Catholic liturgical music is serious, solemn, transcendent, but Catholic musicians are never more fun and inspiring than when they are talking about what they love most. This is what happens at sacred music events around the world: the social and intellectual are critically important elements. The musicians (and music enthusiasts) at the Chant Café, a project of the
Church Music Association of America, bring that sense of life and love to the digital world. As St. Augustine said, "Cantare amantis est."
Among the contributors:
Also past contributors:
Jeffrey Tucker, writer, editor, entrepreneur, musician |
archiveNick Gale (1975-2015), organist, choral director, for 13 years Master of the Music at the Cathedral of St. George in Southwark |
archiveBen, schola director and organ student |
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e-mail:
contact@chantcafe.com
This is good. I was first exposed to intentional silence in my visits to monasteries, and I've striven to implement healthy and appropriate silences during parish liturgy.
People are uneasy with silence, as the indulgence of the culture is to fill up the emptiness and lack of sound or of doing. I can't imagine true silence if the priest is busy about some task or another, even if it is a silent or semi-silent anaphora.
It would seem to me that clergy and even musicians should model silence for a community less used to it.
The modern Roman rite provides well for not only silence, but a stately, measured pace to the liturgy: after each reading or psalm, after the invitations to pray. Where this has been implemented well, I would count the recovery or silence as one of the triumphs of liturgical reform.