Thine Own Service

Thine Own Service

Tag Archives: music

Music for Rosaries & Angels

02 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

biber, guardian angels, music, rosary, sacred music

28857115762_86b56849e4_z.jpg

Detail of a banner of Our Lady and the Christ Child, Saint Saviour, Eastbourne

In case you ever needed an excuse, today is a particularly fitting day to find time to listen to the complete Rosary Sonatas (or Mystery Sonatas) of Heinrich Biber, the Bohemian and Austrian composer who died in 1704. Biber composed the sonatas in the mid-1670s and dedicated them to then Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Maximilian Gandolf von Kuenberg.

The first Sunday of the month of October is known in many places as Rosary Sunday, in part marking the victory of the Holy League over the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Pope Saint Pius V attributed this success to the many prayers offered through the rosary, and instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victories as a result.

Biber’s fifteen sonatas trace the mysteries of the rosary, which themselves help us to focus more profoundly on the life of Christ – a pilgrimage through a little “liturgical year,” marking the mysteries of the Lord’s life.  As Pope Benedict XVI reminded us:

The Holy Rosary is not a pious practice banished to the past, like prayers of other times thought of with nostalgia … In the current world, so dispersive, this prayer helps to put Christ at the centre, as the Virgin did, who meditated within all that was said about her Son, and also what he did and said. When reciting the Rosary, the important and meaningful moments of salvation history are relived. The various steps of Christ’s mission are traced. With Mary the heart is oriented toward the mystery of Jesus. Christ is put at the centre of our life, of our time, of our city, through the contemplation and meditation of his holy mysteries of joy, light, sorrow and glory.

passacaglia.jpgIn the original score of Biber’s work each sonata is accompanied by a small depiction of the mystery of the rosary which the music represents. A final sixteenth movement, also included in the original score, is a passacaglia for solo violin. Above this is an image, not of a mystery of the rosary, but of a small child with his guardian angel (see above). The English musicologist Peter Holman has noted that the bass line of the passacaglia is based on the opening phrase of a popular German hymn to the guardian angels, Einen Engel Gott mir geben.

content

Today, apart from being Rosary Sunday, is also 2 October and thus traditionally the feast of the guardian angels. These angels pray for us, protect and guide us, and offer our prayers, good works and desires to God. Perhaps this is a little opportunity for grace today: finding God anew in the beauty of sacred music, asking once more for the prayers of his blessed Mother, and receiving again the reassurance of his protection.

You can listen to a complete recording of the Rosary Sonatas here:

Advent Notes: Advent I

29 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Liturgy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, liturgy, music, plainchant

IMG_6638

This is the first of a series of reflections for Advent, which I aim to post here in the coming weeks:

As she begins again the round of feasts and fasts that decorate her character, the Church today enters once more into the half-light of Advent, groping toward the New Dawn with the voice of the prophets as guide. This season is marked by the twofold coming of Christ: at his nativity and at the end of time; and so these weeks are themselves layered with meaning, pointing toward both the event of the birth of Christ and his coming-again in glory at the culmination of all things. During these days he is very much the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and this is drawn out for us in the very first thing we hear as we come to the altar today.

Continue reading →

The Way of Beauty

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Talk

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

architecture, Art, Beauty, culture, music, talk

10557378_10152597616451983_5615832336836605302_n

You can listen to the audio recording of my recent talk, ‘The Way of Beauty; The Way of Happiness’, given as part of the Archdiocese of Washington’s Theology on Tap summer series, by clicking below. The text of the talk will be available on the blog soon.

http://www.adw.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/TheWayOfBeautyTheWayOfHappiness.mp3

CMAA 2014: A New Creation

08 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Liturgy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

architecture, bxvi, CMAA14, liturgy, music, pope francis

Sanctuary of Saint John the Evangelist, Indianapolis, IN

Sanctuary of Saint John the Evangelist, Indianapolis, IN

In his apostolic letter on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the promulgation of the constitution on the sacred liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, Saint John Paul II wrote, ‘the Liturgy is the privileged place for the encounter of Christians with God and the one whom he has sent, Jesus Christ’. In the sacred liturgy, then, the praying Church on earth encounters her Lord and God in a unique way as she is caught up in the eternal worship of heaven – the selfless love-giving relationship between the persons of the Most Blessed Trinity.

It is for this reason that we can describe the sacred liturgy, in the words of Father Faber of the Oratory, as ‘the most beautiful thing this side of heaven’. And it is to emphasize this reality that the sacred liturgy bids us join the singing of the Sanctus, together with the saints and angels in the Church’s hymn of praise, a Church present both in earth and in heaven. Thus we can say that the worship of the New Jerusalem is, in the authentic celebration of the sacred liturgy, presented to us who still labour below. In the sacred liturgy, we say, the curtain between heaven and earth is pulled back for us to see into the fullness of the life to which we are called.

Continue reading →

CMAA 2014: Reflections

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Liturgy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

christ, CMAA14, liturgy, music, worship

Detail from the sanctuary ceiling in Saint John the Evangelist, Indianapolis, IN

Detail from the sanctuary of Saint John the Evangelist, Indianapolis, IN

For the past several years I have looked with some considerable envy at the various photos and videos that have emerged from the Church Music Association of America’s annual colloquium. Last week I was able to attend the twenty-fourth conference, in Indianapolis, IN, and as I return to Washington to prepare for the new academic year I want to share a few reflections that flow from the excellent lectures given in the first part of the conference week. We were treated to presentations by Denis McNamara, an architect and Assistant Director of the Liturgical Institute at Mundelein Seminary, my good friend Fr Christopher Smith, Parochial Administrator of the parish of Prince of Peace, Taylors, SC, and Professor William Mahrt, Associate Professor of Music at Stanford University and author of The Musical Shape of the Liturgy. Rather than looking at each lecture individually, simply regurgitating what others more capable than I have espoused, I would prefer to focus on three themes that emerged and that were – at least to me – new, refreshing, and/or worth a renewed consideration.

These posts will appear over the next few days. In the meantime, I simply want to record my initial sense of encouragement. Being surrounded by so many young, capable, and committed Catholics – with a genuine and profound love for the sacred liturgy and the music which is so integral to it – is an invigorating reminder of the central importance of Christian prayer in the life of the Church. Our celebration of the sacred liturgy is never a mere expression of the faith we profess, but the very fullness of it. It is not simply a sign of what we desire, but it is itself the very goal of our deepest longings, because it is in the authentic celebration of the sacred liturgy that we most fervently and clearly encounter Christ – he the head and we the members – in the sacrifice of praise offered by him to the eternal Father, in and through the Holy Spirit. This trinitarian encounter is the essence of the baptismal vocation of all Christians, and so it is the first and most fundamental element of the Christian life. It is not the preserve of experts or the pious, but for each and every Christian soul to experience the fullness of the Church’s liturgy, so that they might be called into a deeper communal and personal-passionate relationship with Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good liturgy – beautiful, true, authentic and faithful liturgy – is the first and most effective pastoral and evangelical tool, because it is not reliant on our preferences or our weak and humble prayers, but rather presents Man with God, and God with Man, in a wonderful exchange in which we cannot but be transformed.

Thanks be to God for the graces of this past week, and the friendships renewed and begun. May God continue to bless us as we seek to bring him, and him alone, to our parishes and homes.

You can view reports and photos from the colloquium at the New Liturgical Movement here.

Music for Lent

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

lent, music, passiontide

Stations of the Cross at the convent of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, MD

Stations of the Cross at the convent of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, MD

Following my post on suggested music for Advent and Christmas, here is a short guide to some appropriate works for the coming season of Lent, and for Holy Week.

The annual performance of Gregorio Allegri’s setting of Psalm 50 (51), Miserere mei Deus, is in many respects the musical opening of the season of Lent. There are many fine recordings of this work. Of all of them, the 2006 Sarum Voices recording is very enjoyable, over and above (to my mind at least) many more established groups. If you want something really special, though, it is to the 2001 Ensemble William Byrd recording with Graham O’Reilly that I would turn. This is based on a couple of late 19th-century Vatican manuscripts and makes extensive use of the highly elaborate (and much earlier) abbellimenti – the infamous Sistine Chapel ornamentation which made the work so popular, and so guarded. The recording also makes use of some beautiful renditions of the accompanying chant (the antiphon Christus factus est, for example) and contains a fine recording of Domenico Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater with the exquisite Eia mater, fons amaris, and Fac ut animæ donatur sections. You can listen to the performance of Allegri here and read more about the edition here.

The vast quantity of music for the office of Tenebræ is also a great source for music during this season. In a contemporary mould, James MacMillan’s Tenebræ responsories have recently been released by Hyperion, sung by the splendid Westminster Cathedral Choir. The recording also includes his resounding Tu es Petrus, sung in the presence of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI during his 2010 visit to the United Kingdom. A video of that can be seen here. Other settings and performances that I enjoy include those by Carlo Gesualdo sung by The Hilliard Ensemble (click here), the setting by Cristobal de Morales sung by the incomparable Doulce Memoire (click here), and Tomás Luis de Victoria’s 1585 complete set of music for Holy Week and the sacred triduum performed by La Colombina (click here).

That should get you started! At some stage I will try to post some recommendations for settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and also some more English polyphony that might aid our Lenten observance. In that vein, I will leave you with William Byrd’s heart-rending setting of Ne irascaris, Domine for five voices, found in his 1589 Cantiones Sacræ. Here is a performance of the motet by Stile Antico, an English choir who I will be fortunate to hear (thanks to a generous godmother!) at the Boston Early Music Festival in Cambridge, Mass., this coming Friday… snow permitting! If you’re used to ecclesiastical Latin, listen to the impressive percussive effect that comes from the English pronunciation of the text (Si-vi-tas Sancti, &c).

Spem in alium

21 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

liturgy, mary, music, our lady, spem in alium, tallis

Virgin and Child by Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1520, at Dumbarton Oaks.

Virgin and Child by Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1520, at Dumbarton Oaks.

Tomorrow afternoon around 100 musicians will gather in Holy Comforter-Saint Cyprian church – my resident parish here in Washington, D.C. – to rehearse and perform Thomas Tallis’s epic forty part motet, Spem in alium. The performance is at 3.30 p.m., and is free and open to the general public. You are very warmly invited and welcome! More details are available here.

Composed around 1570, the text of the work is a Sarum Rite responsory for Mattins adapted from the deuterocanonical book of Judith. It was Judith whose great beauty enabled her to ingratiate herself with the enemy leader, Holophernes, get him inebriated, and then behead him and return to the Israelite camp with her trophy. She was praised by the Jewish princes as a courageous and somewhat tenacious woman. A striking depiction of the decollation of Holophernes was painted by Carravagio between 1598-99, and now hangs in the Palazzo Barberini, Rome (the painting, that is, not the head).

Continue reading →

Music for Advent & Christmas

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, christmas, music

11374554894_9bde400586_z

Certain that I am not alone in having certain pieces of music that I listen to each Advent and Christmas – and which really mark this time of year – I thought I’d share with you some of my favourites, in the hope that these beautiful examples of sacred music draw you deeper into the mystery of the Lord’s coming, as they have for me.

As far as Advent is concerned, I can’t recommend anything better than Veni Emmanuel sung by the King’s Singers on their Christmas album. The arrangement is by Philip Lawson, who sang with them until recently and at whose final concert in Salisbury Cathedral I was privileged to be. I’d also edge you toward the very beautiful Magnificat Quinti Toni by Praetorius, interspersed with verses from Joseph lieber, Joseph mein, on a wonderful recording of his settings of the Magnificat and various motets, by the Cardinall’s Musick directed by Andrew Carwood.

Continue reading →

Dominican Hymnarium

11 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

dominican, liturgy, music, plainchant, religious

OPHymnarium

The other morning I was presented with a copy of the new Hymanarium published by the Saint Joseph Province of the Order of Preachers. I was fortunate to get to know some of the Dominicans in Oxford during my time there, and I have to say that same infectious zeal, good sense, good humour, and love for the sacred liturgy is present in their brethren at the exceptional Dominican house of studies here in Washington. For the feast of All Saints, for example, a chapel packed with young adults sat through an hour of readings, chant and motets, a fine sermon, and then processed around the cloister singing the litany of the saints. The DC house is full, and they have only just completed another extension. Do the math, as they say.

Continue reading →

Sacred Music: a question of taste?

15 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Liturgy, Music

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Beauty, liturgy, music, plainchant, reform of the reform, transcendentals, vatican ii

The Organ of Ghent Cathedral

The Organ of Ghent Cathedral

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, last week I gave the first of two talks on Sacred Music at the parish of Ss Francis and Anthony (The Friary) in Crawley, West Sussex. We spoke first about the nature and purpose of the Sacred Liturgy, drawing on the documents of the second Vatican Council and the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, before turning to the nature and purpose of Sacred Music. Why? Because as both Pope Saint Pius X and Sacrosanctum Concilium point out, the music performed in the Sacred Liturgy is intrinsic to the rite itself. To use the phrase coined by Mgr Andrew Wadsworth, “We need to sing the Mass, not sing at Mass”.

One of the questions that came up in the Q&A session touched on the appropriateness of differing styles of music in the Mass. Theologically sound music of a high quality can be found in genres other than plainchant and polyphony; hymns of good quality can be found (if we search hard enough!). So why can’t these pieces be used in the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, be it the celebration of the Eucharist or the Liturgy of the Hours? Reading over Archbishop Alexander Sample’s talk to the recent CMAA conference in Salt Lake City, we see this exact question answered by placing alongside all performances of music in the liturgy three specific criteria.

First, Sacred Music is holy – it is sacred. Sacred Music is music set apart for the worship of God alone and, therefore – in the words of Pius X – must “exclude all profanity not only in itself, but in the manner in which it is presented by those who execute it” (Tra le Sollecitudini §I). This means that the music performed in the liturgy cannot simply be secular music – either in origin or style – ‘baptised’ by Christian worship; it must be set apart for the worship of the Almighty, just as a chalice is never to be used for profane purposes once it has been consecrated for the offering of the Mass.

Secondly, there must be an intrinsic beauty in the music performed in worship. It must be ‘good’, in the sense that it must of the highest standard of music and of performance, and it must also be ‘Good’, in the sense that it has within itself some transcendental element. The sheer beauty of the performance, of the music itself, should generate a desire for God within the one listening; this is why concerts of Sacred Music are always an opportunity for evangelisation, and why listening to Sacred Music outside the sphere of the liturgy is a way of deepening our desire for God, and our sense of his fundamental right to the worship we offer.

Thirdly, Sacred Music must have a universal character. Obviously plainchant embodies this perfectly (at least in our Latin context), but it would also be naive to suggest that only the chant can exemplify such a character. Certainly it does so in an unambiguous way, but music that is universally recognisable as sacred and intrinsically beautiful – even when it is drawn from a particular culture or context – can also embody such a characteristic. Victoria is pure Spanish renaissance, but utterly suited to the liturgy; Zoltán Kodály’s exquisite Missa Brevis is a work of twentieth century genius, but equally meets the required characteristics of beauty and sacredness. Neither draws on a secular idiom or style, neither seeks anything other than the objective worship of God.

If the music in our liturgical celebrations doesn’t meet these three criteria, then we are falling somewhat short of offering to God the best that we are able. Even with limited resources, if we attempt to apply these criteria to our worship, we will not fail to see more clearly the essential and true purpose of the Rites which we celebrate. In doing that, we will also see more clearly the essential and true object of our worship – the God who has loved us and known since before time and who, even now, desires nothing more than our presence with him in the full splendour of our heavenly home, where we will (we pray) worship him for all eternity.

← Older posts

Enter your email address to follow:

Categories

  • Canon Law
  • Evangelisation
  • Homily
  • Liturgy
    • Beauty
  • Media
  • Music
  • Ordinariate
  • Pope Francis
  • Talk
  • Uncategorized

Tags

advent Anglicanism anglicanorum coetibus Anglican Use apologetics architecture baptism Beauty Benedict XVI bishops BOL2015 BSDW bxvi canon law catechesis catholicism charity christmas church communications communion confession cross discernment discipleship Divine Worship DW: Collects easter ember days eucharist evangelisation extraordinary form faith fid formation fr robert barron heaven holy week homily intentional catholicism law lent liturgy mary mass media mercy morality music new evangelisation new media ordinariate ordination our lady papacy passiontide patrimony plainchant pope pope benedict pope francis pre-lent priesthood reform of the reform sacred heart sacrifice septuagesima sherry weddell social communications social media tracey rowland unity virtue vocation worship

Archives

  • February 2021
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • April 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012

Blog Stats

  • 128,236 hits

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×