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Views from the Choir Loft

Five Suggestions • “Music in Our Schools”

Lucas Tappan · August 20, 2019

82900 tappan ODAY MARKS THE FIRST DAY of school for parochial children in my city and thus provides an appropriate occasion to reflect on the nature of our Catholic school music programs and their work of education. Without doubt, the men and women who head these programs provide an enormous service to the Church and I wish to thank them for their work. At the same time, I would like to challenge the prevailing concept, or layout, of such music programs, which more often than not, are modeled after their secular counterparts with a seasonal nod to our Catholic Faith, such as the singing of Christmas carols every December (although they mysteriously disappear in January).

If we desire to educate, we should keep our end in mind—to teach children what is good and to love that good. In our case, students will only know what is good if they hear it and participate in it on a regular basis and they will only love that good if they see it loved and cared for by those they look up to. To this end, I would propose that our music programs should be founded on the ideal of teaching the Church’s music and music in general within the western tradition and to inculcating a love in students’ hearts for this music in all of its forms.

What follows are a few suggestions as to how we might begin moving our music programs in this directions.

(1.) Sing real folk music. Invite children to join you in the joy of making music, real music. Children shouldn’t feel as though they are in class. Grab your guitar (appropriate in this case) and have fun. Don’t forget to teach them real dances and perhaps host a ball for older students and their families. At the same time, we should find a way for these things to happen in the home. As musicians, we lament the loss of communal music making, but I wonder how many fight this loss by making music with their own children.

(2.) Teach the Church’s music. Children should know a couple of chant Masses by heart, particularly the more beautiful ones. The same can be said for a few of the Church’s well known hymns such as the Adorote devote, Pange lingua or Veni Creator, whether in Latin or in a good English translation. Ideally this would be linked to a child’s Church history and catechetical classes.

(3.) Learn to sing the Mass. Whether you have a small schola capable of chanting the Communion antiphon or you teach the entire school to sing the Introit for each Mass to a common psalm tone, introduce your students to the idea of singing the Mass. Encourage (pester if necessary) the priest to sing his parts.

(4.) Choose worthy hymns and metered music for use in the Mass. If you aren’t aware, the National Catholic Education Association, in conjunction with Pueri Cantores, has produced a list of Mass settings and hymns appropriate for school Masses, which is a VAST improvement on what one normally hears at school Masses.

(5.) The High Mass isn’t just for Sunday. If your parish is an Extraordinary Form parish and is blessed to have a classical school attached, fight the urge settle for daily Low Masses in the effort to get students into class where the “real” learning happens. Priests in this situation would never consent to ditching the proper clerical vesture for Holy Mass, and in like manner, the same Holy Mass should ever be clothed in the aural vesture of sacred music. Beautiful sacred music will go far in forming a love for the Sacraments in the moral imaginations of your students.

(6.) Raise up a new generation of church musicians. Support and encourage musically talented children to take up the work of sacred music. Just as we should cultivate religious vocations from the ranks our students, so should we do the same with liturgical musicians.

I wish you all many blessings in the school year ahead!

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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Lucas Tappan

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.—(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.

—Jeff Ostrowski
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

Random Quote

“Angularis fundamentum” is typically sung at the dedication or consecration of a church and on church anniversaries. For constructions too numerous to list in recent generations, it would be more appropriate to sing that Christ had been made a temporary foundation. A dispirited generation built temporary housing for its Lord, and in the next millnenium, the ease of its removal may be looked back upon as its chief virtue.

— Fr. George Rutler (2016)

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