B.C. Sacred Music Symposium

A hopeful sign for the Latin churches in British Columbia? The video advertises a diverse and young group of people who are interested in preserving the Latin patrimony of sacred music.





NLM

Is the Solesmes interpretation still being handed on as THE tradition or do we have a competing interpretations in North America now? Where is the innovation or the attempt to do something different, other than from musicians who specialize in early music and historical reconstruction? Too bad Cappella Romana isn't interested in doing such reconstructions, specializing as they do in Byzantine and Slavic sacred music.



Different interpretations of Gregorian chant may sound different with respect to the music, but not to the range of singing, and I have not found an American group that incorporates a larger range of male voices. The English sound of Anglican sacred music sounds like it has more T, and the same is true of Catholic choirs in the UK. Is it just the lack of male voices in the lower ranges? Or is there something about the Gregorian melodies as well? I don't think so -- I can hear a wide range of male voices in recordings from Solesmes. So it is something about the interpretation and/or the melodies.

Some historical recreations of "old Roman chant," including a couple of tracks by Ensemble Organum:

Square Notes, Season 2

Pre-Order the CD

Gregorian Chant

Salve Regina

Templar Chant

Good for the Benedict XVI Institute

CNA: Bay area project expands Gregorian chant instruction to children, teens

Something Decent at Stanfurd

The Choral Tradition of Salisbury: A Concert with Commentary Featuring the Salisbury Cathedral Choir

Funny how 666 appears in the url.

Camidge: Psalm 143 "Hear My Prayer, O Lord"

Going to the Ordinariate?

Anglican Chant Tones
Favorite Psalter

Coverdale Psalms - another intro
music

1559 BCP

Psalm 130

Fr. Z: Gregorian chant CD from the Benedictine Abbey of Fontgombault

The Beatitudes

It's good someone is writing these articles over at ROK; maybe some of the non-Christian readers will reconsider Christianity. The Feast of the Ascension

Not Solesmes interpretation:

Syriac Chant

NLM: Two Recordings of Syriac Liturgical Music

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Byzantine triumphalism? Or is it warranted because of the language of the Psalms and the Old Testament?

The Priests (검은 사제들)

Saw the movie yesterday with πατήρ; πατήρ actually enjoyed it as a movie, not for its theological points. If you played a drinking game where you had to take a shot for something in the movie that is portrayed as Catholic but isn't really, you probably wouldn't get past the first 30 minutes. (Before the movie's depiction of the rite of exorcism, which would definitely put you over the edge of sobriety.) The movie is interesting for what visual symbols are used to depict authentic Catholicism (icons, censers, cassocks, rosaries, statues of Mary, the use of Latin). Maybe the best part of me was the use of the sequence for Mass for the Day of Pascha, chanted by the assistant deacon (played by Kang Dong-wan) and used for the end credits, which I rarely heard during my Latin trad days, as I usually attended the vigil Mass and slept the next morning. (πατήρ had to identify it for me.)



Also interesting was the depiction of Korean shaman religion in the movie. Accurate? While the Korean Franciscan priest/exorcist (played by Kim Yoon-seok) was "ecumenical" in praising the shaman's effectiveness in expelling demons, the shaman does fail to do so for the high school girl at the center of the movie. (More "traditional" exorcists like Fr. Amorth would probably see shaman religion as being spiritually problematic in its communication with the spirits and use of spells/chants -- contributing to the problem rather than solving it. "By what authority do you cast out demons?")

Psalm 118

The Beatitudes

I don't think I've seen it before; the Westminster Cathedral Choir has its own website now.