Author: Mary Jane Ballou

When I read National Geographic magazine as a child, explorers eating exotic foods, such as alligator, always seemed to characterize the meat as “tastes like chicken.” Actually, only chicken tastes like chicken and gator really tastes like gator.

I previewed a recording of Anselm Viola’s Missa Alma Redepmtoris Mater this morning. Viola was an 18th-century priest composer at Montserrat.  My first thought was “sounds like Mozart.” And then I realized that was a limiting approach. Viola’s music sounds like music composed at that place with those musicians at that time. (Incdentally, this is one of the few works of his that survived the destruction of the library and music archives of the monastery by Napoleon’s troops.) I needed to listen to his music as his music, not calculating how it measured up to another composer.

The easy comparisons to familiar meats and composers have their value.  You’ll try something if you think it’s similar to food or music you already enjoy.  At that same time in terms of music, it makes it all too easy to place composers and styles in neat boxes – and it seems the fewer the boxes, the better.

Try listening “out of the box,” as we say in corporate newspeak. Or try “no boxes” at all.

I rarely write reviews, but this is the exception that breaks the rule.  When people offer to send me their music (and they do when they realize I can get it on the air), I brace my listening ears when I first play the sample track.  Oh, what a delight it was to hear this!

When most of us think of a chant CD, we think of a “group effort.”  That may be a choir of monks or nuns, perhaps a professional ensemble or even a gifted church choir.  We don’t think soloists, the exception being teaching and enthusiast recordings found on YouTube.  Donna Stewart’s new CD, Adoro Te, is just that – a solo woman’s voice singing a range of chant hymns and antiphons.  And it is quite effective.

Stewart is best known as a singer of Renaissance lute songs, as half of Duo Mignarda. In fact, she met the lutenist while they were singing in a 5-voice schola for a weekly Tridentine Mass.  She has also recorded with the baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire.  So she is both professionally and personally committed to the genre.

Recorded live at the Church of St. Stanislaus in Cleveland, Ohio, Stewart makes full use of the church’s reverberent acoustic.  Each phrase gets a chance to resolve itself into silence. And she doesn’t hesitate to use a judicious amount of rubato in her singing – never schmaltzy – just the right amount of plasticity that beautiful vocal lines demand.  Importantly, Stewart has the beautiful voice equal to those melodies; it is seamless and rich.  Not an imitation boy-choir white tone, but a restrained and attractive adult woman’s voice.

The 15 selections begin with the solemn tone Salve Regina and conclude with the Adoro Te Devote. In between are classic chants from all parts of the liturgical year: Creator Alme Siderum, Jesu Redemptor Omnium, Ave Regina Caelorum, Ubi Caritas, Crux Fidelis and Pange Lingua, Veni Creator Spiritus, and Ut Queant Laxis, among others.

Is this the model for your schola’s singing?  Probably not.  At the same time, this is the album to give to folks who might find it a window into understanding the chant ethos.  And it’s an album worth listening to yourself because its very different style can open an experienced singer to new ways of thinking about both text and melody.  Further, if we insist that chant has to be “my way or the highway,” we may find more on the on-ramp than driving along with us.

The album is available directly from the artist at Mignarda or at the usual download sites.  As a proponent of women’s voices, especially in a genre that is often regarded as exclusively male, I cannot praise Donna Stewart’s Adoro Te, highly enough.  

New on Lulu from Fr. Samuel Weber, O.S.B. is his Hymnal for the Hours.  It’s a print-on-demand published by the Benedict XVI Institute of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Have I seen it yet?  No.  Do I look forward to it?  Of course.  This is just a sweet and short heads-up for those who are interested.  More later.

Here’s the link over at Lulu.  I didn’t find much of a preview except “front matter,” as we call it in the trade.

NEWS FLASH – 14 pages from inside the hymnal have been uploaded as a sample for your viewing on Lulu, thanks to Peter Kwasniewski.  And don’t forget the point of sampling is buying!

Sometimes we forget to check out what the rest of the world thinks of sacred music.  Heck, doesn’t everyone think about it all the time as we do?  Hmmm, maybe not.

Some who read this blog are probably not old enough to remember the launch of the Voyager spacecraft in 1977.  Both Voyager 1 and 2 are now in interstellar space.  The Golden Record they carry contains a collection of sounds of earth in case the spacecrafts ever encounters another civilization.

You can read about the Record and see its contents on the JPL site devoted to the mission.  It’s fascinating and wonderfully optimistic.  And who doesn’t remember Carl Sagan? When you look at the music selections, what’s missing?

  

This composition is a delight.  With its base in the traditional chant and then taking off into rich harmonies, I couldn’t stop listening.  The Young Women’s Choral Projects of San Francisco has great voices and focus.  If you don’t know Frank La Rocca‘s compositions, look this up.  If you love treble voices as I do, you’ll want to listen and learn about this fantastic choral program for young women.

Choral Evensong at Christ Church Cathedral, Indianapolis

Our conference hotel, the Sheraton City Centre Indianapolis is across the street from the Episcopal Christ Church Cathedral.  The Cathedral and their staff are showing wonderful hospitality to our conference faculty and attendees:  use of their choir room and church for rehearsals, hosting our organ breakout series.  Their organist, the award-winning Simon Thomas Jacobs will present a recital on June 2nd.  And as a special treat, their choir is performing a Choral Evensong for us on Monday evening, the opening day of the Colloquium.

The Evensong Service is the crown jewel of the Anglican musical tradition.  The Book of Common Prayer combined the two canticles originally sung at Vespers and Compline, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis, which are sung sequentially at Evensong.  Other music includes sung preces (short petitions), an anthem, psalmody with antiphons, as well as an organ prelude and postlude.

Christ Church Cathedral has a well-known choral program including a choir of men and boys, a choir of girls, and a Spanish language choir.  The principal choir has recorded and toured extensively, so hearing their music will be a delight.

The canticles on Monday, June 30th, were composed by Harold Friedell (1905-1958), best known as the director and organist and St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City.  The  contemporary anthem “Let All the World in Every Corner Sing” is by the British composer Kenneth Leighton (1929-1988). Here’s a performance of that work by the Leicestershire Chorale:

Choral Evensong is a great tradition among the cathedrals and large churches of England.  The BBC has broadcast these live for years and now the programs are archived on their website.  So you can find all varieties of music within the framework of this service.

And our thanks to Christ Church Cathedral for share their musical gifts with the CMAA Summer Colloquium.