Views from the Choir Loft

Don’t Fall For It

Lucas Tappan · November 10, 2015 ·

WOULD BE A WEALTHY MAN if I had a dollar for every time someone told me that the youth of today can’t connect with, or simply don’t like sacred music. I used to think “Okay, how do I get young people to like it, because I know there is real value in it?” However, I don’t buy the basic premise of the complaint any more.

Go to any of the vast majority of Catholic school Masses in the USA today and watch the junior high/high school students worship. They’re bored with EVERYTHING! Count how many of them don’t attempt anything more than a mumble throughout the entire Mass, including the Lord’s Prayer. The only difference is that they have gotten used to being bored with the Catholic Church’s “greatest hits” from the 70s, 80s and 90s. The crux of this issue is not that we don’t have the right music (although that is part of it) or that worship isn’t “cool” enough. The real problem is that these children were perhaps sacramentalized, but never evangelized and catechized. A wise deacon once told me, “God has no grandchildren. Every generation must be a first generation follower of Christ.”

It is true that Beauty draws many people to Christ, and this is an important part of evangelization we tend to forget today. However, when (not if) the accusation is laid at your feet as the Director of Music of turning people away from the Faith because you are striving to bring sacred music back into the sacred liturgy, take a deep breath and gently, but firmly respond, “No, they left because because they were never evangelized and catechized in the first place.”

About Lucas Tappan

Dr. Lucas Tappan is a conductor and organist whose specialty is working with children. He lives in Kansas with his wife and four children.

Could Pope St. Pius X Sing?

“On 12 March 1908, the complete publication of the Roman Gradual was issued by the Vatican Press. On that very day, Dom Pothier solemnly presented the first copy to the Holy Father. A witness of the audience says that Pius X wished to be the first to see the new book; he opened it at random, at page 128 of the supplement pro aliquibus locis—it was the Introit of the new Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Pope sang it with perfect taste to the last note.” (Catholic Choirmaster, February 1915)

—Jeff Ostrowski

Julius Bas Accompaniment

A very prolific harmonizer of Gregorian chant in the early 20th century was Mr. Julius Bas. He often uses a very strange technique, wherein he employs rests to eliminate the Alto, Tenor, and Bass voices. Consider what he did with “Lumen ad revelationem” here:

* JPEG • Lumen ad revelationem

It seems quite lazy, and I’ve never seen anyone else use such a technique, although Dr. Peter Wagner often switched to parallel octaves when he ran out of ideas… (Yuck!)

—Jeff Ostrowski

Hitting wrong notes

Fr. Valentine Young, OFM, used to say: “The organist can play 1,000 correct notes and one wrong note—and the only thing people will care about is the wrong note.” Last Sunday I hit some wrong notes, and felt bad. Then I remembered a story about Rudolf Serkin and started to chuckle. Charles Rosen (or was it Leon Fleisher?) told the story of Serkin playing a Beethoven Sonata in front of a large audience. The theme is all in octaves; but Serkin hit some wrong notes, and played parallel 7ths instead. This so unnerved him that every time the theme returned, he played the entire thing in parallel 7ths! We must remember that even the greatest hit wrong notes. Alfred Cortot, Vladimir Horowitz, Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer, Sviatoslav Richter, Egon Petri—they all hit wrong notes, which we can hear on recordings. (Josef Hofmann was an exception, but he was super-human so he doesn’t count!)

—Jeff Ostrowski