Note: What follows is a transcription of an interview conversation I had with Kevin Allen. Unfortunately, the video and audio were not able to be used for posting, but I wanted to be able to share my conversation with Mr. Allen nonetheless!
William Fritz: All right, so I’m here with Kevin Allen, who has been highly regarded as a composer of opera, chamber and orchestral music. Mr. Allen has also developed a unique reputation as a composer of church music for the Roman Rite. Mr. Allen’s works, sacred and secular have been performed in churches and concert halls throughout the United States and Europe. Your work was performed recently by Voces8, and several of your works have been performed in the Vatican. Mr. Allen is based in Chicago now, and he is the founding director of the Collins consort, the American composers project and the Schola Immaculata. And you are still the choir master for the Monastery of the Holy Cross, is that right?
Kevin Allen: I am, yes, choir master for the brilliant, wonderful choir at the monastery, and the director at St. Gregory’s Hall on the north side, who is sponsoring the upcoming chant workshop.
William Fritz: Amazing, that’s what we’re here today doing, to have a chat with you today about the chant workshop that’s coming up soon, at the beginning of September.
Kevin Allen: Yes, September 3, a Tuesday, the feast of St Gregory the Great, if I’m remembering, yeah, at least one of the feasts; the other feast of St Gregory is March 12 in the Old Calendar.
William Fritz: Yeah, and so if I might jump right into that, what was the inspiration? Why have a Gregorian Chant workshop?
Kevin Allen: Well, the purpose of St. Gregory Hall is to present in the most palatable way possible various parts of Catholic culture: Catholic music, Catholic applied art, prayer, of course, theology, poetry. So, there are many things, so many aspects to St. Gregory Hall. I’m head of the music side of that. And of course, that does dovetail in with the worship side of things. So, a chant workshop just seemed absolutely appropriate on the Feast of Saint Gregory, because his name has been given to the chant of the Church, which we call Gregorian chant.
William Fritz: That’s right, and if people remember the iconography for Gregory, he’s at his desk writing, and a little dove is kind of whispering in his ear all those heavenly tunes. But he was more the ‘admin brain’ behind all that effort in compiling and codifying; but that still needs the Holy Spirit to help do all that monstrous work!
So, I wondered if we could get a little bit of the background of chant in your life. Kevin, what was your first memory of hearing Gregorian chant? Was there a specific moment, or was it just kind of something that you developed over time?
Kevin Allen: Sure. I mean, I can’t remember specifically. There was a lot of singing in my grade school, Holy Angel School, I’m pretty sure we weren’t singing much Gregorian Chant outside of, you know, very, very basic things, I can think of the Stabat Mater tune, because I know for stations, sometimes that was heard. Perhaps I might have heard, you know, the Canon of the Mass, because the priest, Father Clements, who was the priest of the parish, was an excellent singer, and Father Smith, who was the principal of the school, was quite a patron of the arts and a lover of music, and particularly singing. He really loved the choir, and he loved sacred music. So, I don’t have an exact memory, but of course, you know, living in in the United States, you know, anytime a film or a television show wants to have a scene in the church, for some reason, Hollywood knows what the church’s music sounds like, even if Catholics don’t. So, it’s always an empty church with an organ playing, which I’ve always found really interesting.
William Fritz: It’s always interesting too, you know, oh, we want it to we want it to be a Catholic scene, and we want them to know, you they’re in a Catholic church, and then they show like a priest wearing a cassock, which, how many times does that happen in the American church? But it’s almost like the caricature that Hollywood is trying to shortcut into their movies is a little more accurate to our identity than sometimes we experience, right? So yeah, it’s fascinating to kind of consider maybe when chant was in our background, because it’s probably there subliminally: that tapestry, it’s written in the DNA of Western music. There are so many examples of this, I’m thinking right now of the Dies Irae that appears so many times in so many classical music pieces.
Kevin Allen: Yes, Berlioz’s famous Symphony Fantastique. It’s just a huge, huge climactic moment. So exciting, right?
William Fritz: So much we could talk about there! But for you, was there a conscious moment where you, you said, “All right, I’m learning chant now. I’m going to pick it up. I’m going to start singing it”? Was that a conscious decision? Or were you lucky enough to just kind of get thrown in?
Kevin Allen: Yeah, it was out of necessity! I was a parish musician at quite a young age, and I had no chant background, so I can’t imagine I did very much chant, my first kind of big, big job in my early 20s, it was minimally some chant. For sure, I made a conscious decision to insert some parts of Gregorian chant, I think for sure, at the Agnus Dei, we were doing that, and this was kind of ‘cutting edge’ in those days. It was a big deal, but, and I’m not sure how well it went, how well it was received.
But I do know at that job, you know, talking about the sins of youth, I did for the January 1st Holy Day of obligation, like, actually, with the head professional singers and my full choir (which was quite a large amateur choir) singing La Messe Notre Dame of Machaut [laughs] – the folly of youth! Of course, I don’t think I’d do that again. It was quite a wealthy parish, but it’s just, you know, [the people in the congregation were saying] “what are they doing?” Spasms up there, pockets, you know, it was just…it was something. And I remember the priest saying after mass. He said, “Kevin, during the Gloria, I thought I would levitate.” He enjoyed it, he was an older priest, and he loved it. But, you know, I got quite a bit of flack for doing that Mass setting, and rightly so. That was, that was, that was only one of the minor faux pas of my tenure. That medieval sound is SO out there! What we did was the full choir – the parish choir – actually alternated with the polyphonic group singing the chant from in the gallery. This is a large church, so that’s how we included quite a bit of Gregorian chant as well. And that was quite early in my professional life. So yes, I really kind of hit the ground running with [Chant]. Granted, it was in the context of this polyphonic mass by Mauchat, so it wasn’t the propers, so anything like that, but it was certainly Gregorian ordinaries, or plainsong ordinaries.
William Fritz: Yeah, for my part, chant is something that I was certainly lucky enough to kind of get an early exposure. I’d always been doing chants since I was in high school. But what I’ve seen more and more is that more and more people are starting to read the documents of Vatican II and are starting to kind of just go, “oh, it says, here: ‘Chant has pride of place,’ so let’s get those chant books out!” And with all the resources online, it’s so much easier to step into the kind of vast stream that is Gregorian chant. Which leads into my next question for you: Why? Why do a workshop? You know, with all those things online, what do you feel is important to doing something in person, if people can make it out for that, as opposed to just watching a YouTube video?
Kevin Allen: Well, that the best and most traditional way to learn anything is to learn under a master. I am often approached by folks that want to start a choir. Well, that means you must sing chant in a choir, and sing many years in a choir, under a choir master who’s programming good chant and good polyphony. It is just the only way. I was fortunate to learn that way. I sang under good directors who exposed me to lots of music, lots of old music, but also music, even in high school. You know, my music director, said, “oh, you know, a local composer gave us this piece and we’re going to sing it.” So, this was just such a normal thing to me to not only sing music by people that have been dead a few centuries, but also music, you know, just literally fresh from the composer’s desk. This is the most traditional way, and I would say is the best and only way to go about really anything, certainly in the arts, but and specifically for us, for music. The way of looking at YouTube is, if that’s all you have, of course, that’s what you have to do. Though it’s not good, it’s not fine to only have that: I won’t even say it’s okay. That’s just what you have until you can find good people. [People will say] “So, you know, I live in a small town.” Then I say, “Well, Bach walked all the way to hear Buxtehude: And he wasn’t around the corner!” If Bach wanted to learn from the master, he had to go a long way to do it, so he made the sacrifice to do it. So, there’s no easy way, or even ways out of it; so, in person is the way to do it.
William Fritz: It’s funny, I wholeheartedly agree. And what’s ironic is I have an entire YouTube channel mostly devoted to teaching tutorials on Gregorian chant! My only excuse is that I started it as a way to supplement the practice sessions I do with my own choir but wanted others to have some kind of benefit as well.
But there really is kind of a overwhelm with information on the internet. You can search whatever you want, and you get so much information. There’s no priority or hierarchy to that information, and it gives you the illusion of completion. When, in fact, learning from a master, yes, sitting at the feet of a master, being in the room with someone who knows how to do it and does it on a regular basis, who also received instruction from someone else. There’s a co-naturality with just doing it, and it takes a lot of the argument out of the different schools of thought, because you’re just here in this room doing this music, with this teacher. There’s a lot to be said about the very human way of learning from a master. That’s how it always was done, and it’s the most natural way to do it.
So, I know that one of the things that you wanted to talk about at the workshop was how to introduce chant at the parish level. And you know, sometimes, if you’re musician and you’re interested in the more authentic expression of music in the Church, you can feel a little bit like a lone ranger. (My boys just watched the original Lone Ranger this morning) In most settings, you just feel kind of like you’re all by yourself, kind of gun-slinging in the West. But what are your thoughts on that, how would you say to introduce chant in a parish where maybe you find yourself?
Kevin Allen: Well, of course, every situation is quite different, and so there must be a bespoke approach to it; you know, well, art is that way, I mean ‘made to order’. Introducing chant is no different, even introducing polyphony, or introducing a more authentic approach to a church music program is no different. It must be ‘of the place’ and meet the needs of those people. It’s wonderful that we have access to so, as you said, so much information. But at the same time, you know, on Good Friday, and everyone wants to sing Allegri’s Miserere. I mean, that’s awesome. But you know, if you’re not singing things that are in line with that the whole year, then it’s ridiculous. You heard it on television, you heard it on YouTube. It sounds amazing. But then if you’re going to get to next week and singing pop, then you know, shame on you. Shame on you.
William Fritz: That’s, that’s something that a lot of people don’t think about when they initially, you know, they read the documents, and they hear something amazing on the radio or on YouTube. They’re all gung-ho and just started in their program, and they want to supplant everything and just start over. And I think that, yeah, artistically speaking, if, if you’re doing something that’s way out of left field, given what you’re already doing, that doesn’t work artistically. There’s a, like you said, bespoke answer to the question. This music was developed over centuries, and you can’t just introduce it, you know, in a couple of months in a culture where it wasn’t already ingrained as part of the normal day-to-day.
Kevin Allen: Exactly, exactly. It’s, yeah, it’s unfortunate. I mean, you can understand the zeal and the enthusiasm, but as I said, you have to take into consideration where you’re presenting this and the education of the congregation. Granted, urban centers are quite varied, but in more homogenized places, it tends to be, you know, more easy to implement. And so, I recently gave talk four weeks ago, and just this exact question happened, and I’m currently in a situation like this. You asked earlier about the Holy Cross, which is a Benedictine monastery, and those men are chanting all day, every day, and so you know, Gregorian chant is just what they do, and it’s in their blood. And this is no there’s no controversy in really doing anything that that the church has done, that the church recognizes as part of her tradition. But I’m also not only working with professional singers, but I’m also working with amateur singers, and sometimes they are quite young, like the children’s choir, and also sometimes quite old. There is a section where I think that the median age is probably the mid-70s. So, an different approach has to be there for each group. You know, I certainly approach things differently with my professor choir than with my children’s choir and then with my older adult choir. So, at the very starting with this older group, they’ve had some exposure to chant, just as you mentioned, it’s in their DNA. So, it’s in the background of their minds as chanting the Canon. Nothing else. Maybe the priest won’t even intone the Gloria, but somehow he will sing “the Lord be with you” and he’ll still chant that to a recognized formula we all know. So that’s our chant. And so, this garners familiarity; to sing chant as a choir and chant I first had to introduce it very simply and as a motet (that the choir sang by itself). And because they didn’t have much experience, had really much experience in choral singing, let alone singing chant, I chose very, very simple chants and then alternated it with organ versets. And so, Im’ able to get, as one of my teachers used to say, get “a little mileage out of” a simple hymn such as Adoro Te Devote. It’s an easy kind [of chant], it’s not necessarily modal, and has a quite modern tonality sound that most people can do: and then they can alternate men and women. It’s an easy thing, even for many people. And this is easy way start with things that they’re familiar with. Another chant that you can add is Veni, Veni Emmanuel, so most people will still hear O Come, O Come Emmanuel some point during Advent. You can also think of doing it at some point as a choir motet. But then you know, instead of singing it in English, like as you do as maybe a processional hymn, you can sing it in Latin and then alternate it with organ versets and at some parts with women, sometimes with men, some with both. That way, you get your choir comfortable singing chant and singing it a cappella without the organ. And also it’s a way for your congregation to hear it performed that way. And then you can move to some things a little more advanced as they become more familiar. That’s the easiest way I find, especially if they’re completely unfamiliar or perhaps a little antagonistic toward the chant. Start with the simple, and then, of course, you just become more complex.
William Fritz: Well, what I love about what you said is you start you start simple, and you start with things that are already familiar, like the priest who sang the ‘Dominus Vobiscum’: he wouldn’t do anything else, but that’s chant. That’s the chant of the Mass. It’s liturgical music that’s used to help the liturgy along. And you know it’s just part of the liturgy. We had a joke when, you know, we were going through teaching our RCIA that this is for Catholics, like infused knowledge: when you’re baptized, ‘The Lord be with you’ – ‘and with your spirit’ just kind of comes out of you. And that music is chant! People know how to sing the ‘Our Father,’ and that is chant. And the I think people forget that, that the music in the English Roman Missal is chant.
I’m always fascinated by looking through even the more contemporary hymnals, because I’ll find these Gregorian tunes inside of them, like the Adoro Te Devote: I’ve actually found in many of the mainstream hymnals. Now they may be in English, but I’ve found others! I found the Ave Maria, both in English and in Latin, which is it just blew me away that it was in there. Granted, they are in modern musical notation. And no one hardly ever actually does them, but they’re in the book, right? So, I think for a lot of music directors that are, you know, wanting to include a little bit of those of that of Gregorian chant, they can really just dig a little bit in their own hymnals and missals they already have. They might be surprised to see chant is already in their parish!
Well, awesome Kevin, I’ll let you go, since our time is almost up, but thank you again, and always a pleasure to chat with you.
Kevin Allen: God bless. Always a pleasure, until next time!
