Ring in the new year with Christ!

And His mother, too, I should add!

Hugh Henry has made available a booklet for Vespers of New Year's Eve (1st Vespers for the Octave of the Nativity according to the extraordinary form) ending with Benediction and the singing of Laudes Regiae (Christus Vincit). But coolest of all is the recording of Christus Vincit by Juventutem. The strength and energy of this hymn in praise of Christ Our Lord and King blew me away! Have a listen, and then sing along.

Christus vincit. Christus regnat. Christus imperat. Exaudi Christe.
Christ is victor, Christ is ruler, Christ is Emperor. O hear our prayer, Christ.

Let my verses go!

Jeffrey Tucker at the NLM:

From the instant that the USCCB announced that the Revised Grail Psalter would become the new standard for Psalms in the ordinary form of the Mass, musicians in the UK privately issued warnings along the lines of “welcome to our Hell.”

The problem is not the translations of the Psalms, which are said to be an improvement over what is in use today in the U.S. The problem has to do with the law, copyright, permissions, expenses, enforcement—and the problems are so pervasive in the UK that one of the least spoken about aspects of liturgical life in the UK is the proliferation of samizdat Psalms.

What are samizdat Psalms? These are Psalm settings written by composers attached to parishes and cathedrals, by composers and directors who are required to use the Grail text but cannot bear to sing the musical settings published by the mainstream publishers. They write their own, but understandably fail to jump through the copyright hoops and pay the exorbitant fees associated with the texts themselves. So they are copied, handed out, kept under wraps, delivered from parish to parish in brown envelopes, and spoken about in hushed tones. It’s like a sector of an underground Church.

The same situation could happen in the U.S. when the Revised Grail becomes official here too. The Psalm that are currently made available online will be forced down. The settings made available by independent composers will have to go underground. The job of setting the Psalms to music will fall to the “Big Three” music publishers who provide the mainstream fare today. Incredibly, one of those publishers, a for-profit company, has actually been named as the literary agent to decide the terms and conditions under which people can publish the Psalms. (more)

Bethlehem Down by Peter Warlock

A beautiful Christmas carol sung by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge.

"When he is King we will give him the Kings’ gifts,
Myrrh for its sweetness, and gold for a crown,
Beautiful robes,” said the young girl to Joseph,
Fair with her first-born on Bethlehem Down.

Bethlehem Down is full of the starlight —
Winds for the spices, and stars for the gold,
Mary for sleep, and for lullaby music
Songs of a shepherd by Bethlehem fold.

When he is King they will clothe him in grave-sheets,
Myrrh for embalming, and wood for a crown,
He that lies now in the white arms of Mary,
Sleeping so lightly on Bethlehem Down.

Here he has peace and a short while for dreaming,
Close-huddled oxen to keep him from cold,
Mary for love, and for lullaby music
Songs of a shepherd by Bethlehem fold.

Sights and sounds of sacred music courtesy of the CMAA Sacred Music Colloquium

It's been said that it is, "too hard," "no one wants this music," that "it is not possible for a regular parish," that "this music is completely outmoded." Yet, here were more than 270 musicians of all ages, from all over the country doing everthing that was presumed impossible.



Corpus Christi Watershed and Jeffrey Ostrowski (Chabanel Psalms) did this with the help of Arlene-Oost Zinner.

I'd love to head to the 2009 Sacred Music Colloquium should the funds become available.

Sancta Cecilia, ora pro nobis

Our quartet sang at a lovely mass this Saturday morning for the feast of St. Cecilia, patroness of musicians. We sang A Hymn For St. Cecilia by Herbert Howells as best we could. Here is an mp3 of the piece recorded by the Musica Sacra Choir of Auckland, New Zealand.

The splendor of truth in liturgy

Shawn Tribe at The New Liturgical Movement expresses what is becoming more apparent to me: liturgical worship is not about about entertainment, feel-good emotions, or personal preference. The liturgy has an objective quality that communicates the faith. How we pray will shape how we believe. He quotes the following:

... people are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year - in fact, forever.
-Pope Pius XI Quas Primas

And later from Four Benefits of the Liturgy by Dom Gerard Calvet:

Take a group of Japanese tourists visiting Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. They look at the height of the stained-glass windows, the harmony of the proportions. Suppose that at that moment, sacred ministers dressed in orphried velvet copes enter in process for solemn Vespers. The visitors watch in silence; they are entranced: beauty has opened its doors to them. Now the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas and Notre Dame in Paris are products of the same era. They say the same thing. But who among the visitors has read the Summa of St. Thomas? The same phenomenon is found at all levels. The tourists who visit the Acropolis in Athens are confronted with a civilisation of beauty. But who among them can understand Aristotle?

And so it is with the beauty of the liturgy. More than anything else it deserves to be called the splendour of the truth. It opens to the small and the great alike the treasures of its magnificence: the beauty of psalmody, sacred chants and texts, candles, harmony of movement and dignity of bearing. With sovereign art the liturgy exercises a truly seductive influence on souls, who it touches directly, even before the spirit perceives its influence.

Sacred liturgy is the body language of the Church - the people of God and the Body of Christ.

O God, come to my assistance - Sunday Vespers

Perhaps I mentioned at some point my ongoing project to set a simply chanted Sunday Vespers to sing weekly at my parish? I went about typing the texts and setting music in the hopes that the more I had done before pitching it to our pastor and choir director the more likely it'd be to get started. I stalled for a while, stuck on the strange canticle from Revelation. But thanks to a tip from this discussion on the Musica Sacra forums, I was able to move ahead and finish the main part of the project (minus readings and propers for Advent, Lent and Easter).

Here is the result presented for review: (See edited links at bottom).

If you are so inclined, could you offer feedback? Specifically regarding the pointing of the antiphons and psalms:

1) Are any of the chant tones really ugly or awkward?

2) I used the simple method employed by the editors of the Mundelein Psalter. The italic syllable is where you first change pitch. Each note after the change corresponds to one syllable with any extras falling on the last note. And also the final note should correspond to the final accented syllable in the phrase. I had some difficulties following this last rule with the antiphons for Psalm 110. Making the final syllable line up with the last note over-emphasized an insignificant word or awkward syllable.

3) I originally wanted to keep the "official" text for everything. For the Magnificat (Canticle of Mary) the traditional tone I used works poorly. I have a better arrangement from The Hymnal (1940) but it uses King James English. It's beautiful, but not "official." I'm leaning toward using the different translation unless someone can offer a way to fix my version.

As a beneficial aside, I also set the English translations of two traditional hymns from the Divine Office in square notes. They look nice and are wonderful to sing. Feel free to use and distribute these as you like (all text and music is common domain):

Lucis Creator optime - Sunday, II Vespers, odd weeks
O Lux, beata Trinitas - Sunday, II Vespers, even weeks

Head over to my friend Geometricus' blog Hymnos Debitos Canamus for helpful info about these and many other hymns of the Divine Office!

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EDIT: Here are the updated booklets in PDF files, the first combined, one for Ordinary Time and one for Advent:
COMBINED - This booklet has multiple antiphons for each psalm depending upon the season. I moved away from this, thinking instead to have different booklets for different seasons.
ORDINARY TIME - Simplified layout with only the OT antiphons for each psalm.
ADVENT - Psalms have antiphons for advent only. Hymns are english translations of the the proper Advent hymns from Liturgiam Horarum, Conditor alme siderum and Verbum salutis omnium, set to a tune from the Liber Usualis. I also selected a different chant tone for the Advent Responsory and Magnificat.

They are set in half-sheet size (5.5"x8.5") for printing as a booklet on 8.5"x11" letter paper. I decided to just use the latin Magnificat. The booklets have everything you need to pray Sunday II Vespers for Ordinary Time and Advent except the Magnificat antiphons and final prayer. It seemed too much work to try and type and included these in a section that you'd have to flip to anyways. I plan to just look them up from another psalter when praying.

Dick Dawkins rap: He's smarter than you he's got a science degree!

Hilarious! This one goes out to all y'all brights out there.

Apparently it took Richard Dawkins three days to understand that he was being dissed. You must watch. As the YouTube info says, "OH MY DOG, it is funny.":

New book from Darren Rousar!

Darren Rousar is a colleague of mine here at Providence Academy. He has recently published a book, Cast Drawing Using the Sight-Size Approach available from Amazon. From sightsize.com:

The first book of its kind, Cast Drawing Using the Sight-Size Approach by Darren R. Rousar teaches the student a systematic way to meet the challenges of cast drawing. Traditionally taught in classical art ateliers, Sight-Size is an approach to drawing and painting from life. It is through cast drawing that the basics of Sight-Size are learned. This approach is readily adaptable to other disciplines such as portraiture, still life, interiors, landscape and figurative painting as well as sculpture.

I've always been intrigued by Richard Feynman's stories about learning to draw as an adult. This book looks like a very systematic approach that appeals to me. Can anybody say summer project?

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Darren R. Rousar attended Atelier Lack and Atelier LeSueur, both in Minnesota, as well as Studio Cecil-Graves in Florence, Italy. He was the assistant director and an instructor at Charles Cecil Studios in Florence, after which he became vice president of The Minnesota River School of Fine Art in Burnsville. He has been a professional artist and teacher for more than 20 years, focusing mainly on Christian themes. When not painting, Darren teaches art and art history at Providence Academy in Plymouth, Minnesota. His website is here.