22 February 2012
PRESS RELEASE FROM THE LATIN MASS
SOCIETY
For Immediate Release
Sense of Beauty in
the Liturgy ‘Umbilically Connected to Music’, Composer Tells Meeting of Choir
Directors
James MacMillan, the Catholic composer, and Fr Guy Nicholls, founder of
the Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in Birmingham, addressed a meeting of
around fifty choir directors and chant experts at the second biennial meeting
of the Gregorian Chant Network at the London Oratory on 18 February, sponsored
financially by the Latin Mass Society.
The Network, which was founded two years ago by the Latin Mass Society,
Una Voce Scotland, the Association for Latin Liturgy, the Schola Gregoriana of
Cambridge and dozens of Chant scholas across England and Wales, aims to promote
greater knowledge of, and expertise in, the Church’s most ancient musical form
with the aim of fostering its wider use in the Catholic liturgy.
Dr MacMillan was the principal speaker and addressed the meeting about
the role of music in the Church’s cultural patrimony. He recalled that, as a
young boy, he had attended what is now called the Extraordinary Form of the
Mass and noticed that, ‘the sense of beauty, the sense of sacred awe, was
umbilically connected to the music.’ He observed that beauty as a concept had
largely been lost from contemporary Church music. Indeed it had been
accompanied by the abandonment of any objective notion of beauty at all. This
fitted in with a widespread liturgical trend, namely, celebrations of Mass that
have become self-preoccupied and centred on the notion of self-expression; a
liturgy that too often focuses on community rather than the divine. In Dr
MacMillan’s experience, the singing of Gregorian Chant had helped priests and
their congregations to recover their focus on what was important in the Mass –
that sense of beauty and the sacred.
Fr Guy Nicholls of the Birmingham Oratory, gave the meeting a brief but
fascinating update on the progress achieved at the Newman Institute of Music,
which was established in the wake of the Holy Father’s visit to Britain, and
which was dedicated to meeting the musical needs of both clergy and laity.
The meeting was chaired by Dr Joseph Shaw, Chairman of the Latin Mass
Society, who reported on the activities of the Gregorian Chant Network over the
past two years and looked forward to further success in the months to come.
The very successful gathering concluded with Vespers in the Little
Oratory, led by Fr Andrew Southwell, the Latin Mass Society’s National
Chaplain.
. . . . ENDS . . . .
For further information, please contact Michael
Lord, General Manager, on (T) 020 7404 7284; (F) 020
7831 5585; (E mail)
michael@lms.org.uk
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