New Translations for the Mass

You might have heard that the Mass is changing. Rest assured, our Mass is not changing in any way or form. That's the good news. The bad news is, the Mass is changing. Actually, the Mass texts are changing. Why? What would motivate this change?

There is a lot of rumor mongering going on and conspiracy theories abound. I choose not to address those theories here, as this is not the purpose of this blog. If you wish to explore the conspiracy theories, which read like a Dan Brown novel, I can recommend some great websites out there. LOL

The reality is that the language we use for Mass are translations from the Latin. The texts we pray are translated from the Missale Romanum. During John Paul II's (may he rest in peace) reign as Pope, he authorized a new edition of the Roman Missal. This new edition (the third edition of the Missal) includes new prayers and texts for the propers (specific) liturgical celebrations, such as the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, as well as other saints that had been canonized since the second edition was released.

When we begin praying these texts, you will notice that the syntax will be a bit different than what we are used to. The guidelines used for the translations from the Latin are a bit different then what were implemented by the Church for the translation of the previous edition of the Missal. For the previous translation, the translators were given more latitude with the translating, that allowed for idiomatic translations of the texts. With the new translation, the translators had to use dynamic equivalency or a "word for word" translation, which does not allow for idiomatic language.

In a weird twist of fate, or through the intercession of the Holy Spirit, many of the texts we will be adopting on the first Sunday of Advent are familiar to us from the 1976 translations that were first given to us from the Latin.

Will this be an easy transition? Maybe, maybe not. What it does do for us is to give us an opportunity to explore our liturgy and what we pray and say and how it shapes us as Catholic Christians. Fortunately, the laity have a minimal number of changes to be made. Our clergy, who have been praying these texts for over 40 years have a more difficult challenge ahead of them.

One of our biggest challenges we will face as laity is that our musical language will be changing. The new texts don't match the rhythmic structure of our current settings. The composers in our Church have spend a number of years working on these new texts and deciding if it is best to rewrite the Mass settings we have been using or scrapping them all for new melodies that better fit the new texts. In many of our musical settings, we have been Pavlovian trained that as soon as we hear certain thematic materials, we respond automatically. This does not serve us well, when what we have learned to respond with is no longer the "approved" text for our liturgies.

In my mind, it will be easier in the immediate future, for us to use new settings that do not have associated responses ingrained into our psyche. There are several new settings of the liturgy that have been composed that will make our liturgies the jewels that they are intended to be.

In the coming months, we will explore some of the issues that go into choosing those Mass settings and what we will be doing to make this transition as easy as possible. As we undergo this transition, remember that our liturgy does not change, just some of the words. Yes, words are important, but we gain the opportunity to deepen our faith and to explore our faith. How can that be a bad thing?

Remember, Christ has protected his Bride, the Church, for the last two millenia and will continue to do so. Let us trust that He has a better idea than we do, as to what is developing and growing in the Church.

We Are the Music Makers

Why do we do what we do and why is it important?

I have been thinking about this for a good while and came across this welcome address to the parents of the freshmen class at The Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, the director of the music division at the conservatory. This really sums it up...

One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remembered my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school. She said, "You're wasting your SAT scores." On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp-a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist-and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture. Why would anyone bother with music? And yet from the camps we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."

On September 21, 2001, I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 a, to practice as was my daily habit. I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost. And then, I along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. Id did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang We Shall Overcome. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a past time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heartwrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone move Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut-it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside s the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings. People get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching, Indiana Jones or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall. I enjoyed playing in Paris. It made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important-music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier. Even in his 70s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned it mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute cords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?"

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: "If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at 2 am someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 pm someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell. Being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I'm not an entertainer. I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music. I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet - of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness-I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

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While I don't necessarily agree with his summary of the influence of religion in the world, the rest of his speech pretty much covers why I remain a Musician by vocation. I know that each of you have a different vocation than I, but I do know how important music is to each of you. I hope this helps you better realize the importance of the ministry that we all share.

I also want to express how thankful I am for your willingness to serve the community with your gift of music.

New changes in ministry

For those who haven't heard, Carmela has decided to stay at home and take care of her new baby boy. While I will miss collaborating with her, this has opened up some new opportunities for us as a music ministry. You are some of the first to hear about all the details:

Bob Lawrence (he's the guy who subbed for me after my surgery) has agreed to join the Music Ministry leadership as an Assistant Director of Music and will lead the Apostles at the 5pm Sunday Mass. Bob has a PhD in Jazz Studies from UNT and is already making a huge impact on that liturgy. His wife Tamalyn, who has degrees from SMU and UNT as well, is assisting with working with the vocalists and instrumentalists. The kids that have worked with him already are excited about the new direction we are going in.

In addition to Bob and Tamalyn, I am excited to announce the hiring of Kyle Miller as Assistant Director of Music. Kyle is an incoming graduate student at SMU in the Perkins School for Church Music. He received his undergraduate degree from Heidelberg University in Ohio. He received a double major in Accounting and Organ Performance. He is truly one of the few musicians I know that is truly gifted with numbers beyond 4. He is also a gifted tenor and will be singing with the Liturgical Choir as he is able. His studies have to come first. Kyle will be leading the Children's Choirs and will be the 8:00 Mass musician. He has served as a Music Intern at Holy Rosary Cathedral in Toledo, Ohio as well as Parish Musician for St. Gaspar of Bufalo Parish in Bellevue, Ohio.

As you come across the three talented individuals, please welcome them to the team and introduce yourselves to them and be sure to tell them how excited I am that they are with us!

God has truly blessed us with these 3 joining us in ministry.

BTW, rehearsal begins September 9 at 7:00 pm in The Loft. Be sure to invite those you have heard singing in the assembly this summer to join the choir. I look forward to seeing all of you soon. I have missed making music with you.

Thoughts vol.2

At Prince of Peace we hear an awful lot about "full, active and conscious" participation in the liturgy. What does that mean? How do we go about doing it?

In Mark Searle's book mentioned in the last post, "Called to Participate" he submits for consideration:

Full, conscious, and active participation is not merely external, it is also internal, in fact, even more so.

He goes on to identify three levels of "FCA":

1. External - the demands of our rites (hymn singing, responses, going through the motions, etc...)
2. Internal - experiencing the mystery of the Pasch, the liturgy of Christ, who became obedient, even to dying on the cross, having lowered himself to the form of a servant. (Philippians)
3. Life of God that becomes sanctifying grace. We have become transformed and are actually offering ourselves as that same model of sacrifice, sharing ourselves without hesitation or thought, with the rest of the world, helping to bring them into the life of Christ.

Liturgy is to be transformative in our lives. Think about the bread (wafer) that we eat for that meal. It started as a seed, that had to fight its way through the earth, growing into a plant that was then cut down and ground into flour. It then was forced into a dough, baked, then ground again when we received it at the Eucharist, then went through the digestive process. These are all very brutal, and difficult transformations that that wheat seed has undergone.

While it was being transformed in an earthly form, it was also transformed into the Body of Christ. When we ate it it changed us both spiritually and physically, for not only did it give us protein and sustenance to continue on with our daily life, it changed us spiritually (and physically) into the body of Christ. We then leave the Church community and then share that life with others.

Without trying to sound "holy" and "hyper-pious" I want to challenge you to contemplate on how your participation in the Paschal mystery has changed you and how you have changed others you have encountered.

What does this have to do with us as musicians making music? When we make music, we are making the music of the Gospel and are giving voice to Christ as well as the community. We can never lose sight of what we have become, so that we can be a "little Christ"or "Christian to every one we meet.

Thoughts vol.1

Just so you know it's a misty 68 degrees this July 1, 2009 at St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, IN. I start classes today and have been immersed in reading. My desk in my dorm room has about 15 books stacked on it that I have to get through this summer!

I will be posting thoughts and reflections as well as some ideas that might be of interest to you, and will leave them for you to ponder. I hope that they challenge you to discuss with me. Some of this will work its way into rehearsals starting this Fall.

I am in the midst of reading Mark Searle's manifesto on the liturgy entitled: "Called to Participate: Theological, Ritual and Social Perspectives." One quote that jumped out at me is:
"We do not own the liturgy. Rather it is the liturgy of the whole Church that is given us by Christ as the means whereby we may enter into his liturgy..." and

Human worship that has any hope of being acceptable to God has to be the worship not of lips but of obedience: an offering of one's whole self, with and in Christ, to God. That is our participation in the paschal mystery of Christ's obedience unto death. Without that, we might as well stay in bed on Sunday morning; without that, all the praying and singing in the world is beside the point." (p. 28)

Do we act like we "own" the liturgy? Do we offer an acceptable offering unto God? I don't know the answers to these questions, but it does cause one to pause and think. I invite you into that same conversation and reflection.

Peace.

If Ye Love Me

This is a wonderful anthem that is a staple in the choral repertoire. I'm not sure how to do this yet, but, here is the link for a beautiful recording by John Rutter.

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvu0lrliPW0

If it doesn't connect by clicking on it, highlight it and copy it into your address bar. You can find several good recordings on Youtube.

We'll talk about this later.

Perspective is Everything

Lots of people in our ministry and our community are facing real hardships in their lives, whether they be medical, employment, financial or relationship issues. Many people have asked about how serious my hand surgery was. My first reply was usually something along the lines of: "I define acuity of surgery as anything done on you is minor surgery, while anything done on me is major surgery." While trite, I think as Americans we tend to take that mindset. I am not trying to diminish how deeply affected we all are by our problems, but my Mom shared a quote from a book she is currently reading that I think I will be tackling once she finishes it. (Hurry up Mom!!!)

This is from the book "Dangerous Surrender: What Happens When You Say Yes to God" which is written by Kay Warren, who's husband Rick is the pastor at Saddleback Church in California. He was the host of the forum with John McCain and now President Obama during the election. (While I may not agree with all he stands for, at least he is genuine in standing up for what he believes without disrespecting the position of others. This is a lesson we could all learn.)

Anyway, enough chasing rabbits.....

Here is what Kay has to say:

....if you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead, and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the people in this world! If you have any money in the bank and some in your wallet and some spare change in a dish somewhere, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy; 92% have less to live on than you do! If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million other people in the world. If you can attend worship services at church without the fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death, you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

What does this have to do with the Music Ministry at Prince of Peace? I hope that you are able to realize the blessings that you have been given through our Resurrected Christ, and are inspired and motivated to share those blessings you have been given with others you encounter.

You each are great blessings to me and to the rest of the community. I hope and pray that you are able to recognize the blessings of God in your life and share with others.

++++quote taken from "Dangerous Surrender: What Happens When You Say Yes to God" by Kay Warren. Published by Zondervan Books. Copyright 2007.