Taking parish music to the next level

By LAUREEN McMAHON

New directions in liturgical music are bursting forth at Vancouver’s St. Jude’s Church, offering parishioners and visitors the opportunity to more fully appreciate the richness of the Church’s heritage of sacred music.
The plan to spring open this musical treasure chest, says pastor Father Lawrence Donnelly, received a tremendous boost when acclaimed classical musician Michael Jarvis came to direct the parish music program earlier this year.

Laureen McMahon / The B.C. Catholic Canadian musician and conductor Michael Jarvis at his marvellous “antiques roadshow” discovery, an historic 1857 Chickering piano.

An early music specialist, Jarvis is acknowledged as one of Canada’s premier harpsichordists and is an accomplished fortepianist and basso continuo player whose performances are available on several CD labels.

The appointment followed on the heels of the installation of a pipe organ at St. Jude’s after a Saskatchewan church sold it to the parish “for a dollar!” said Father Donnelly.

“The Catholic Church has spoken about the importance of the pipe organ in worship and we realized one was needed to take our music program to the next level,” the pastor explained. “This organ, which originally came from Arkansas, had been purchased for a dollar by the church in Humboldt, Sask., but never installed. When that church decided to pass it on, their only requirement was that it go to a religious organization, hence the dollar price tag.”

The search was then on to find an organist.

Father Donnelly, who himself plays the organ, posted an advertisement with the Royal Canadian College of Organists. Jarvis, a member of the College, responded soon after, providing, said the pastor, “an answer to prayer.”

As for Jarvis, the timing of the St. Jude’s offer, “was perfect.”

Just a few months earlier, he and his wife, Canadian soprano Carolyn Sinclair, had made their first-ever trip to B.C., where they were immediately charmed by the ambience of the west coast.

Fed up with Toronto’s smog, which was hard on Sinclair’s classically-trained voice, it was “love at first sight” with the mountains, the ocean, and especially, the clean air.

Chant ‘should be given pride of place’: Vatican II

The couple drew up a “five-year plan” to give themselves time to explore the Vancouver music scene, but it took just a short discussion with Father Donnelly to confirm to Jarvis that St. Jude’s was the “right fit.”

The Montreal-born Jarvis has many years of experience in sacred church music as a performer and conductor. He has toured various countries, including Italy, where his choir sang for Pope John Paul II. Most recently, he served as artistic director of the critically-acclaimed period instrument ensemble The Baroque Players of Hamilton.

Carolyn Sinclair has performed around the world and she and Jarvis are members of a group of performers appearing in Come Into the Parlour, a television series currently running on Bravo! TV. The program showcases Jarvis’s 1857 Chickering pianoforte, which he discovered in a dusty antiques shop “almost in tune” and which is the only such pianoforte known to be in use as a historical performing instrument.

Jarvis says he and his wife were delighted to discover that Vancouver is home to a roster of “world class” classical performers.

Last summer, he and Father Donnelly set to work developing a program of sacred music designed to inspire and enrich the spiritual understanding of St. Jude’s parishioners.

“The Church,” said Father Donnelly, “is very particular when it comes to sacred music. The definitions are clear. It must be music that is holy, i.e. sacred; it must contain goodness of form, i.e. beauty and artistic merit; and it must also possess universality, which is described by the Vatican as having characteristics so that ‘nobody of any nation may receive an impression other than good on hearing it.’”

Universality also means, the pastor added, that the music is recognizable as sacred music by the faithful around the world and therefore encourages inclusivity. Although it may not be Palestrina or Gregorian Chant, it must evoke the sacred.

“You may never have heard the music before but it is recognizable as enhancing worship and a sense of the spiritual,” said Father Donnelly.

Jarvis maintains he has deep faith in people’s “inherent good taste.” Almost everyone will recognize and respond to good music when it is presented to them. Good music, he continued, nourishes a desire to hear more good music.

He suggested that the absence of music programs in schools has hampered, for many, the ability to develop an understanding and appreciation of good music.

“Going to church may be their only chance to hear good music, as the cost of symphony or opera tickets has become out-of-reach for many. Unless they develop a ‘fire’ to explore for themselves, many people depend on the Church for exposure to works by such composers as Bach, Brahms, Benjamin Britten and others.

In his pamphlet Why Are We Singing Gregorian Chant? Father Donnelly notes that documents on sacred music from Vatican II describe chant as music that is “proper to the Roman liturgy” and which “should be given pride of place” (Musicam Sacram, n.50, 1967).

The Vatican has specified, Father Donnelly said, that the highest degree of good sacred music is to be found in chant ... “the chant proper to the Roman Church, the only chant she has inherited from the ancient fathers ... which she prescribes exclusively for some parts of the liturgy, and which the most recent studies have so happily restored to their integrity and purity.”

In 1974 Pope Paul VI sent every bishop a booklet of Gregorian Chants accompanied by a letter insisting that all Catholics become familiar with at least some Latin Gregorian chants, such as the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei.

Another important form of sacred music according to the Vatican is Classic Polyphony, which reached its greatest perfection in the 15th Century, owing to the works of Pierluigi da Palestrina. Polyphony is considered a superb complement to Gregorian Chant.

So, besides Gregorian chant and polyphony, what other forms of sacred music should be part of a parish’s repertoire? Father Donnelly was asked.

The Vatican has made it clear, the pastor answered, that good, modern sacred music is also welcome in churches, since it, too, can furnish “compositions of such excellence, sobriety, and gravity that they are in no way unworthy of the liturgical functions.”

Jarvis said he sees it as his job to bring the finest of contemporary classical music into the mix at St. Jude’s.

A terrific example, he said, is right in our midst, the music for organ written by the “phenomenal” local composer and Holy Rosary Cathedral organist Denis Bedard.

“His music is contemporary, approachable, and brilliantly written, and he is a wonderful resource,” Jarvis noted.

“In considering what Vatican II had to say about music,” said Father Donnelly, “I would say that what has been happening in many parishes often does not reflect the Church’s intentions.

“I think we are finding a way at St. Jude’s to put in play the mind of the Church. It is similar to the Church’s views on language. While today the vernacular is to be used in the Mass, the Vatican’s intention was never that Latin is no longer valid or useful.”

Similarly, he added, a piece of art may be well done artistically and may even have a religious connotation, “but it may not belong in a church because it doesn’t evoke the sacred and thus fulfill sacred art’s requirements.”

When questioned about the parish’s reaction to the new music program, Father Donnelly said it has been “mostly positive” and he added, “I notice that when you seek to implement the Church’s mind on these things, what you are really doing is recovering the sacred.

“Music is the most powerful of all the arts when it comes to the Church. Our aim is to foster congregational singing. The people here do not sing ‘at’ Mass, they sing the Mass.

“The responses are sung, and at all Sunday Masses we sing the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei in Gregorian Chant, which was actually not written for professional choirs but for the community to sing.”

The choice of instruments to produce sacred music should also be evaluated, Father Donnelly noted.

“We must ask does a certain instrument belong in the Church and is it able, by its nature or association, to take us deeper into the sacredness of the moment? Some instruments draw us to another venue where the sacred is not present.

“Every change that we have made here, although it may take time, is to bring the sacred closer.”

Michael Jarvis recently established St. Jude’s Pro Musica group to perform classical music of the 17th and 18th Century appropriate for Church services, liturgical celebrations, and private devotions. Period instruments are used by each of the players.

The first concert at the parish last October included an exhibition of sacred art by the Epiphany Sacred Arts Guild in the church’s new gallery space.

This proved such a success that an art exhibit will be included at the next Pro Musica concert, which is slated for Feb. 3 at 8 p.m. at St. Jude’s, with the Duo Seraphim presenting 17th and early 18th Century sacred duets for two sopranos.

Carolyn Sinclair and Maria Mayson will sing, Nan Mackie will play the viola da gamba, and Michael Jarvis will play the harpsichord.

On May 5 the ensemble will offer the Magnificat, sacred music by Telemann, and arias from the cantatas by J.S. Bach. More information on the upcoming concerts is available at www.baroqueplayers.com/musica.