Church music news

St. Paul's Episcopal Church (K Street) here in Washington has hired Robert McCormick, currently organist and music director at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin ("Smoky Mary's") in New York City, to be the new music director at St. Paul's. He starts August 1.

The rector has invited my friend John to stay on as assistant organist/choirmaster/music director, and I certainly hope he does!

New York's turn

Pool Photo: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times.
Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company.
The papal Mass from Yankee Stadium in New York is being broadcast now. I am, unfortunately, having to watch it on a Spanish broadcast station that isn't coming through with a completely clear signal, and their broadcasters not only have been chattering constantly during the hymns and music (and not even talking about the music!), but they are providing simultaneous Spanish translation of the English Mass on top of the English. They are also talking and interjecting comments during the Mass itself. It's going to drive me crazy by the end of the Mass! Nevertheless, I'm going to write this as a play-by-play for those of you (if any) who care. I'm writing this in a long thunderstorm, and my DSL connection keeps flickering on and off, so I hope I can get this posted without losing it in a power failure.

They have a very different approach to things in New York, from what I can see. The stadium platform design is very dramatic and theatrical, and they had priests processing in in a way that required the lines to cross. While in Washington, the focal point behind the altar was a large crucifix, the focus of the New York altar is a large banner bearing the papal coat of arms. New York also has a big papal coat of arms over the pitcher's mound. Both Masses are votive Masses of the Holy Spirit; Washington, though, vested the pope and concelebrants in red—the traditional liturgical color for Masses of the Holy Spirit—but New York has chosen to use white, perhaps thinking that it's still the Easter season. New York also put the Holy Father in a striking (but I hate it) contemporary mitre with stylized crosses all over it that I think are supposed to be evocative of flame. Also, in Washington, the music was led by someone appointed by the archbishop (who happened to be the person who directed the music at the archbishop's enthronement as bishop of Pittsburgh) who lived out in the Maryland suburbs and who assembled an archdiocesan-wide choir of about 500; in New York, the cathedral's music director has done all the music planning and it appears (from what I hear from Catholic musician friends in New York) they are using the cathedral choirs and supplementing by specific invitation to get up to about 200. NY is getting a much more professional sound from their choir, though. I wish my television were clearer, because I can't quite figure out what the cantors are wearing as vestments. At first, I thought the guy was wearing a purple Nike warm-up suit with flowing sleeves! New York's music seems to be more orchestral; in Washington, the instruments were more of an accompaniment to the organ.

The preliminaries were interesting. I saw one priest talking on a cell phone as he processed in. They also made use of the vast green space of the baseball field to use a bunch of liturgical dancers, something I didn't see in Washington (and for which I am thankful). Couldn't hear the music over the announcers. They had a lot of pop star singers slated to perform/entertain, but the only one I got a glimpse of was Harry Connick, Jr., playing a grand piano over home base.

Once the Mass itself started (it was a little late, in contrast to Washington's two minutes early), they opened with the very same hymn tune used in Washington, Lasst uns er freuen (a/k/a Vigiles et Sancti, a/k/a "Ye watchers and ye holy ones," but with different words. ) The arrangement was different, and, what with the television miking and all, I can't tell if the congregation is invited to sing along or not. It sounded almost like it was a male soloist with the choir singing backup, and it vaguely reminded me of a contemporary English arrangement of the hymn by the well-known English atheist John Rutter. Once the hymn finished, the choir sang a Renaissance polyphonic anthem that sounded like one of the Tu es Petrus (You are Peter) settings.

So far, for the Mass setting, I didn't recognize the Kyrie (it was mildly contemporary), but the Gloria is from de la Victoria's Missa O Magnum Mysterium. The Psalm is something contemporary with a rather saccharine sound that reminds me a bit (but it isn't him) of Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber's earlier works (Evita is popping into mind). They are also mixing English and Spanish both with the verses and in the antiphon. The Gospel Alleluia appears to be a glitzy arrangement of the hymn tune Victory. The deacon is doing a good job chanting the Gospel; it was just read in D.C.

The homily appears to be interestingly supportive of immigrants and the Holy Father is praising the contributions of immigrants to American society and the American Church. There was a bit of the usual spiel about protecting unborn children. Otherwise, nothing surprising or controversial. The homily is over now; the stadium has erupted into baseball park-like cheers for the pope. LOL

They're calming down now, as they've moved into a chanting of the Nicene Creed in Latin. The intercessions are all being read in different languages. The response is being sung to a mixed language antiphon I've heard before (but I can't recall the name/composer).

How lovely! The choir is singing the offertory: "How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place" from Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, in English. It's nice to have a proper offertory anthem for a change. Choir sounds good. I want to choke me some announcers who won't shut up during the music. The organist is improvising on the "How Lovely" theme as the pope finishes up censing the altar.

The Mass setting for the Sanctus, Benedictus, Memorial Acclamation, Great Amen, and Agnus Dei is from Schubert's Deutsche-Messe. I can hear harmonies being sung by the choir. My home parish back in Oklahoma used to sing this setting (at least for the Sanctus) all the time, but I never really liked it, thinking it was too simplistic and childlike. The television feed musical miking is a lot better in New York than it was in Washington, picking up good choral sound and full, rich organ sound; in Washington, I didn't hear much more than the melody lines and a thin electroniccy organ.

It's communion time. This is a long Mass. Washington was over in an hour and a half; it's already been two hours since they started at 2:30 and they've just started communion for 60,000 people. I wonder if they'll have the cute little yellow umbrellas to mark the communion stations like they used in D.C.? I think the Holy Father is getting tired after his big American Tour. I heard him say a lot of "ze" instead of "the," "undt" instead of "and," and his voice seemed to waiver a bit here and there. Communion music (that I can hear over the chattering announcers) includes Palestrina's Sicut Cervus and that 20th century hymn "This Is the Feast of Victory for Our God" but I can't remember the composer....Dirksen? Hillert? I think it was a National Cathedral (Episcopal) organist-choirmaster....called Festival Song or Festival Canticle or something like that. There was some Renaissance polyphonic stuff, but I couldn't hear enough to recognize it. Hmm. Marcello Giordani from the Metropolitan Opera is singing something, but I can't hear over the announcers chatting to hear what it is. Oh, there it is....it's "Panis Angelicus," like Domingo sang Thursday. I wonder if Giordani will get to kiss the Holy Father's ring? Ick, they moved a mike right over a second violin and it's picking up and sticking out. Nope, Giordani didn't get to kiss the ring. Idiots in the congregation keep trying to start up more baseball park chants for the pope. Now they're playing an odd, heavy orchestral, version of the spiritual "Let Us Break Together on Our Knees." Eeeuw, now they're singing it, and it's a really obnoxious arrangement with the cantor singing and the choir singing backup. I like the cantor's baritone voice.....and you very seldom hear me (a baritone cantor) say that about another male cantor. LOL

It's over....sounds like the closing hymn is an arrangement of the Beethoven Hymn to Joy with "Joyful, joyful we adore thee" words. Hard to hear over the ballpark cheers and the announcers "recapping" the Mass. I don't think the congregation is singing, they are just cheering. LOL....the priests in the congregation are like a bunch of teenaged girls at a rock concert falling all over themselves to touch the pope and maybe even kiss his ring as the Holy Father processes out.

You know, I think we need to design some new liturgical vestments for the Secret Service to wear when they are walking around a pontiff.

Alright, it's 4:46 p.m., and Benedict has left the building. Over and out.

Post-script: As a postlude, the choir and orchestra are doing the entire final movement of the Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor.

Papal Mass

Both photos by Bill O'Leary-The Washington Post.
Copyright © 2008 The Washington Post Company.

Over 46,000 people made their way early this morning to the new Nationals Stadium baseball park in Washington to hear Pope Benedict XVI say Mass, with several thousand other people outside, either as worshippers or protestors, and tens of thousands of people worldwide watching via television. All four of the local major network stations preempted their programming this morning to carry the Mass live.

Since I'm not anybody important, and since I didn't "win" a ticket in the parish lottery, I got to watch the Mass on television. That may not have been such a bad thing, since people were told to be at the stadium in time to be in their seats and seated by 8:30 a.m. for the 10:30 a.m. Mass. They had to show up even earlier, too, because everyone had to go through security screening. Also, it was a lovely, bright, warm, sunny day....and, it got hot sitting there in the sun, with many people having heat-related illness issues.

It was a beautiful service, though, and I have to say that I was very, very impressed with the work done by the planners. Several years ago, I was on the committee that planned and executed the consecration of a new diocesan bishop (I was in charge of all ushers, procession marshals [we had a dozen simultaneous processions], and acolytes), and I think we probably only had 6,000 or so people, not the 46,000 they had today, so I'm fully aware of how much work this is. Everything seemed to go off without a hitch today, and they managed to start two minutes early and end three minutes early. On top of that, they gave everyone communion in less that twenty minutes! (Of course, they only gave out hosts [bread] to the people, as the Catholic Church routinely gips the common people out of their swig of wine, and today was no exception.)

I thought the music ended up being much better than I had anticipated. It was hard to hear things in their proper context on the television, but I think it was probably pretty good in the stadium. They had a choir of 250, plus several "specialty" choirs, bringing the vocal musician count up to nearly 500. They had a good sized electronic organ, plus a 25-30 member orchestra with lots of brass, and some of the specialty choirs had special instrumentalists with them, especially for the "ethnic" choirs. I recognized the voice of the music director at the cathedral as the cantoress. There were a couple of male cantors I didn't know, and the main one did not seem to have as trained a voice as I would have liked to have heard at a papal Mass, but it was still acceptable. Some of the featured soloists in the choirs had very nice voices for their brief moments of song. Because of the television miking, the organ sounded thin and electronic and it was difficult to get a sense of harmonies (if any) being sung by the choir. That's the one main reason I wish I'd been able to have been there in the stadium, since I can't adequately judge things remotely.

Some of the major music was surprisingly acceptable this morning. They didn't get too weird or too contemporary. I haven't been able to get a service booklet yet, so I'm having to guess from memory the music. The opening hymn was Lasst uns er freuen (a/k/a Vigiles et Sancti) with one of the Catholic alternative word sets (instead of "Ye watchers and ye holy ones"). The closing hymn was Hyfrydol ("Love divine, all loves excelling"), with the "Alleluia! Sing to Jesus" words (I think). The Gloria sounded like it came from the Peloquin Mass of the Bells. The Sanctus, Benedictus, Memorial Acclamation, and Great Amen all came from Haugen's Mass of Creation—and this inclusion created a little outside controversy; more on that later. Didn't know the Kyrie or Agnus Dei....they sounded newish. The psalm setting, though, was an awful "modern" thing with weird tonalities (but that's usually required in "modern" music). Someone told me they thought the psalm was a Peloquin setting. So, for the most part, the music was selected for it's comfort and familiarity level for most of the worshippers.

I think the music planners missed an opportunity to do a fabulous anthem during the offertory. It sounded like they had the choir singing a hymn arrangement then. Because of the television miking, I could never tell when, if at all, the congregation was singing. The local stations all had minor news anchors covering the Mass, each with their own local priest "expert," so naturally they had to talk during all the music, especially the offertory and communion, so I'm sure I missed a lot.

Now, about the Haugen thing. When a list of papal Mass music got leaked to the blogosphere, a lot of the traditionalists (the boring people who think only Gregorian chant and Palestrina should be sung at Masses) were chagrinned by the planned use of Marty Haugen's Mass setting. Well, Haugen's Mass of Creation and Richard Proulx's A Community Mass are by far the two most commonly used and sung Mass settings in modern American Catholic worship. Whether or not they like it, most Catholics know the music to these settings. Now, I'm not at all fond of Haugen's hymns, but this particular Mass setting isn't offensive. In fact, dressed up with choral harmonies and a bunch of brass this morning, it sounded appropriate and pretty good. So, I thought it a bit unfair for the major Catholic bloggers to be making statements like "Marty Haugen is responsible for ruining Catholic music and worship in America." Well, you know, Haugen isn't even Catholic—he's a Lutheran—and he's not the one responsible for ruining Catholic music and worship. I can't even assess that blame on the St. Louis Jesuits (although they come close!) or even the originally-Presbyterian-now-nondenominational Taizé community (source of those inane, repetitious, mantra-chants). The problem is with the bishops and priests who were so quick to throw out millennia of beautiful liturgical music in favor of hippie folk tunes that belonged on a Catholic contemporary music radio station, not as a part of the divine liturgy. There's a whole generation of Catholics who grew up with crap music, but, fortunately, I see a great interest—coming from young people—in restoring more traditional music and hymns in services. In fact, I often hear the younger people refer to contemporary Catholic music as "old stuff" and "lame" music that geriatric priests try to throw at the youth to be "relevant" and "modern" in worship, and they hate it as much as I always have.

During the two hour long prelude and during communion, they did a wide, wide variety of music, singing in all kinds of languages and performing in all kinds of styles. Not all of that music was to my taste. But, I think the musical planners were trying to make the effort to include all the different fringes of Catholic worship and music that regularly occur in this archdiocese, and I think they pulled it off fairly well.

The last song during communion was "Panis Angelicus" sung by Washington National Opera general director Plácido Domingo. I thought he did a serviceable job (perhaps I'm just over exposed to the maestro, but I wasn't wowwed by his performance). He got lots of applause afterwards (I hate it when people applaud during church), and then he went to the pope and kissed his ring. None of the other soloists got to kiss the pope's ring.

Speaking of applause, the pope got a lot after his homily. I've found it interesting how many "unpleasant" issues this pope has been addressing and confronting head-on during this week's appearances. The news has been covering how he's mentioned the priestly pedophilia scandal multiple times, and he spoke of it during his homily. He also spent a portion of his talk expressing his regret for the treatment and exploitation of Native Americans and African slaves in the early history of the country. That surprised me.

Incidentally, the homily and Mass were all said by the pope in English. He seems to speak English quite well, though you can detect his German accent.

The pope got lots of applause and cheers all morning. He was cheered after the local pointy-hat's welcome and introduction of the Holy Father at the beginning of Mass, and the crowd went crazy when, an hour before Mass started, he made a circuit of the stadium in his Popemobile. As he left the Mass at the end, everyone seemed to want to touch him. And, it wasn't just the laity that was wild, it looked like a lot of the priests in procession had cameras and were just as star-struck!

So, it was a very interesting morning. The big screens at the new ballpark got an interesting workout. And, I still snicker at the irony that, just a couple of years ago, the spot where the pope was standing during the Mass was occupied by a gay bathhouse. Meanwhile, I'm anxious to see this weekend if the New Yorkers at Yankee Stadium do as interesting a Mass as was done in Washington.

Papal visit

Washington is decorated with the flags of the Vatican this week in honor of the official visit of Pope Benedict XVI, who was formally received at the White House yesterday, and today (as I write this) is celebrating Mass at the baseball stadium. Here are a few views of the flags.

Oh, for those of you not local, the red and white barred with red stars flag is the "state" flag of the District of Columbia.

He's here

Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.
Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company.

Shepherd One

The Pope's plane is in the air, making its way to Washington.

'Twill be a very interesting week.

Wandering around down south

Laurent hasn't been to Mass since Easter. To eliminate all his usual excuses, I agreed to Metro down to his neighborhood and go to Mass with him at his neighborhood church, St. Dominic. It takes him probably less time to walk to the church than it does for him to get to his Metro stop, yet at one minute til Mass, I still found myself dialing his cell phone wondering where he was. Fortunately, the music director opens the Mass with a bunch of announcements, so we were able to slip into a pew just in time before the opening hymn started.

I always find this parish to be a place of so much potential, but so much misguided liturgy and music. This morning was no exception.

The parish uses Breaking Bread 2008, one of those disposable paperback hymnals that have to be replaced every year, and most of the service seemed to come from there. The opening hymn was Kingsfold. So far, so good. For the offertory, they had a congregational hymn the congregation didn't sing called "Glory in the Cross" by Dan Schutte, one of the dreaded "St. Louis Jesuits." What particularly drove me crazy about the "hymn," though, wasn't so much the music, but the vocal performance: each verse has the phrase "the cross of Christ" at the beginning and at the end, and the music director very emphatically kept singing it as a jaunty and choppy "crossssssssssss.....of.....Chrisssssssssssst." The communion hymn was "You satisfy the hungry heart," a well-known bad Catholic song that, surprisingly, had very little congregational support (usually they at least sing the refrain). The recessional hymn was Easter Hymn (Jesus Christ is ris'n today), the only hymn all morning that seemed to be heartily sung by the congregation, but even though things were going just great, they only did three of the four verses!

The Mass setting started off with a sort of responsorial Gregorian chant Kyrie, followed by a Gloria I didn't know and couldn't locate in any of the Mass settings in the hymnal. It must be a great secret; the parish newsletter has a column where the later portions of the setting are listed with hymn numbers, but the Gloria isn't mentioned at all. The rest of the Mass setting was that great abomination, Mass of Glory by Ken Canedo and Bob Hurd, one of the biggest arguments in favor of abortion the Catholic Church has. For the responsorial psalm setting, the music director (who cantored the Mass) sang an antiphon setting that was not anywhere I could find in the hymnal.

The liturgy itself was very low church, with very little chanted and no incense used. The priests weren't overly social or friendly shaking hands after the service. The homily was read by a deacon/monastic from the archdiocese, but as is typical with archdiocesan speakers, it was sleepy. There's a weird acoustic in the church, too, that makes spoken words from the ambo hard to hear via the speaker system.

The parish is fortunate, though to have a beautiful church with gorgeous 19th century stained glass windows and a very nice organ in the balcony loft. They have a good organist (he played an arrangement of "Ode to Joy" as a postlude) and the few times I've been to Mass here, there's been a good flutist in the loft occasionally playing along with the organ. They also had a choir of five women and three men this time that was positioned on risers up front and heavily miked that seemed interested and enthusiastic. So, with a little liturgical and musical rethinking (basically getting rid of the bad contemporary Catholic music that the congregations at this Mass seem not to prefer), they could have a very nice service, and, perhaps, start to fill up all those empty pews.

Sunday church

Fr. Brady, the priest who's assisting at St. Stephen while he works on his doctorate in canon law at Catholic University, was celebrant and homilist at Mass yesterday. He had a friend from his home diocese in Louisiana there to help out, but I'm not so sure where the guy is from, since he lacked the distinct characteristic accent of a native Louisianan or even a Southerner.

Nothing exciting at Mass. Hymns were Victory for the processional, Noel nouvelet (Now the green blade rises) for the offertory, the Wilcock "Taste and see" antiphon for the communion "responsorial," and Truro (Christ is alive! Let Christians sing) for the recessional.

The Mass setting included a chant Kyrie (with extensions from Missa Aeterna Christi Munera by Palestrina) and Agnus Dei (with an uncredited Palestrinaesque extension), Gloria from Martin How's Parish Communion Service, and the consecration section from Hughes' Mass of the Divine Word.

During post-communion ablutions, the choir sang "Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem" by Charles Villiers Stanford. This is one of the few Stanford anthems I've never sung, so I didn't know it at all.