Author Archives: SacredMusic

Summer Programs filling up

Tuesday, 17 March 2009 10:29
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The CMAA’s nineteenth annual Sacred Music Colloquium is filling up in record numbers. The registration deadline is still two months away, but rooms are going quickly. In fact, if you were planning on attending and staying in a single room, be advised that as of today there are only 25 rooms remaining at the lower price. Register today.

Still haven’t decided? One look at this year’s playlist is sure to sway you. Buchholz conducting Haydn with orchestra? Brouwers conducting a polyphonic Requiem? Turkington conducting the Byrd for Five? Countless treasures await us, including lectures by Dr. William Mahrt and Fr. Frank Phillips, an organ recital by Brother Jonathan Ryan of St. John Cantius, a new motet by Chicago’s own Kevin Allen, not to mention fellowship with old friends and new.

Don’t forget that the week before the Colloquium Scott Turkington will be teaching the second annual Summer Chant Intensive. Graduates of his week long courses are changing the shape of music in parishes all over the country. The deadline for registration is May 1st.

If there is someone you know who isn’t quite convinced he should be attending, consider giving him (or her!) Jeffrey Tucker’s book, Sing Like a Catholic. Proceeds from all sales go directly into the Colloquium scholarship fund. Purchase the book here.

Parish Book of Chant, 3rd Printing

Thursday, 05 March 2009 14:19
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The Church Music Association of America is seeking a donor of $15,000 to underwrite the cost of the 3rd printing of the Parish Book of Chant. You will be mentioned in the front matter. If you are interested, please write. The CMAA is a non-profit 501c3, and all contributions are deductible to the full extent of the law.

The First Sunday of Lent: A Note on the Tract

Wednesday, 25 February 2009 18:09
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by William Mahrt

The Sunday which heads the Lenten season takes its theme from the paradigm of all Christian fasting: Jesus’ forty-day fast in the desert and his temptation by the devil there. In tempting Jesus to show his divinity by casting himself down from the parapet of the temple, the devil quoted Psalm 90, “He hath given his angels charge over thee, and in their hands shall they bear thee up, lest perhaps thou dash thy foot against a stone.” This quotation is such a powerful memory of the event of the temptation that the psalm is the source of all the Propers of the Mass for this Sunday. Rarely are Mass Propers so unified; moreover, the place of this psalm is even more emphasized by the fact that the tract for the day comprises most of the verses of the psalm.

The tract is direct psalmody—the singing of successive verses of a psalm without refrain, and it is sung in alternation by two halves of the choir. By replacing the alleluia sung in the normal seasons, it represents a kind of fasting from the wordless jubilation of the alleluia. While the tract normally comprises three to five verses of a psalm, the tract for this day has thirteen verses. Only two other days have these long tracts: Palm Sunday and Good Friday. On these days, the Passions are sung, and the tract serves as a long preparation for these extended Gospels. Today, however, the long tract simply stands by itself, and its function could be seen as an intense entry into the Lenten Season, a turning to God as refuge and protector. Throughout the Lenten season, the tracts can be the point of recollection in the liturgy and a meditative preparation for the hearing of the Gospel.

Sing Like a Catholic

Sunday, 22 February 2009 13:51
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We are pleased to announce the publication of a new book, Sing Like a Catholic, by Jeffrey A. Tucker (Sacred Music), with an introduction by Scott Turkington. It is an introduction to the sacred-music perspective on Catholic music in parishes, drawing from tradition and documents as well as the author’s own experience. It is a book that provides both direction and inspiration.

Today, many priests and musicians are thoroughly confused concerning a core issue: what music belongs at Catholic liturgy. There are clear answers to this question, though one might never know them if the only sources you have at your disposal are the resources from mainstream music publishers.

The answer is also found in the teaching of the Church.

To discover and sing truly Catholic music is not a burden but the opposite: a tremendous liberation from the commercial-pop industry and an thrilling immersion in the most theologically and aesthetically rich treasure of music available, a tradition that enlists artistic talent in the service of transcendent ends.

It is published in the hope of raising scholarship funds for seminarians and others to attend the Sacred Music Colloquium in June. All proceeds will be devoted to that end.

$17.50 at the CMAA Shop.

Gregorian Missal Online

Wednesday, 21 January 2009 09:12
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All musicians in the English-speaking world are deeply grateful to the monks of the Solesmes Abbey for permission to offer a free download of the Gregorian Missal. This extraordinary book provides the sung propers attached to the 1970 Missal, for Sundays and Feast Days, along with English translations. It is the most useful book for any Catholic music working within the framework of the ordinary form of the Roman Rite. This is a tremendous gift to the entire world. The Church Music Association of America is pleased to host this file for the monastery.

For many musicians, this will be the first time they have seen the actual music of the Roman Rite and how it is embedded within the structure of the Mass and the liturgical year.

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