San Francisco project to promote beauty in music, liturgy
San Francisco, Calif., 10 February 2014: A recently launched initiative in San Francisco
will educate Church musicians about sacred music and train lay ministers for their
roles, according to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.
“To recover a sense of
our sacred music” is among the top objectives of the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred
Music & Divine Worship, the Archbishop of San Francisco told CNA Jan. 25. “Beauty
– as Pope Benedict has taught us – evangelizes, lifts us up to God, so we need to
recover that sense of beauty in our liturgical music.”
The institute had been
launched at a January 5 vespers service for the Epiphany, at which both the archbishop
and the foundation's director, Fr. Samuel Weber, spoke.
The Benedictine priest
taught the more than 200 attendants how to chant, and in his interview with CNA the
archbishop affirmed that such a recovery of sacred music “really is just trying to
do what the Church has asked us to do, at Vatican II and ever since, in all the documents
on music and the liturgy, that the people also be well formed in singing the sacred
repertoire.”
He alluded to the Vatican II document on the liturgy, “Sacrosanctum
Concilium,” which acknowledged Gregorian chant as “specially suited to the Roman liturgy,”
thus forming the core of the “sacred repertoire.”
“It doesn’t exclude other
forms of music, as the (Vatican's) instructions say, although it says it should be
in keeping with the sacred nature of the liturgy,” he explained, adding that the Benedict
XVI Institute’s purpose “would be to promote chant, and perhaps to some extent polyphony.”
Contemporary
music, too, will be included he said, saying, “this is perhaps a good idea, that musicians
understand how to use contemporary music well, because it is very popular, and that
will draw people too.”
Archbishop Cordileone said it is important that “musicians
doing contemporary-style Church music should understand what is good music – because
not all of it is even good musically – but also to understand the theology underlying
the lyrics.”
Fr. Weber, the institute’s director, is well-versed in Gregorian
chant, but is also known for “updating” chant, producing English and Spanish language
music in a chant style.
The Benedict XVI Institute will be based at St. Patrick’s
Seminary in Menlo Park, and will serve seminarians as well as laymen; according to
its website it “supports pastors in their efforts to form lay people” for liturgical
ministries and will offer courses both online and at parishes. The new initiative
is one among a number of acts Archbishop Cordileone has done in the 18 months he has
served in San Francisco.Source: CNA/EWTN