The Recovering Choir Director

William Lauer of the Lincoln Journal Star recently visited Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary to interview faculty and seminarians of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter about their reflections on the technique and spirituality of Gregorian chant, and to photograph some of their liturgies and chant classes.  He has produced an excellent eight-minute slideshow in that, apart from the photos chosen and the words included in the video, the reporter’s take on the story is completely absent; you only get the interviewees’ answers, clouded neither by verbal commentary nor the interviewer’s line of questioning.

See the video here.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, Denton, Nebraska

One of the seminarians featured in the video is Kevin O’Neill, who I met in 2005 while singing for the Juventutem Pilgrims’ Choir under the direction of Richard Llewellyn.  Kevin is a product of the Diocese of Rochester in that he graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in music and attended many a campus liturgy there.  As I was attending, living close to, or working for the Catholic campus ministry at Cornell University from 1993–2003, I found it ironic that we, fellow Catholics and musicians, did not cross paths during the two years both of us were in Ithaca.

Of all the seminarians featured in the video, Kevin was the one with the most musical experience going in.  I reproduce his comments below, which close the slideshow:

My name is Kevin O’Neill.  I’m a fourth-year seminarian, first [year] theology, at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary.  I went to school for music, so part of the history of music courses, which I took, started off with what we know about the Greek music, but then quickly progressed to chant.

I remember the visual impact it had, because I was used to standard notation and piano music— which was my main instrument—and also orchestral scores.  And then when I saw chant, it was something altogether different.

So instead of relying on one, two, three, fifteen, thirty different musical lines happening at the same time, to create musical interest—which an audience will respond to positively [or] negatively—you have one line of chant, which, if sung well, sung beautifully, sung prayerfully, will invite the listener to contemplate a more profound meaning of prayer, of relationship to God—of reality, really.

…I can say without hesitation, that chant has nourished my faith to a great degree, because it gave me an understanding of musical prayer.  The more you live with chant—the more you listen to it and don’t compare it to classical music [or] to popular music—the more you listen to it and you accept it on the terms that it was meant for, I think that your appreciation for it can only go up.

(H/T: Jeffrey Tucker, NLM)