A Silver Jubilee
Many things have changed over the last quarter of a century in the field of church music and thankfully most of them have been for the better.
Jesus said to them: “I have come into this world so that a sentence may fall upon it, that those who are blind should see, and those who see should become blind. If you were blind, you would not be guilty. It is because you protest, ‘We can see clearly,’ that you cannot be rid of your guilt.”
Dr. Lucas Tappan is a conductor and organist whose specialty is working with children. He lives in Kansas with his wife and four children.—Read full biography (with photographs).
Many things have changed over the last quarter of a century in the field of church music and thankfully most of them have been for the better.
Perhaps I am just a Benedictine at heart but I feel the *Opus Dei* (Work of God) must truly be given pride of place in our personal lives…
Until we start forming our youth in the Church’s treasury of sacred music we will continue contracepting our musical future to death.
Unfortunately my avocation of church musician doesn’t allow me to sidestep the Latin vs. vernacular issue any more than a house painter is able to avoid paint.
I realize it is hard, but perhaps this is the balance we are called to live—truth in charity.
The audition itself is very straight forward and usually takes about 10 minutes, although I know within the first minute if I plan to accept the child into the choir.
If the Holy Mass really is the unbloody sacrifice of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, then the music we use will be radically affected.
I watched in fascination as one of the tenors strained to reach notes obviously out of his range. I had never heard the chest voice *forced* so high in the male register.
Here we see the result of so much hard work, one of the great Cathedral Choirs of the world!
I can’t imagine my family playing such an intimate role in the ceremonies of Holy Week, but it surely made an awesome impression on the von Trapps.
if St. Augustine was right and “singing belongs to the one who loves,” then it behooves us to once again learn to love and thereby take up the Church’s eternal hymn of praise.
The Psalter, as Esolen notes, is the prayer book of the Church and the Psalms constitute the “foundational poems of Christian praise.”
Along the “via pulchritudinis” (the way of beauty) they will come to know Him Who is Beauty itself.
Corpus Christi Watershed is a 501(c)3 public charity dedicated to exploring and embodying as our calling the relationship of religion, culture, and the arts. This non-profit organization employs the creative media in service of theology, the Church, and Christian culture for the enrichment and enjoyment of the public.