the Holy Spirit touches people with music, but making people emotional and touched was never my goal. My job is to make it a prayer to God by taking Sacred Music to the highest level. When people tell me about their emotional experiences with the music, I always remind myself not to rejoice for people being touched by my music; but to rejoice because God was glorified and the Holy Spirit is working through the music.

The above situation is really the “good side” of emotion in the field Sacred Music. If you are a music director, I am sure that you have also experience the “bad side”: negative comments and complains. I think the “bad side” can be divided into three categories in general. The first category is negative comments due to misunderstandings and the lack of liturgical catechesis. These conflicts can usually be solved by polite and objective explanations. The second category is negative, but constructive comments. These comments may make us feel bad at first but they are usually helpful. When you hear these comments, what you need to do is: calm down, analyze and improve. The third kind is the ridiculous complains that don’t make any sense. These unreasonable complains can drive us crazy and affect our performance. All you can do is pray for the person, control your own emotion and say the prayer to St. Michael and tell Satan to get behind you.

The field of Sacred Music is truly a place filled with emotions.

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

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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Andrew Leung

About Andrew Leung

Andrew Leung currently serves the music director of Vox Antiqua, conductor of the Cecilian Singers, and music director at Our Lady of China Church.—(Read full biography).

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One of our most popular downloads has proven to be the organ accompaniment to “The Monastery Hymnal” (131 pages). This book was compiled, arranged, and edited by Achille P. Bragers, who studied at the Lemmensinstituut (Belgium) about thirty years before that school produced the NOH. Bragers might be considered an example of Belgium “Stile Antico” whereas Flor Peeters and Jules Van Nuffel represented Belgium “Prima Pratica.” You can download the hymnal by Bragers at this link.

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15 February 2021 • To Capitalize…?

In the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, there is a question regarding whether to capitalize the word “christi.” The Vulgata does not, because Psalm 27 is not specifically referring to Our Lord, but rather to God’s “anointed one.” However, Missals tend to capitalize it, such as the official 1962 Missal and also a book from 1777 called Missel de Paris. Something tells me Monsignor Knox would not capitalize it.

—Jeff Ostrowski
15 February 2021 • “Sung vs. Spoken”

We have spoken quite a bit about “sung vs. spoken” antiphons. We have also noted that the texts of the Graduale Romanum sometimes don’t match the Missal texts (in the Extraordinary Form) because the Mass Propers are older than Saint Jerome’s Vulgate, and sometimes came from the ITALA versions of Sacred Scripture. On occasion, the Missal itself doesn’t match the Vulgate—cf. the Introit “Esto Mihi.” The Vulgate has: “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in domum refúgii…” but the Missal and Graduale Romanum use “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in locum refúgii…” The 1970s “spoken propers” use the traditional version, as you can see.

—Jeff Ostrowski

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“Indeed, we may not hope for real Latin poetry any more, because Latin is now a dead language to all of us. However well a man may read, write, or even speak Latin now, it is always a foreign language to him, acquired artificially. It is no one’s mother tongue. Does a man ever write real poetry in an acquired language?”

— Rev’d Adrian Fortescue (d. 1923)

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