The Recovering Choir Director

In this post, Mr. Alderman focuses on the sacred music of colonial Paraguay and Bolivia.

Noteworthy words:

The rediscovery of these works, especially today when we are only beginning to understand the nature of the New Evangelization begun at Vatican II, speaks volumes about the nature of enculturation. Rather than simply intabulating mass texts into foreign tongues, clumsily trying to translate theological concepts into vernacular music, or, for that matter, dropping unadulterated European hymns on them, the Jesuits of Paraguay created a whole new musical culture intelligible both to Spanish creoles and Indian converts, a truly Catholic sound that merits comparison in its unexpected sophistication with the baroque of Europe.

Also, for that matter, that a handful of isolated Jesuits and Indians in a dirt-poor outpost of the Spanish empire could do light-years better than the average suburban parish with all the resources of the twenty-first century at its disposal, well, it says an awful lot.