Subscribers to the Church Music Association of America’s journal Sacred Music have been reading work by our students this year.
The Spring 2024 issue featured a fantastic article about Polish-American composer Eugeniusz Walkiewicz by Jeffrey Quick, along with one of Quick’s fantastic editions, this time Walkiewicz’s Missa in honorem S. Josephi Sponsi Beatae Mariae Virginis, a lovely Ordinary for organ and congregation or unison choir.
In the Fall 2024 issue the reader finds a helpful survey of several alternatim masses, which alternate polyphony and chant, by José Ballón Vasquez, along with his edition of Palestrina’s Kyrie from his 1592 Missa Dominicalis, based on the Orbis Factor chants of Mass XI.
The forthcoming issue, Winter 2024, showcases Anton Bruckner’s Tota pulchra es in an article by Colleen Maher Bond.
Recent issues have also contained a fantastic series on the Psalms of Sunday Vespers by faculty member and chaplain of the CISM, Fr. Joshua Neu.
Congratulations, students and faculty, for your wonderful work!
Our second annual Advent & Christmas concert, part of our Public Lecture & Concert Series, and sung by the Schola Cantorum of St. Patrick’s Seminary will be lovely. Along with this new concert tradition is another tradition: all the RSVPs are gone within just over a week! To those friends of the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music and St. Patrick’s Seminary who wanted to come but didn’t get a ticket, we’re sorry! We hope you’ll be able to join us next year!
On October 18–19, 2024, we hosted an online conference for music educators on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Jubilate Deo and Voluntati Obsequens. Twelve speakers from around the world shared their stories of successes in handing on the Catholic faith and sacred music in programs for youth. The talks are a testament to the success to be found in accepting the invitation of Paul VI to hand on at least a minimum repertoire of Gregorian chant. When the Church’s sacred music forms the core of a music curriculum, students are able to set down deep roots in their Catholic faith and to find their own voices in the symphony of praise in the cosmic liturgy.
Take a listen to what Archbishop Cordileone had to say about the role of sacred music in Catholic education!
In 1974, Pope Paul VI sent every bishop and head of a religious order in the world a small collection of Gregorian chants entitledJubilate Deo. This booklet contained a “minimum repertoire” of plainchant that he wished every Catholic in the world to know, withthe aim of fulfilling the mandate of par. 54 of Sacrosanctum Concilium: “…steps must be taken to ensure that the faithful are able tochant together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.”
50 years later, the handing on of this treasury of sacred music remains largely unrealized.
Will you join us in making it a reality?
Learn what, how, when, and why to do it in an online conference for music educators, featuring talks by 12 Catholics who will inspireyou and equip you with tools you can use to hand on our Catholic faith by teaching young people to sing the Gregorian chants of theChurch.
We have just wrapped up an amazing series of summer 2024 courses and are ready to dive into the regular academic year. We’ve got over 20 events coming up during the 2024–25 academic year, including:
Our fall workshop topics are taught by three faculty members: Dr. Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka, Dr. William Mahrt, and Prof. Christopher Berry. The topics include:
Blueprint for Building a Parish Sacred Music Program: Foundations, Structures, Personnel, and Resources
Chant Modality at the Keyboard and Chant Accompaniment
The Cantiones Sacræ, Masses, and Gradualia of William Byrd
We have just wrapped up an amazing series of summer 2024 courses and are ready to dive into the regular academic year. We’ve got over 20 events coming up during the 2024–25 academic year, including: