Best Picture Marathon: Broadway Melody (1929)

Broadway Melody  PG13  1 hour, 40 minutes 
Director: Harry Beaumont
Starring: Bessie Love, Anita Page, Charles King

Like Wings, Broadway Melody would seem a lot less impressive out of the context of when it was made and what technological advances they were showing off.

Broadway Melody opens with a cacophonous scene in a music shop/studio where many people are rehearsing/practicing many different types of songs right on top of each other. It was clearly something that couldn't have existed just a few years before.

I must admit that most of our familiarity with 1920s musicals comes from the musical Singin' in the Rain (1952). While watching Broadway Melody, Singing in the Rain came to mind many times, and not just because of the era. A little Googling helped me discover that Singin' in the Rain was written to bring together a bunch of the music of Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown, who wrote the music for Broadway Melody. (Singin' in the Rain was produced by Arthur Freed.)

So final consensus here was that this is mostly interesting as a piece of history. The parody Dogway Melody (found in the special features on the DVD from our library) was more entertaining.

Movie Music Fun

There's a lot of fun and interesting movie music out there, and we've collected some on iTunes over the years. Recently, I put a bunch more together for an upcoming road trip and thought it might be fun to share some of our favorites here. (We've also been enjoying playing "Name that Tune" with some of these songs, as well as some we were able to find on YouTube.) Oh, and I didn't shy away from a few television shows and operas too.

"Main Title" from The King and I
"Overture" from Lawrence of Arabia
"Jeeves and Wooster" (from the album The World of Jeeves and Wooster)
"Downton Abbey - The Suite" (The Chamber Orchestra of London)
"One Small Fact" from The Book Thief (by John Williams)
"Theme from Jurassic Park" (by John Williams)
"Hedwig's Theme" from Harry Potter (by John Williams)
"Still Dream" from Rise of the Guardians (with Renee Fleming)
"Calling the Guardians" from Rise of the Guardians

"Overture" (Prelude) from Carmen (Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Leonard Bernstein)
"Special Order" from Ratatouille - Michael Giacchino
"Theme from the Magnificent Seven" by Elmer Bernstein
"Main Title" from The Great Escape by Elmer Bernstein

"Driving" from Driving Miss Daisy by Hans Zimmer

The Bridge on the River Kwai - "Colonel Bogey's March"

Ben-Hur - "Parade of the Charioteers"
"The Pink Panther"
"Somewhere in Time"
Raiders of the Lost Ark - "The Raiders' March"
"Le Festin" from Ratatouille
"Down to Earth" from Wall-E by Peter Gabriel
"He's a Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
"Captain America" by Alan Silvestri
"The Avengers" by Alan Silvestri
"Kingdom Dance" from Tangled by Alan Menken
"Band of Brothers Theme" by Michael Kamen
"Non Nobis, Domine" from Henry V by Patrick Doyle
"Now We Are Free" from Gladiator by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard
"The Hanging Tree" from Mockingjay by James Newton Howard
"Jessica's Theme" from The Man from Snowy River by Bruce Rowland
"Married Life" from UP! by Michael Giacchino
"Gabriel's Oboe" from The Mission by Ennio Morricone
"Test Drive" from How to Train Your Dragon by John Powell
"Main Title" from Singing in the Rain
"Who is She" from Cinderella by Patrick Doyle
"Bistro Fada" from Midnight in Paris by Stephane Wrembel
"My Father's Favorite" from Sense and Sensibility by Tony Hymas et al.
"Around the World, Pt. 1" from Around the World in 80 Days by Victor Young

Plus, I forgot some of our all time favorite albums of movie music:

Meet the Robinsons Soundtrack
Sleepless in Seattle Soundtrack
You've Got Mail Soundtrack
Disney/Pixar Greatest

It's funny how some of the songs bring back many memories besides just those of the movies themselves.

My parents like to affectionately refer to me and my six siblings as "The Magnificent Seven", so of course that soundtrack is our theme song. :)

Also, Golfredo Corradetti, my amazing high school music teacher at Kolbe Academy, had us watch part of Somewhere in Time during class one time because he liked the theme song, which I think is based on (or mostly composed of?) Rachmaninov's "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini: Variation No. 18".
.

And I just noticed that ClassicFM.com has a whole section on film music.

Family Singing Repertoire 2: Intermediate Songs

Singing Irish songs (and performing Irish dance) with some friends for St. Patrick's Day at a local nursing home, circa 2008.

Well that was fun! It all started with our choir learning Palestrina's Sicut Cervus, which has been a tough song for them to learn. It seems to be coming together just in time to sing it for the Easter Vigil. (It is one of the psalms for Easter Vigil). But in the course of preparing for it, we discovered the series of YouTube videos that highlights one part at a time to help you learn it. (Here's the Soprano one.) It was the kids were having so much fun learning multiple parts on this that got me thinking about collecting our singing repertoire. And then yesterday, we had a great time listening to the recordings of some of the songs that I shared in yesterday's post (as well as breaking out into Rambles of Spring randomly after dinner).

It's difficult to quantify the different songs. We obviously have had kids in different age ranges all singing songs together for years, so this is just a very rough approximation.

More Challenging Rounds (or Round-ish songs):

Dona Nobis Pacem


Non Nobis Domine (from Kenneth Branaugh's Henry V) - Awfully fun and epic (and not too hard) to sing if you can figure out the two parts.


Magnificat (I'm not sure where this came from as we learned it from someone who learned it at St. John Cantius Church in Chicago. This is the best recording I was able to find, but we do not sing it this fast! It can be sung in up to six parts.)

Jubilate Deo

To Portsmouth, to Portsmouth, it is a Gallant Town (unable to find a recording of this one so far)


Great Tom is Cast (weird recording, but a good way to learn it, I suppose!)


When Jesus Wept


Per Crucem 

More Irish Favorites:

Mountain Dew

Winds of the Morning

Christmas Favorites: (many of which we can sing in parts as a family or with some friends)

The Angel Gabriel (I first discovered this via Sting's rendition on A Very Special Christmas album, the arrangement we use can be downloaded for free at this link)

O Come Divine Messiah (We first learned this via a Christmas Album by the Barra MacNeils - the version we learned as a family was the slightly different OCP arrangement)

Maria Walks Amid the Thorn

Stay tuned for more on this list as I am able to remember them!


I'd like to dedicate this series of posts to all of our family's musical mentors, teachers and choir directors, especially my mom, my siblings (with a special shout-out to Darlene!), Emma Napoli, Michael Morris, Golfredo Corradetti, William Mahrt, Mark Donnelly, Stephen Grimm, Peter Kwasniewski, Kay Moen, Ginny Smith, Deborah Coleman, Max Van Hecke, Julie Farrell, Danny Grimm and Susan Switalski.

Family Singing Repertoire 1: Favorite Munchkin Songs

Singing "The Lord's My Shepherd" with some of the munchkins, circa 2005.

Somehow I recently realized that I've never really done a lot of blogging about music, which has always been a big part of our family's life. I thought it might be fun to collect some of our musical repertoire here on the blog, especially since we have a tendency to forget and then re-discover some of the songs over the course of the years.

I'd like to start with a list of songs that were favorites among our kids when they were munchkins. It's hard to remember who exactly liked which songs, but I especially remember a number of Ria's favorites from when she was 3-6 years old or so, since I made a list at one point.

Of course everyone enjoyed the classic songs of various sorts, such as:

I'm a Little Teapot
Hickory Dickory Dock
Hey Diddle Diddle
Jack and Jill
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
I've Been Working on the Railroad
God Bless America
You're a Grand Old Flag

A great place to learn many of these classics is Wee Sing: Nursery Rhymes and Lullabies and Wee Sing: Children's Songs and Fingerplays. We also, especially enjoyed lots of songs from three other Wee Sing albums: America, Around the World and Sing-Alongs.

The kids also learned to sing the basic Ave Maria chant when they were very young (I remember Ria singing it at age 3) as we used that as part of bedtime prayers.


We also picked up a number of more quirky favorites from a variety of sources (and we never necessarily learned all the words to all of these, just enjoyed them a lot):

Powder Milk Biscuits (from the "Prairie Home Companion" radio show)
Pretty Irish Girl (from Darby O'Gill and the Little People)We're Busy Doing Nothing (from the musical, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)
Under the Bamboo Tree (from Meet Me in St. Louis)
The Codfish Ball (from a Shirley Temple movie - we had a Shirley Temple sing-along video at one point)
Paper Moon (from Natalie Cole's Unforgettable)
Istanbul, not Constantinople (from They Might be Giants' Flood)
In the Highways (from O Brother Where Art Thou)
The Lord's My Shepherd (this recording is of the same tune, but sounds very little like the way we sang it, which was more as a folk tune with a guitar)
Edelweiss, Do a Deer, My Favorite Things, etc. (from Sound of Music)

And we need a special category for Irish music:
John and I kind of dated over Irish music and it naturally became part of the family from the beginning, especially since our home town of Milwaukee annually hosts the largest Irish Festival in the world. Here are some of the Irish songs that the kids enjoyed when they were little:

All God's Creatures Got a Place in the Choir
Waltzing with Bears
Rattlin' Bog
Rambles of Spring
Big Ship Sailing (couldn't find a recording, only the lyrics) 

Favorite Rounds for Munchkins:

Three Blind Mice
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
Frere Jacque
Father I Adore You
Down by the Station, Early in the Morning
Cookaburra
Love, Love, Love, Love or Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose (we sing both versions, sometimes mixed together!)
White Coral Bells


And so much more that's hard to remember. Lots of Christmas songs and patriotic songs and Church songs and such too. I'll see what I can keep coming up with.

What We've Been Enjoying This Week..

The 39 Clues Series - I'm on book 8, the kids are all over. It's been tough covering an 11 book series from the library with 6 different readers/listeners with a crazy combo of audio and print!

Watching YouTube videos related to topics that came up in the 39 Clues, like Terra Cotta Army, Amber Room and Catacombs of Paris.

Discovering Music DVD series by Dr. Carol Reynolds (I love how she incorporates art, architecture, history, culture, politics, science, etc. along with LOTS of stories and excellent recordings). Already touched on a few topics from  The 39 Clues here too. :)

Good stuff! 

P.S. An extra motivation for me to finish the series is that the 1st book in the second series, (Cahills vs. Vespers: The Medusa Plot) is waiting for me to read from the Amazon Vine program. Terri's already cruised through that and eager for the next volume (which comes out in December!)

This'n'That, 9/17/11

I recently discovered the Christian band, Future of Forestry (the name comes from a poem by C.S. Lewis) via a link to from Jennifer's Favorite Links. I found a lot of songs that I really like (and a few that just aren't my thing), including this one, called Close Your Eyes...



Another of my favorites is Slow Your Breath Down...



And speaking of slowing down, I've been working hard to slow down a bit - simplify my life and my commitments and it's not easy, but I can definitely see it making a difference in many ways and that it's something I've REALLY been needing to do.

I know I'm always saying that I'm getting rid of stuff, but I really did make an extra big dent in the last few weeks, especially with books, but other stuff too. Sometimes I just have to make myself pretend that I never happened to find it at a rummage sale or whatever because it looks really interesting, but I don't really need it and in the end it's just getting in the way.

We've also been busy with lots of painting projects - inside and out. There's nothing quite like paint to give your house a new outlook on life. ;)

Ria is doing very well at TAC and seems very happy. I can't believe that she's been gone a month already! It's funny how her departure made us start looking at everything in a new way again. It was definitely an impetus behind my simplifying of things around here, both because her departure reminded me of how quickly everything goes (it's not long, really, before other kids are ready to test their wings) and how much time I want to spend with my other kids right now both because of that and because of what we have left to do together before they're ready to go.

We eased our way into school a bit this year by giving ourselves a week and a half (or so) of part-time school before diving in more fully. On our first day of part-time school, I made a list of things for the kids to do, including "spend 15 minutes observing something outside". Well, this first day also happened to be our homeschool park day, so we decided to do our observing at the park. Late in the spring, at the same park, we got to watch a turtle laying eggs in a hole in the grass. We went home to look up when the eggs would hatch, but it was a wide range (9-18 weeks, I think), so we didn't hold up much hope for observing things on the other side. As it turned out, that first day of school, there were some new hatchlings nosing around in the hole and one that had escaped but had fallen down into the curb of the street where it was stuck on the wrong side from the river. Terri rescued it with a leaf and carried it down to the river. She set it down on the bank where we all got to watch it leap in (and it was a tiny thing!) and wriggle around happily in the water. So nice to spend time whenever we like in the greatest classroom in the world. :)

Tradition vs. Traditionalism

This is a really interesting thought that popped up in the middle of an article about the Chieftains performing at the Communion and Liberation gathering (seems like too small a word) in Rimini, Italy. (Hat-tip to to my sister who was there!)

I think that there is an important distinction to be made, which Don Giussani, the priest who founded the movement this Meeting comes out of, made clear between tradition and traditionalism. Tradition is the wisdom of inheritance. It is something living. Traditionalism is the obsession that comes with preserving this, keeping it safe and free of all other influences, which is a terrible thing.

I think part of the problem we have with traditionalISM today is that tradition is under attack and it's easy to respond to that attack in an unbalanced and inappropriate way. I find the distinction above extremely helpful in understanding where the balance lies. The whole article is quite fascinating.

You can read it here: RIMINI MEETING/ The Chieftains, a living tradition discovering the world

I was already a big fan of the Chieftains - their Christmas album, Bells of Dublin, is my favorite Christmas album ever, and I have the San Patricio album and at least one other one too.

By the way, the quote above also reminds me of something Pope Benedict said in his book, Light of the World:

…to what extent do people still belong to the Church in the first place? On the one hand, they want to belong to her and do not want to lose this foundation. On the other hand, they are of course also shaped and formed interiorly by the modern way of thinking. It is the unfermented coexistence, with and alongside each other, of the basic Christian intention and a new world view, which leaves its mark on all of life. To that extent what remains is a sort of schizophrenia, a divided existence.

We must strive to integrate the two, insofar as they are compatible with each other. Being Christian must not become a sort of archaic stratum to which I cling somehow and on which I live to a certain extent alongside of modernity. Christianity is itself something living, something modern, which thoroughly shapes and forms all of my modernity – and in this sense actually embraces it.

That a major spiritual effort is required here I expressed most recently by founding a “Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization”. It is important for us to try to live Christianity and to think as Christians in such a way that it incorporates what is good and right about modernity – and at the same time separates and distinguishes itself from what is becoming a counter-religion.

Additional afterthought:

It’s important to keep in mind that there are different meanings of the world traditionalist and, naturally, not everything that is described as traditionalist is bad. An example that comes to mind for me of the problematic kind described above would be someone who strongly objects to the addition of the Luminous Mysteries to the Rosary. a) They probably have an unclear concept of the origins of the Rosary (and thus think Our Lady gave it to St. Dominic exactly the way it was before Pope John Paul II changed it, which is not correct) and b) I think anyone who looked at the concept objectively would see that it’s not only *not* a detraction to the Rosary or its particular tradition, but in fact an enhancement and completion of it – more like a restoration of something that was lost than any sort of negative.

7 Quick Takes, 7/19/11

I thought I'd use the Quick Takes Friday to catch up on a few things now that I'm trying (again) to get back to blogging.

1.



I mentioned in the previous post that we held a performance of Shakespeare's As You Like It (or rather selections from...) in our backyard a few weeks ago. It was directed by my daughter and some friends. I think it went really well and we sure enjoyed the performance. Here is the first video:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLrOVx1Kxvc]

You can find the rest of the videos here. Unfortunately the quality isn't great as we just had a little Flip Video and we missed a significant chunk in the middle. You can view pictures from the play here.

2.

I was so excited to hear that our friend, Matthew Alderman, is having some artwork published in one of the editions of the New Roman Missal. Congratulations! (hat-tip Robert Gotcher)

3.

I haven't yet put my notes together on the blog from my culture talk at the homeschool conference in Napa. I am working on an article on gratitude that's kind of grown out of the talk for a future issue of mater et magistra magazine. I'm excited about the article and hope to sit down and spend some time on it.

4.

We got together with some friends at a nearby lake last weekend (and has the weather ever been beautiful lately - what a change!!!). I was pretty impressed with what the kids built on the shoreline (and many of them were just little tots):



5.

I really enjoyed this animation of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson. I've been hearing about this educational speaker for a long time (including from my brother Dan) but had somehow neglected to actually listen to any of his talks until this week. Here's the video:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U]

This was a great time to watch this video as I'm trying to get my head into gear for the new school year and I continue to wrestle with conventional wisdom vs. what actually seems to work with my kids. The video also brought to mind a few related items:

a. Lots of bits and pieces from the book Nurtureshock by Po Bronson and Angela Merriman, b. The Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph #1937 (we all have unique gifts and we're supposed to share them with each other - not turn out the same as each other!) and c. the article "Listening to Experts Inhibits Decision Making in the Brain" from the Eide Neurolearning Blog.

6.

On Monday, our family sang for the feast day of the Assumption at our local parish. Ave Maria in 3 1/2 parts (a little family joke since the tenor part is a little hit and miss still), and little harmony on several classic Marian hymns (Immaculate Mary and Hail Holy Queen) and also on Holy Is His Name. We love singing as a family and it was nice to get one more chance before Ria left for college.

7.

Before Ria left for college, we had a bit of a movie festival with flicks we wanted her to see. We got through maybe a dozen of them, including Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Premonition, Regarding Henry, A Good Woman, and The Mission. They were some really good, though serious, flicks, and we enjoyed working our way through them with her.

Celtic Spring!

Celtic Spring performed at two parishes in our area yesterday and today and they put on fabulous shows. It was a real treat to meet them and their concerts were absolutely incredible.

Singing Dancers

These are the youngest of our Irish dancers, who also sang some Irish tunes at a nursing home this week.

More Easter Music

I was looking for a Regina Caeli that we sang in college. I couldn't find it, but I did find this, which is absolutely amazing!

Deconstructing Johann

This is an amazing (and funny) piece performed by the King' Singers.

Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity

I loved this little snippet from the First Day of the retreat I'm reading (called "Heaven in Faith") from Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity:

It is there in the very depths that the divine impact takes place, where the abyss of our nothingness encounters the Abyss of mercy, the immensity of the all of God. There we will find the strength to die to ourselves and, losing all vestige of self, we will be changed into love...

I first heard about Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity when I was in college and singing during the summer with the St. Ann Choir. We were privileged to sing for the 50th Jubilee of a Carmelite nun at the monastery in Santa Clara. The choir got to meet with her afterwards through the cloister screen (I think that's what you call it) and it was something I will never forget. The other sisters had fashioned for her a wreath of roses which she wore over her veil. She looked completely ageless and filled with love. She had taken the name "Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity". They had in common a love of music, which was why someone invited our choir to sing for her special mass.

This meeting was also memorable to me because it helped me see the beauty and rightness of a cloistered life while at the same time helping me to recognize that that wasn't my vocation. I pray that my children will have the opportunity to appreciate the beauty of this life whether or not they are called in this direction.

Another Somewhat Overdue Tribute

Tommy Makem passed away last week at the age of 74. I've seen tributes from several bloggers including Chestertonian (and, by the way, welcome to the blogosphere - it's about time!) and Causa Nostrae Laetitiae.

I couldn't let this pass without a post because his music is another one of those significant little milestones that have become a real part of our family.

You see, my husband and I started dating partly because of our common interest in Irish music - an interest I had only begun to pick up a few months earlier in the TAC development office (where I worked, as I may have mentioned before, among others with Margot one of Danielle's sisters) at the instigation of a co-worker named, believe it or not, Patrick Finegan. That was during my Freshman year at TAC, a time in which the development office was squished into a tiny four-room trailer. All of the students assigned to the office had to put in their work-study hours after office hours, which wasn't much fun scheduling-wise but definitely gave us a sense of camaraderie.

Anyway, a couple of months before we started dating John was planning a beach trip that my roommate was already heading to. If I remember right John had a boombox in hand with Irish music playing (to get people in the mood?) and I figured some singing would be a fun part of the evening. I've always loved the friendliness and openness of casual, fun group singing that Irish music is so conducive to. I don't really remember anything about the beach trip itself, just the planning part. :)

Over the years we've seen Tommy Makem in concert a number of times at the great Milwaukee Irish Fest and sung his* songs at beaches, round the campfire and to many little tots - especially ones getting anxious on long car trips when we need to make it *just a little further* ... please!

*Yes, I understand that many of the songs we've learned through him weren't written by him, but were simply introduced to us by him.

Joy - I just found that Tommy Makem's website has a huge database of lyrics. You don't know how much trouble we went to in college trying to learn the lyrics to his songs!!!

Here are a few of our favorites that might be heard in our house any odd time of the day or year:

The Ballad of Saint Anne's Reel
The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Big Ship Sailing
The Castle of Dromore
Johnny McEldoo (as much as we tried, we never were able to figure out all the words to this song)
Mountain Dew
New South Wales
Rambles of Spring
Red is the Rose
The Wild Rover
Winds of Morning

There are two more I thought we first heard from a Makem and Clancy recording, but I couldn't find in the lyrics section - "All God's Creatures Got a Place in the Choir" and "Waltzing with Bears."


Tommy Makem, rest in peace.

Classical Music Options

My sister just sent me some online classical music options to console our loss (I have to admit it was rather depressing to go into the kids room early this morning - they had put on the classical station to go to sleep to - and hear Aretha Franklin instead. I have nothing against Aretha Franklin and in fact have very eclectic musical tastes - but the loss of this station is just plain sad.)

Anyway here are some great online offerings courtesy of my sister (thanks!)...

KDFC listen online
http://www.kdfc.com/pages/295032.php

Symphony broadcasts
http://kdfc.com/pages/295020.php

SF Opera
http://kdfc.com/pages/297676.php

Daily programming
http://kdfc.com/pages/294873.php

Make a request
http://kdfc.com/pages/254127.php?

Listener selected top 100 pieces:
http://www.kdfc.com/pages/294900.php

By the way, I'm working on sorting out all of our pictures on flickr and will post on them here pretty soon. You can take a peek here for now. There's a lot of deleting to be done too along the way. We had two cameras with us and the kids took tons of shots, but I don't want to overload our flickr site for now. :)

I know we haven't been able to tune in for the last ten days or so...

...but this is ridiculous!

"No More Classical Music Radio"

more here

Our one local classical station is switching to "smooth jazz" tonight at midnight. I am majorly bummed.

By the way, we just arrived home and are all well. Hope to do lots of trip blogging (including lots of photos over the next few days - though I feel like we've just packed about six months worth of life into ten days!).

Rest in Peace: Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Rostropovich, the ebullient master cellist who fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall, has died. He was 80.

Read more here

Bio with a little audio sample

TIME Magazine Tribute

The Kennedy Center Bio with Multimedia

Related links:

Sony Classical Biography

Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation

I remember listening to his recording of Bach Cello Suites while waiting through contractions in the middle of the night with Terri (and playing cards). Appropriately beautiful, but with a certain intensity. :)

The Man Who Was Thursday, in a rather fuzzy fashion

There's a little chatting about Chesterton's Man Who Was Thursday going on over at the ACS Blog and we're discussing TMWWT with our teen discussion group on (most inappropriately) Friday. So I thought I'd attempt to write the post I hinted at way back here.

I've taken so long to post about it because I never seemed to be able to wrap my head around it completely even to post about it. So it's funny that I've just been thinking about a related concept, partly because of my Sacred Music meeting (which was last night, by the way, and went well, I think). The concept I've been thinking about is whether or not you should introduce children to things that they can't completely understand. I wrote a little about it last year here in the context of introducing poetry to children. Willa recently reminded me of it here.

This came up in my reading (mostly writings of Cardinal Ratzinger) on music because music - particularly if some of it's in a different language - has some of the air of mystery to it. I'm sure it's possible to have music that's far too sophisticated to "reach" most people. Right now the tend is the far opposite extreme - songs that have no depth or mystery whatever to them.

In A New Song for the Lord, Cardinal Ratzinger says:

Speaking about singing in accordance with wisdom points to a word-oriented art, but the place of word must not be narrowed in the superficially rationalistic sense of an intelligibility of all words at all times. Instead, looking at it from the perspective of the early Church, we can call what is meant here music in accordance with logos [with "reason"] There is an art form corresponding to God, who, from the beginning and in each life, is the creative Word which also gives meaning. This art form stands under the primacy of logos; that is, it integrates the diversity of the human being from the perspective of this being's highest moral and spiritual powers, but in this way it also leads the spirit out of rationalistic and voluntaristic confinement to the symphony of creation.

Well, that's a tangent I can't fully explain right now, but it does relate to my thoughts on TMWWT anyway. I read this book aloud to the kids this summer. It was an enjoyable, adventurous read, but I left feeling like I hadn't understood the story very well at all. The kids loved it and have listened to the audio numerous times (they're obviously not afraid of diving into things they don't fully understand - a good thing I think!).

So I put the book away, thinking I'd have to read it a second time some day (that second time, by the way, needs to be this week!). The funny thing is how little thoughts and ideas kept coming back from it and a number of things in real life kept reminding me of the story.

Anyway, today I started re-reading TMWWT today and came to this in the foreword by Chesterton himself:

...I should not wish it supposed, as some I think have supposed, that in resisting the heresy of pessimism I implied the equally morbid and diseased insanity of optimism. I was not then considering whether anything is really evil, but whether everything is really evil; and in relation to the latter nightmare it does still seem to me relevant to say that nightmares are not true; and that in them even the faces of friends may appear as the faces of fiends. I tried to turn this notion of resistance to a nightmare into a topsy-turvey tale about a man who fancied himself alone among enemies, and found that each of the enemies was in fact on his own side and in his own solitude. That is the only thing that can be called a meaning in the story; all the rest of it was written for fun..."

Getting a little too fuzzy here at the moment. I'll try to get back to this more later.

The Holy Father on Sacred Music - Part II

Some highlights from A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today by Cardinal Ratzinger:

Even for modern culture, however, the separation from its religious matrix has not been without consequences. For this reason it, too, has been driven into a dead end in which it can say less and less about its own quo vadis. Culture somehow seems useless in the modern world and, making a virtue out of necessity, it defines itself frankly as follows: Art is that which fulfills no function but is simply just there. There is some truth to this, but negation alone does not suffice to establish a meaningful space for any kind of phenomenon in the existential framework of humans and the world. (pg. 94)

But now something completely new has occurred. Music has split into two worlds that hardly have anything to do with each other any more. On the one hand there is the music of the masses, which, with the label "pop" or popular music, would like to portray itself as the music of the people. Here music has become a product that can be industrially manufactured and is evaluated by how well it sells. On the other hand there is a rationally construed, artificial music with the highest technical requirements which is hardly capable of reaching out beyond a small elite circle. (pg. 95)

Within the Old Testament, the Psalter is a bridge, as it were, between the Law and the Prophets. It has grown out of the requirements of the temple cult, of the law, but by appropriating the law in prayer and song it has uncovered its prophetic essence more and more. It has led beyond the ritual and its ordinances into the "offering of praise," and "wordly offering" with which people can open themselves to the Logos and thus become worship with him. In this way the Psalter has also become a bridge connecting the two Testaments. In the Old Testament its hymns had been considered to be the songs of David; this meant for Christians that these hymns had risen from the heart of the real David, Christ. In the early church the psalms are prayed and sung as hymns to Christ. Christ himself thus becomes the choir director who teaches us the new song and gives the Church the tone and the way in which she can praise God appropriately and blend into the heavenly liturgy. (pgs. 96-97)

Singing psalms should have something of the essence of sapientia about it and in it. In order to plumb the enigmatic quality of this formulation we should ponder what is meant by sapientia: a behavior of humans that certainly has the brilliance of understanding about it but also denotes an integration of the entire human person who not only understands and is understandable from the perspective of pure thought, but with all the dimensions of his or her existence. In this respect there is an affinity between wisdom and music, since in it such an integration of humanness occurs and the entire person becomes a being in accordance with logos [with "reason"]. (pg. 98)

The analysis of the oft-repeated imperative psallite in the psalms thus calls us to draw a few concrete conclusions concerning our question about possible biblical directives for music in the Church:

1. This imperative runs through all of Scripture; it is the concrete version of the call to worship and glorify God which is revealed in the Bible as the most profound vocation of human beings. This means that musical expression is part of the proper human response to God's self-revelation, to his becoming open to a relationship with us. Mere speech, mere silence, mere action are not enough. (pg. 100)

The "new song" praises his death and resurrection and hence proclaims God's new deed to the whole world: that he himself has descended into the anguish of the human state and into the pit of death; that he embraces all of us on the cross with his stretched-out arms and, as the Risen One, takes us up to the Father across the abyss of the infinite divide separating creator and creature, which only crucified love can cross. Thus, the old song has become new and must be sung as such over and over again. In this process of renewal, however, the song has not done away with the basic cultural decision of faith nor with that which faith has culturally given as a directive but has opened them on the one hand even further while simultaneously defining them more clearly. (pg. 101)

The Holy Father on Sacred Music - Part I

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger has some amazing writings on the purpose, value and norms of Church music. Over the last few days, I read the music portions of Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy (written in 1981 - published by Ignatius Press) and A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today (written in 1995 - published by Crossroad Publishing). His interest in the subject and the depth of his understanding in the matter make me wonder if he might write an encyclical on Sacred Music at some point. (I'm quite certain it would be fantastic!)

Here are a few highlights from Feast of Faith (I'll leave the other book for a separate post as this is already getting rather long):

It is astonishing to find that in the German edition of the documents of Vatican II, edited by Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, the brief commentary which introduces the chapter on Sacred Music in the Constitution on the Liturgy begins with the observation that genuine art, as found in church music, is "of its very nature - which is esoteric in the best sense - hardly to be reconciled with the nature of the liturgy and the basic principle of liturgical reform". It is astonishing because the Constitution on the Liturgy, on which it is supposed to be commenting, does not see music as "merely an addition and ornamentation of the liturgy" but as itself liturgy, an integrating part of the complete liturgical action. (pg. 97)

Comparing the Council document itself with the commentary by Rahner and Vorgrimler, we find a contrast which is characteristic of the difference, in general, between what the Council said and how it has been taken up by the postconciliar Church. (pg. 99)

The years which followed witnessed the increasingly grim impoverishment which follows when beauty for its own sake is banished from the Church and all is subordinated to the principle of "utility". (pg. 100)

As opposed to a narrow, rationalistic theory of proclamation, we would need to point to that cosmic proclamation which finds expression in Psalm 19: the heavens are telling the glory of God. The Creator's glory cannot be manifested in word only: it needs to be expressed in the music of creation, too, and in its creative transformation by the mind of the believing and beholding man. At the same time we would need to remind ourselves that the psalms are also the prayers of the poor, the prayer of the crucified Righteous One, and as such they are to a large extent laments; but here too they are to be seen as the lament of the whole creation, which goes beyond words, transforming them into a music in which the lament becomes both a beseeching of God and a sign of hope: glory, too, but in the mode of suffering.

"Glorification" is the central reason why Christian liturgy must be cosmic liturgy, why it must as it were orchestrate the mystery of Christ with all the voices of creation. (pg. 115)

Thomas says that through the praise of God man ascends to God. Praise itself is a movement, a path; it is more than understanding, knowing and doing - it is an "ascent", a way of reaching him who dwells amid the praises of the angels. Thomas mentioned another factor: this ascent draws man away from what is opposed to God. Anyone who has ever experienced the transforming power of great liturgy, great, art, great music, will know this. Thomas adds that the sound of musical praise leads us and others to a sense of reverence. It awakens the inner man...

Vatican II was well advised, therefore, only to indicate very general standards: music must "accord with the spirit of the liturgical action"; it must be "suitable, or be capable of being "made suitable, for sacred use"; it must "accord with the dignity of the temple" and "truly contribute to the edification of the faithful".