Reports from Sacred Music Colloquium

The Sacred Music Colloquium is underway in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Chant Café blog has several updates about the talks and activities – be sure to take a look so you have some idea of what you’re missing!

Besides the chant classes and polyphony rehearsals, there have been some major talks and a concert. Here are some edited excerpts – please visit the Chant Café for the rest.

Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth, Executive Director of ICEL, spoke about the Holy Father's vision of the liturgy, formed over the course of a long life of study. He spoke about the problems of implementing the vision of the dogmatic constitution Sacrosanctam Concilium of the Second Vatican Council. That document, Msgr. Wadsworth noted, is much more likely to find expression nowadays by celebrations of the Extraordinary Form than of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

The Chant Café promises a text version of the talk at some point, but for now you can listen to the recording here.

About the concert, Kathleen Pluth reports:

“In the silence between polyphony pieces, members of the audience turned to one another and simply mouthed ‘wow.’ The Choir School of the Cathedral of the Madeleine sang a generous program, of broad repertoire, showing precisely what young people are capable of when given the opportunity. Music samples here. Hopefully my fellow bloggers will have something to say about this extraordinary and beautiful accomplishment. Personally, I am speechless, and very grateful.”

And about the same concert, Jeffrey Tucker adds:

 
“There are no words to describe the concert last night by the Choir School of the Cathedral of the Madeleine. From the first notes, there was a giant gasp from the audience, and the sense of astonishment lasted for the full hour, as the choir sang music from the renaissance to modern times. The standing (leaping) applause at the end seemed to last ten minutes and it probably would have gone another ten had the choir come out for a curtain call.”