Author: John Schultz

Today during the announcements, our associate pastor had to announce that tickets were on sale for the summer musical: Damn Yankees.

Waynesboro, VA was the location of my Father-in-Law’s 92 birthday party. He drove himself 30 minutes to get there from Charlottesville. All his children were there, with their spouses and a couple of the grandkids. His good marble to desired good marble ratio is 99/100, the only problem is he hates wearing his hearing aids. I can always tell he isn’t wearing them when I call:
“Hi Fritz it’s John”
“I’m doing fine, thank you”
“Great – we’ll be there at 2:30, is that ok?”
“When will you be here?”
“Do you have your hearing aids in?”
“What?!?”
“Put your hearing aids in, Fritz”
“Why are you bringing Kibbles and Bits?”
My dog is very happy to get the long car ride with us to Waynesboro because like all dogs she loves the steady whir of the engine and the fact there are 50 billion new smells just minutes from our house. The party was at my sister-in-law’s house and after dinner a few folks got in the pool, which drives my dog crazy because she wants to play but hasn’t taken to swimming just yet. So after a few minutes of barking, running around the pool and acting crazy I just threw her in. She’s got a black coat like a Belgian Shepherd, when she got out of the pool she looked like a big black wet rat. And she wouldn’t shake until she was right next to someone.
Time to get ready for Mass.

Very interesting post by Fr. Jim about his experience there.

Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus brought tears to my eyes this morning while I drove to work. It’s a wonderful beyond words. A bit of music trivia for you folks: Handel’s Messiah is one of those works that ends up in the snobby musician spotlight because it’s old enough that educated folks want to hear it without the 19th-century bombasticism [alert: I just made up a great word! sounds like monasticism and is almost an antonym.]
Most British conductors will strive for a performance that sounds like the original. Most Italian conductors will go nuts, reorchestrate it to include things like tubas or a gong (that didn’t even exist in Western music at the time,) and super-loudness and tempo changes that make Danny Elfman scores sound like C.P.E. Bach. My feeling is the music doesn’t need 19th-century non-sensibilities in order to be effective. It’s a true masterpiece and therefore the performance style doesn’t need to change to please an ear with different taste.
So I’m circling back to my previous thought: Where are the Sacred Masterpieces of the 20th Century? I can name a few and the composers don’t have S.J. after their name.

The issue is not whether Church documents have some preferences and norms: the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy details the preeminent place of chant, polyphony and the organ in latin rite liturgies. The issue is rather the fact that bishops don’t have much to say about those norms, or about musical style. It’s literally within a Bishop’s authority to ban certain instruments from the church, but I’m not aware of any who have felt the need to ban the slide-whistle, the kazoo, the harmonica or the bassoon. I won’t mention the g-u-i-t-a-r or I’ll get all sorts of nasty feedback about how snotty I am.
So the question is: is music style in church really that important in the grand scheme?