This week the reader is in for a treat. Choral Evensong comes live from St. Pancras Church during the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music. I doubt that every single person will be a fan of each of these works, but I have a feeling there will be at least some incredible music. For example, I am looking forward to listening to the Responses composed by Paul Burke. In preparing this post, I visited the composer’s website and listened to a recording of his Tribus Miraculis and couldn’t listen enough. There was a depth and mystery to the piece that so much of our church music, especially what is used in mainstream US Catholic parishes, lacks.

The Anglican church in England, as well as those Catholic English cathedrals that maintain high choral traditions, understand that the treasury of sacred music is LIVING. Too many Catholic musicians I have met in the United States don’t understand that. For the Catholic who attends a “normal” (how I wish I didn’t have to use that term) parish, there is no connection to the music that has fed his brothers and sisters for centuries, the treasury of sacred music is dead. On the flip side, those who attend the Extraordinary Form often experience music from the treasury of sacred music, but that too is a dead experience because those musicians refuse to acknowledge that the treasury is still expanding. Compare Palestrina’s Tu es Petrus, Rachmaninoff’s Bogoroditse devo and Lauridsen’s O nata lux. Each one of these pieces comes from different composers, times, countries and musical traditions, but each is imbued with a deep spirit of awe, reverence, mystery, spiritual depth, etc. May we take the best from our past and truly imbue today with that same spirit so that we can rebuild the Church for our children tomorrow!