"Liturgical Music Goes to College" « The Recovering Choir Director

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"Liturgical Music Goes to College"

Gary Penkala provides pithy commentary on the state of liturgical music on college campuses, and a partial “white-list” of schools that celebrate good liturgy.

Posted 09.10.2005
by Aristotle Esguerra
8 comments.
Filed under: Relevant Reading.

8 Comments

Thanks.

My attending a secular conservatory I have learned that I escaped the drek most of my siblings and Catholic friends we subjected to in college liturgies, or rather, the drek they saw the Lord subjected to.

The Leper
09.10.2005 @ 4:10 pm #

Greetings,

He mentions steubenville as having good liturgy. However, every steubenville event I have been to has contemporary christian rock for music boisterous yelling priests attempting to whip the 10,000 youth into a frenzy. We send our youth group to their youth ministry every summer and the kids come back asking why we don’t have rock music at our mass.
peace

TP
09.10.2005 @ 10:47 pm #

My College (Holy Cross in Worcester, MA), is not on the list, but it’s where I was converted…from banal Catholic music, to great traditional music, singing in the Schola Cantorum, which I will miss next year, now that I am a senior.

Joe S.
09.12.2005 @ 10:47 am #

He’s got to be kidding. It’s just a ‘whitelist’ of schools with a strongly orthodox tradition. That’s fine and dandy, but has little or nothing to do with where you’ll find high-quality liturgical music.

How can the author even claim the list is of schools with fine rubric-reverent liturgical music when one of the schools on the list won’t even open for a year?

Anyway, as TP (I love those initials - you should meet my friend Brian Mitchell) has pointed out, FUS is doctrinally orthodox, but the liturgy is full 100% hands-in-the-air hootenanny. It’s rock and roll. Nothing traditional NOTHING traditional about the liturgy at Steubenville. Ask ANYBODY who went to school there.

Matthew M.
09.12.2005 @ 2:39 pm #

While it is true that the majority of liturgies at FUS are celebrated with praise & worship music, even some of those sport a few chants (Sanctus & Agnus XVIII). Moreover, since 1993 the Schola Cantorum Franciscana has been actively promoting Gregorian chant Mass Ordinary and Proper chants. Until 2000 the Schola sang two 8am Masses per month and one Latin Novus Ordo Mass per month (at a 6:25pm weekday Mass). From 2000 the Sunday Mass time was changed to 9am. At all the Masses the Schola sang polyphonic motets and at the Sunday Masses there were also English hymns with organ. The congregation always got to sing the Ordinary chants at every Mass. I guess that Matthew’s friend Brian never got up early enough on Sunday mornings to attend a Schola Mass. Perhaps he did not read the chapel bulletin or the student handbook/calendar that listed the Latin and Sunday Schola Masses. I was the director of the Schola through Spring 2005, and I guess that my successor is ably carrying on the tradition. Tradition does have a presence at Steubenville! May God bless you, Matthew M., as you try to find out the truth aboutcampus liturgies.

Yours, in Christ,
Susan Treacy, Ph.D.
Professor of Music
Ave Maria University

Susan Treacy
09.12.2005 @ 7:39 pm #

I sincerely hope that Gonzaga University will appear on future lists of that type. For at least eight years now there has been a Schola singing chant at Sunday Masses during the school year. Our choir director, Dr. Schaefer, was the board secretary of the Society for Catholic Liturgy last year, if that says anything.

We have a Missa Cantata–the entire Mass is chanted, including the readings–every week. Most of it is in English. This year is the first year we have been able to have occasional Solemn High Masses (two deacons, six servers), and we have incorporated a little more Latin into our Masses, in addition to the chanted Ordinaries and Propers, and the polyphonic motets.

Not to brag, but our schola is one of the best in the nation. We were invited to perform in the liturgical music section of the American Choral Directors Association national conference last year, and though we were the smallest group in that concert, we were probably the best.

Though Gonzaga is not considered a particularly conservative school, I look forward to the day when it is recognized that we have some very beautiful liturgical things happening here.

Jane
09.14.2005 @ 11:51 pm #

I’ve never attended Mass at Gonzaga, but I have been priv–, no, make that BLESSED to have participated in sung Masses and Offices where the Gonzaga schola sang.
It is truly one of the best in the world.
Jane, correct me if I am wrong, but the priest who presided at Mundelein last September presides at your missa cantata in Spokane?
Excellent celebrant.
Dr. Schaefer’s work there is remarkable.
If the regular Sunday Mass is even a quarter as reverntly conducted and as well prayed in song the whole town of Spokane is blessed in the presence of the University.
(I’m pretty unbiased, I have never been there and have no connection to the school other than my husband’s bizarre and anachronistic ladoration of all things connected to Bing Crosby;-))

Geri
09.16.2005 @ 10:23 am #

errata:
“ADoration”

Can’t spell, can’t type…

Geri
09.16.2005 @ 10:25 am #

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