New Ordinariate Chant Schola in DC

As the Saint Luke ordinariate community moves to downtown Washington DC next month, a new initiative is beginning, to build on an existing tradition of Sacred Music. Named in honour of Saint Benedict and the Benedictine tradition of Gregorian chant, and with a nod of gratitude to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (who founded the ordinariates), the women of The Saint Benet Schola will provide the chant at the 8.30am Sunday Mass at Immaculate Conception, 8th Street NW. The group will draw on the Anglican plainsong tradition, whilst at the same time emphasizing the universal, Catholic nature of our worship, by singing the ancient chants and texts of the Sacred Liturgy.

More details here: www.stlukesordinariate.com

Hat tip to Charles Cole at The New Liturgical Movement.

The Daily Offices as a Healing Balm

David Clayton is the Artist-in-Residence at Thomas More College in Merrimack, NH. An Oxford graduate, David has spoken about the way that even in contemporary Oxford, the Daily Office is the framework around which the life of the College is built. In a new post on the New Liturgical Movement blog he writes about a novel way of praying the office that his students and colleagues have taken up:

Recently when I went home to England we had a reunion of old college friends of mine. Most were not believers of any sort - I had known them since I was eighteen and so the friendships pre-date, by a long way, my conversion (I was 31 when was received into the Church and have just turned 50 FYI). It was great to catch up with everyone and see how they were getting on. I was interested by a recent decision of one. She had given up teaching genetics at Imperial College, London and was now working for a company that would go into investment banks in the City and teach executives how to meditate to help them deal with the stress of the job. She been introduced to meditation when she took up yoga for the physical benefits and then was attracted to the 'spirituality' that is attached to it.

In order to convince the executives that there is something to this Eastern meditation, they would be armed with statistics from scientific research. She said that there had been observable improvements in the condition of heart patients in hospitals when people meditated. The research shows, she said, that even if the patients did not meditate with the visitors or even if they were unaware it was happening, just have meditation going on in the building seemed to have a positive effect.

I was happy to believe that she was right and that the research backed her up. However, my reaction was that if anything good was coming out of this, then it was because it was participating in some way in Christian prayer, whether they knew it or not. I would contest that the fullness of what they are doing is in the traditional prayer of the Church and there is every chance that this would be even more powerful if done.

When I got back to the USA, I contacted local hospitals and asked if they would like a small group of people to come and sing Vespers on a regular basis. What is surprising and some ways dismaying, is that I couldn't find anyone who had ever heard of this being done before. There are Christian prayer groups who visit hospitals, but I don't hear of people making regular commitment (beyond the occasional concert) to pray the liturgy. Shouldn't the liturgy of the hours be one of our most powerful weapons as part of the New Evangelisation?

...

I was delighted when the Catholic chaplain at the VA Hospital, the American armed services veterans hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire invited us to come in every other Monday evening. Fr Boucher is an old friend of mine and the college. Since September, myself and Dr Tom Larson from Thomas More College have been leading a group of male students in Vespers and Compline on Monday evenings. Because we were singing the psalms, we have presented it as ecumenical and administratively this enabled us to fill an available slot in the chapel and it has attracted a few non-Catholics

The veterans at the hospital know that we are there but very few have been able to come each time. Most are too ill or injured even to be able to get up one floor from the ward without someone dressing them and bringing them up and those helpers aren't always available. Even then, I am not fooling myself that large numbers want to come but can't make it. This is an unusual thing. But we are undaunted. A regular group of up to a dozen guys has been going in and singing the psalms. We keep the door open and sing loud enough so that it floats down the corridor for the wards to hear. They are always surprised at the effort we make to sing well on their behalf and in order to praise God. It has been gratifying to hear how readily those who come, many who have never been to any Office before, can sing with us, and want to. We are singing in the vernacular so that any visitor can understand and join in. Nevertheless the tones are modal and have the feel of the plainchant tradition and this I think draws them in. (They were developed for the liturgy at the college)...

Read his full reflection at the NLM post "Send Out the L-Team - Making a Sacrifice of Praise for American Veterans"

The Chanted Office

In speaking to and reading accounts by Anglican Christians who have been inclined toward reconciliation with the Roman Church, but who hesitate on the threshold, there are various stumbling blocks that come up. I don't think any of these are trivial, although some are obviously of greater importance than others.

For one person it may be questions about Catholic dogmas: Papal Infallibility, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, or some other defined doctrine. For others it could be scandalous behavior in the Catholic Church that renders her less attractive.

Still others are hesitant to abandon the very things that nourished their faith in Christ: a parish that is focused on Christ and living out the Gospel, a church that has been the scene not only for their own faith life, but that of generations of their family, or the beautiful liturgy for which modern Anglican churches are rightly praised. "How," a person might ask themselves, "will I continue if I am deprived of the worship that has been the vehicle for the grace that has brought me to this point?"

Of course, the promise of the Pastoral Provision and the Personal Ordinariates is that such an Anglican Christian needn't give up anything from their past that is true and beautiful, that such practices will be welcome in the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the fact that something is welcome doesn't mean it will in fact happen! If a small number of people are received into the full communion of the Catholic Church and do establish an Ordinariate Community, that doesn't mean that they'll have a choir, or organist, or books. "We'll never have evensong like we used to," they might think.

Well, it's true, things will be different. But not necessarily worse!

For many, the part of the Daily Office that is most familiar, and most cherished, is Choral Evensong. Pope Benedict himself was so entranced with the service at Westminster Abbey during his visit to England that he invited the choir there to join him at St. Peter's in Rome for the feast of Ss. Peter & Paul. But Evensong as it is today is not how it originally was celebrated. Imagine the same words, but there is no Anglican Chant and no hymns. Seem impossible? And yet, that was how Evensong was celebrated for nearly 100 years after the first Book of Common Prayer was issued in 1549.

When Cranmer and the royal authority issued the Daily Offices as part of the Prayerbook, they were not a new creation; rather the Daily Officers were an adaptation and a simplification of the Divine Office of the the Medieval Church. What was also adapted and simplified was the music for the Office. We have one example from that time in the Book of Common Prayer Noted by John Merbecke, but his was not the only adaptation. In addition to this adaptation of plainsong, there were simple harmonies, often in the form of fauxbourdons that were employed. And of course, there were more complex pieces written by some of the great musicians of the age, such as Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. Nearly all of this was a capella, because the use of organs in churches was fairly rare; organs were more typically found in private homes.

The parishes, as opposed to the cathedrals, tended to have the simpler music, which also made it possible for the lay people in the congregation to join in. And this example from the early days of specifically Anglican services may well be a help for new Ordinariate congregations today. While services of chanted Evensong may not be hosted soon on the BBC's Choral Evensong broadcast, it will provide for the most important aspect of any liturgy: the worship of God and the building up of His people.

First, many people may not have even heard an a capella service. As an example, I would point you to the web site of the Compline Choir. This choir began in 1954, and since 1956 has been singing the office of Compline at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle every Sunday. The service has been broadcast continually since 1960, and now is available as Podcasts as well. The most recent podcast I listened to, from October 14th, was entirely a capella and is a wonderful example of the most important instrument we can employ in the praise of God: the human voice.

Of course, any group starting out will not sound like the Compline Choir the first time out; but that hardly matters. The key resource, I think, that people need is to have the chants available. That resource, fortunately, is readily to hand: The Saint Dunstan Plainsong Psalter. This book, which is actually more than just a psalter, contains the American version of the Coverdale Psalter along with the usual canticles from Morning and Evening Prayer. Each of the psalms is set to one chant melody, while the canticles are set to multiple chant melodies. There is also a set of Old Testament canticles to supplement the appointed ones for Morning Prayer, with both festal and ferial settings.

I use St. Dunstan's Psalter daily to pray the office, but also used it as a source for compiling the Compline service we used at St. Athanasius on Maundy Thursday, at the end of adoration following the Mass of the Lord's supper.

O Gracious Light

One of the new elements from the 1979 US Book of Common Prayer that found its way into the Book of Divine Worship is the Phos Hilaron, which is an optional hymn for the beginning of Evening Prayer.

The version given in the BDW is below.

O Gracious Light   Phos hilaron
O gracious Light,
pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven,
O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed!

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,
and our eyes behold the vesper light,
we sing thy praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Thou art worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,
O Son of God, O Giver of life,
and to be glorified through all the worlds.

Unfortunately, of course, there is no music in the BDW, nor a reference to where the music for this translation of the hymn can be found. In chanting the office, I usually fell back on using the version found in the Liturgy of the Hours, sung to the tune "Jesu, dulcis memoria" (LM). But a few years ago I stumbled upon the web site of the Metropolitan Cantor's Institute of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Pittsburgh (and doesn't it say something that there is a Cantor's Institute in an Eastern eparchy, i.e., diocese; you'd be hardpressed to find the equivalent in a Latin diocese). And there I found the archive of sheet music. The version of the Phos Hilaron below is from that archive.

This version pairs well with the chants from St. Dunstan's Plainsong Psalter for chanted Evensong, I find. Here's hoping that the Ordinariate will also find its way to establish some equivalent to a Cantors (a Schola) Institute, for the preservation, teaching and handing on of the Anglican musical patrimony: its hymnody, the chant work of learned clergy such as Canon Douglas, and Anglican Chant.