“What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too…” Pope Benedict XVI (7 July 2007)
When you ask how a computer works, what you’re really asking is how people use it. That’s a good starting point for understanding how liturgical music works, but just as a computer trains its user to work in a particular way, liturgical music trains us to pray in particular ways.
As churches prepare to return from lockdown, what about music in the liturgy makes it essential? In the next essay in his series encouraging liturgical musicians to consider what their vocation entails, Wilfrid Jones shares his thoughts on the nature of active participation.
Some very brief comments on the lessons we might learn during this pandemic for the future of liturgical music.
One of the most significant thinkers in the Church today shares his thoughts on, and experiences of, music as a source of hope in the darkest of times. When we face death, we respond in song.
An interview with the Dominican composer and theologian Fr Dominic White about his work and theological approach to music.
A recording of the chants of the Easter Vigil.
Post-Liberal Theology compares a religion to a language. How might that comparison, which could include the concept of a “vocabulary” of liturgical music, inform how we think about repeating repertoire?
A video and quote from our friends at the Monastère Saint Benoît.
The way we do music says a lot about how we see ourselves and our relationship to those around us. What does that say about music in the liturgy?
We can be so caught up in the cycle of planning, delivering and marking lessons, that we never have time to step back and consider the bigger picture in a way that would improve how we do our jobs.
Wilfrid Jones went on to a choral scholarship at New College, Oxford, where he read music before completing masters degrees in theology at the University of Birmingham and in education at the University of Cambridge…
