Reasons you love Chant or Palestrina... or both?

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I thought it would be neat if everyone who loved traditional Catholic music had a space to comment about why they loved it.

Do you love Chant? If so why?

Do you love the multi-voice Masses of the Renaissance? Why?

Do you prefer a High Mass or Low Mass? Is traditional Catholic music related to your preference?

Who is your favorite Catholic composer, or composer of Masses?

Any and all thoughts about our Church’s rich and glorious musical tradition are welcome!!!
 
I love chant. I listen to it at work. It, I don’t know, stills me. That would be the best way I can describe it.

I also love multi-part choral music. I love Victoria (Vittoria) but Vivaldi wrote some splendid pieces in the Baroque period. The music is also a great deal of fun to sing. I liked nothing better when my cathedral choir mastered one and could go on to refine our singing it.

I grew up with a sung High Mass (Missa Cantata) as the normal main Mass on Sunday.

I don’t know if I have an absolute favorite Catholic composer. We have had many spectacular composers. I am not a big fan of Palestrina but I like Gabrielli and certainly Monteverdi. Vivaldi in the Baroque and Haydn and Mozart too.
 
brotherhrolf said:
I love chant. I listen to it at work. It, I don’t know, stills me. That would be the best way I can describe it.

I also love multi-part choral music. I love Victoria (Vittoria) but Vivaldi wrote some splendid pieces in the Baroque period. The music is also a great deal of fun to sing. I liked nothing better when my cathedral choir mastered one and could go on to refine our singing it.

I grew up with a sung High Mass (Missa Cantata) as the normal main Mass on Sunday.

I don’t know if I have an absolute favorite Catholic composer. We have had many spectacular composers. I am not a big fan of Palestrina but I like Gabrielli and certainly Monteverdi. Vivaldi in the Baroque and Haydn and Mozart too.
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Great list!!!

Right now I am listening to the Kyrie from Tallis’ Mass for Four Voices. It is amazingly upbeat, and beautiful.
 
cathguy said:
Great list!!!

Right now I am listening to the Kyrie from Tallis’ Mass for Four Voices. It is amazingly upbeat, and beautiful.
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I listen to Tallis at work, on my mp3 player. I also love Palestrina and Byrd. Such music! What can I say! It touches my soul and truly glorifies God!
 
I love both, they’re lovely and very unique.

On a random note, here’s a nice rendition of Ave Verum Corpus by one of the local choirs. They’re CoE but they probably have the best choir (not to mention church building) in the area, so I have to give them some credit for that. 😉

youtube.com/watch?v=y6PUE0fnPsI

Also, on a loosely related note, Fauré’s Requiem Mass Sanctus is probably one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard in my entire life (no joke):

youtube.com/watch?v=TqVFbyJCynU
 
Onegin said:
I love both, they’re lovely and very unique.

On a random note, here’s a nice rendition of Ave Verum Corpus by one of the local choirs. They’re CoE but they probably have the best choir (not to mention church building) in the area, so I have to give them some credit for that. 😉

youtube.com/watch?v=y6PUE0fnPsI

The local Cathedral has a very nice choir too but as they tend to get usurped by St. Mary’s they’re not on youtube. 😉
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Heartbreakingly beautiful!!!

Are you in the UK? That church looks ancient, so I am assuming you are.

At 58 seconds, if you stop the video, you can see what may have been alcoves where the statues of the saints resided before the “stripping of the altars.”

It could be something else though. The sanctuary looks pretty intact.

If it is an ancient Church in the UK, it must have been MAGNIFICENT before the reformation.

Wow…

Gorgeous.

Thanks!
 
cathguy said:
Heartbreakingly beautiful!!!

Are you in the UK? That church looks ancient, so I am assuming you are.

At 58 seconds, if you stop the video, you can see what may have been alcoves where the statues of the saints resided before the “stripping of the altars.”

It could be something else though. The sanctuary looks pretty intact.

If it is an ancient Church in the UK, it must have been MAGNIFICENT before the reformation.

Wow…

Gorgeous.

Thanks!
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Thanks! Yes, St. Mary’s is the oldest medieval building in Nottingham where I live. It’s breathtakingly beautiful for it’s size though, I have to say, the Lincoln Cathedral (about 40 minutes away) is exponentially more magnificent (also CoE). The intricacy and splendor of Gothic architecture is something that never fails to fascinate me, especially when you consider the resources available at the time these churches were built:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

I can’t even begin to fathom how they built that Cathedral in 1092!

These ancient churches give me great incentive to pray for the CoE to return to the Faith so that Mass can be said in these beautiful buildings. I can’t even begin to imagine how unspeakably amazing it would be to a TLM there!
 
cathguy said:
Great list!!!

Right now I am listening to the Kyrie from Tallis’ Mass for Four Voices. It is amazingly upbeat, and beautiful.
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Try this one from Palestrina Missa Papae Marcelli

This was the Kyrie sung in that famous taped 1986 Tridentine Mass in London.
 
ProVobis said:
Try this one from Palestrina Missa Papae Marcelli

This was the Kyrie sung in that famous taped 1986 Tridentine Mass in London.
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Beautiful recording!!

I have the Missa Papae Marcelli recorded by Jeremy Summerly Conducting the Oxford Camerata. A lot of these Naxos recordings are great AND affordable.

The tempo on the Summerly version is slower than the one you linked above, but both are beautiful are very stunning. Now that I am listening to both, I think I prefer the recording you linked on youtube however. You can tell its a live recording. It feels more live and emotionally “present” for lack of a better word, although the recording is more “muddy.”

I will never forget my first EF Mass and I heard Tallis outside the concert hall and outside my CD collection, and in the real environment. The incense, the music, the babies cooing… sometimes a cry, the intangible sounds of the congregation (whispered prayers, coughs etc.) all mixed together. It was just… awe inspiring.

Achingly beautiful.

Thanks for linking this! I hope folks check out the links and listen!

Peace!
 
ProVobis said:
Try this one from Palestrina Missa Papae Marcelli

This was the Kyrie sung in that famous taped 1986 Tridentine Mass in London.
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I found the Mass here.

The Kyrie starts at 9:28. Palestrina’s Gloria follows. It’s heaven.

(I had thought it was 1986 but the note says 1988. In any case it’s worth watching and listening to.)
 
My favorite Mass setting is Thomas Crecquillon’s Missa Mort m’a privé—“death has deprived me.” There is nothing else like it. The phrase “hauntingly beautiful” is often bandied about quite liberally these days, but in this exceptional case it truly apples.

Victoria’s Ave Maria is the perfect hymn. His Requiem Mass is something else as well.
 
Onegin said:
Also, on a loosely related note, Fauré’s Requiem Mass Sanctus is probably one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard in my entire life (no joke):
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I got to sing the entire Mass in the context of our Bishop’s funeral. It is indeed beautiful.
 
BrotherhRolf,

Still trying to figure out how to find northern south Louisiana. Probable like my location which is southwest pacificnorthwest. or more particularily SW Washington state.

To the point; I truely love both chant and Sacred Polyphony. As a matter of fact the wife and I are going down to Portland, OR for Ash Wednesday. Cantores in Ecclesia is singing polyphony and chant in Missa Cantata for a Dominican Rite Mass. If you haven’t heard them sing you are really missing something. Jeffery Tucker from New Liturgical Movement has commented on their performance at the William Byrd Festival on ocassion.

Its a bit of a drive but all we have locally is a NO Mass in its very simplified form and common hymnody with a pathetic choir.

So we’ll stop at the local clam chowder eatery and then down to Mass, allowing plenty of time for the FAST regs.
 
Yggdrasil said:
My favorite Mass setting is Thomas Crecquillon’s Missa Mort m’a privé—“death has deprived me.” There is nothing else like it. The phrase “hauntingly beautiful” is often bandied about quite liberally these days, but in this exceptional case it truly apples.

Victoria’s Ave Maria is the perfect hymn. His Requiem Mass is something else as well.
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Can you recommend a recording of the Crecquillon? I searched amazon and sadly found none.
 
Northern south Louisiana is that tier of parishes (counties to you) which are called the Florida parishes because they were once part of Spanish Florida but revolted against the Spanish and formed their own independent republic - the West Florida Republic. These parishes (like mine) are almost all WASP. South Louisiana is predominately Catholic. I live in a suburb of Baton Rouge and their in no Catholic church in my town.

I also meant to add that my cathedral choir has also sung some of the protestant English motets from the late Renaissance period that were written by English composers whom musicologists believed to have been secret Catholics. These were very nice but singing Sicut Cervus as "Like as the hart desireth the water brook didn’t cut it and as soon as we regained permission to sing in Latin, the English version was retired.
 
I like chant, but I love Renaissance polyphony. I have always been fond of early choral music, as a listener and especially as a singer. As a university music student, I sang in the early music ensemble, where we did exclusively pre-Baroque *a cappella *works. The first Mass I ever attended was one where our group was invited to sing. I don’t remember which Mass it was (this was back in the '70’s), but I think it was Palestrina. We certainly never had any music like this at the Methodist church from which I came! Such music was a major attraction for me when I began to explore Catholicism.

I prefer a Missa Cantata or High Mass, esp. if they have a good choir that can do polyphony (and a decent pipe organ, of course, but that’s because I am an organist!). But if I can’t have good traditional music, I’d rather attend Low Mass.

I also like some sacred/Catholic choral music from other periods in music history. I am especially fond of the music of contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, although he draws more from the Orthodox tradition than the Catholic.

I couldn’t begin to choose one favorite Catholic composer, but if I had to name one choral work as my all-time favorite, it would be the Miserere of Gregorio Allegri. That is truly a glorious piece!
 
My cathedral choir joined with LSU’s Early Music Ensemble and we did a Medieval Christmas concert with period instruments. I still have the cassette tape of that concert and an ancient “boom box”. The cathedral had standing room only. One of my favorite memories.
 
brotherhrolf said:
My cathedral choir joined with LSU’s Early Music Ensemble and we did a Medieval Christmas concert with period instruments. I still have the cassette tape of that concert and an ancient “boom box”. The cathedral had standing room only. One of my favorite memories.
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I have heard that Louisiana State has an excellent early music ensemble.

What an experience! To have the “traditional Mass” (I actually had to pause three times to figure out how to say this without causing a dustup! :() with period music AND instruments.

That must have been amazing. 🙂

I would have loved to have been there. 🙂
 
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