Thanks for listening!

Jenny, you've got a slew of heavy-hitters, well done!

Feel free to send along suggestions for topics you'd like to see covered. We've got a giant list in the wings, but we're happy to hear from y'all as well.

It's been great hearing from so many different quarters about how people are enjoying the podcast. And with just 9 episodes (a 10th coming on Sunday), we're nearing 20,000 listens/downloads.

Thanks for listening, everyone!

I enjoy listening to them - but on your most recent podcast (with the Delightful Kevin Allen) I must admit being aghast that the only modern composer you could think worth mentioning was Arvo Part. Seriously? No Karl Jenkins, or Ola Gjeilo, or Imant Ramnish, or LAURIDSEN? Why just Arvo? Or did I miss something?

I do love me some Arvo Pärt!

It's not. Lauridsen has serious technical issues with the way he writes for the voice that are immediately apparent to most trained vocalists. Also, all his pieces sound the same. As for Gjeilo, he's never sung in a choir and just seems to be fascinated with what cool effects he can come up with for singers.

Are these two really who we should be idolizing as the princes of modern-day composition?

If I understand Gjeilo right

If I understand Schubert right, based on the source of his original texts [e.g. Ave Maria], he wasn't concerned with an expression of faith either. Elgar wasn't exactly a faithful Catholic by the end of his life, either. Yet we still use their pieces. Are we to assume since their authors had no intention behind them, that any sort of religious feeling we experience from such pieces are to be considered counterfeit?

And who said anything about idolizing them? I simply asked why they only felt the need to mention one single composer. The composers I mentioned were the ones who most immediately came to mind - I could think of more, definitely. (Tavener comes to mind right now.) If they want to debate the supposed merits or failings of other composers, fine. I thought that was what this show was supposed to be. A discussion. Not an idolization on one composer to the exclusion of those who don't happen to fall under the heading of "elites" because they "seem to be fascinated with cool effects".

Totus tuus (Górecki), another sublime example:

I do love me some Górecki too!

If I were an interviewer I might have asked "What do you think of Arvo Which composers do you consider your peers?" and been intrigued if Pärt were mentioned before McMillan. Pärt's Beatitudes is the most beautiful setting in English, and thanks to Paul Hillier's commissioning project there are many Gospel motets in English, such as Tribute to Caesar. Macmillan's Latin Strathclyde Motets occupy a similar niche, but can we admit that his occasional lapses, more 'use-music' than truly useful? We still lack a vernacular mass to put alongside Schubert's (and by the way, while I consider Gerontinus to at least be in a league with Schubert's late masses, Elgar's "liturgical works" would be …um, the Vesper Voluntaries?).

Another of the giants is Penderecki, Gorecki (1933 – 2010) and One-R-Tavener (1944 – 2013) having joined the immortals.

Jenny wasn't doing journalism here

Oh dear! Would she agree with you?
I'd better admit I've been kibbitzing on the thread comments. Listening to the interview, Jenny does in fact ask the open ended question, to which the answer is "Bruhkner", the Pärt Q being a follow-up by Peter.

Thanks for listening, gentlemen, and for a lively discussion on modern choral music!

Since kibitzing seems to be the modus operandi of the discussion of late, though, it seems a good thing to quote correctly. To wit, my question was

When you think of really great choral music in the modern time, who do you think of? Or when you think of composers who are really great at composing for amateur church choirs, who do you think of?

In response, Kevin mentioned the music of Richard Hillert, Carl Schalk, Cardinal Bartolucci, and Nicola Montani.

To say that for Peter to follow up with a question about Pärt, unquestionably one of the greatest choral composers of the modern era and some of whose works are quite performable in the liturgical context, was unreasonable or some sign that we couldn't think of anything else to say seems a bit ungracious, both to us and to Kevin, no? If you're coming to the colloquium this summer, you'll be singing a motet by Ola Gjeilo, a shared suggestion on my part. But even so, to consider Gjeilo or Lauridsen on par with Messiaen, Pärt, or Gorecki isn't warranted in my opinion, pace some in this thread. This is, I would assume, what Kevin was driving at when talking about how a fair amount of music being written now is mostly profane, only vaguely religious, or not practical because of performing force requirements. I generally agree with a lot of what Richard Taruskin wrote in his article "Sacred Entertainments" (Cambridge Opera Journal, 15, 2, 109–126 [2003]) when he critiqued some compositions of the recent decades as superficially religious, attempting to offer "spiritual content" as a marketing angle, but ending in "shabby topical hypocrisy."

Re: Bruckner, Kevin was discussing the difference in compositional intent between people like Bruckner, Hillert, etc. as opposed to Pärt; the former clearly considered their compositions designed for liturgical use whereas this aspect of Pärt's compositional intent is less clear.

Touché, Richard. As I'm sure you know, Bruckner is a particularly important name for a New Yorker to pronounce with care and intent, depending on whether one is citing a motet/Mass/symphony, or a Tom Wolfe novel...

One of the appreciable things about Bruckner is that he very clearly delineates those works intended for liturgical performance (the a cappella motets, Mass in E minor) from the concert works (Mass in F minor, Psalm 150, Te Deum). Modern composers of sacred texts would do well to follow his example.

I can find no reference to a concert performance of the f minor mass during Bruckner's life, nor any such comment on either the published or the holograph score.

From Wikipedia:

After various delays, the mass was finally premiered on June 16, 1872, at the Augustinerkirche, with Bruckner himself conducting. Herbeck changed his opinion of the piece, claiming to know only two masses: this one and Beethoven's Missa solemnis. Franz Liszt and even Eduard Hanslick praised the piece. A second performance occurred in the Hofmusikkapelle on 8 December 1873. The manuscript is archived at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

@jenny Donelson after your quick comment on one episode about how you print posters of Gregorian antiphons, I immediately tried it with the elementary school choir I was (then) directing, and it works brilliantly. It pulls the kids in and created a positive emulation to have them sight-read. Like the old "Lutrin" I guess...
(Note: I was looking forward to do more of this with the kids but then a not-completely-unrelated "disagreement" with the school director happened, I quit, and I'll have to wait to continue this experiment somewhere else.).

Ideas for future episodes?
Maybe an episode looking at more analogies between Gregorian Chant and culturally more "popular" subjects, allowing non-Catholics to get over some of the "old baggage" they see in Gregorian chant.
For example, I have been using these analogies with varying degrees of success:
- learning to chant relying on the "memory of how it feels" (not just how it sounds), and the analogy of the Pythagorean proportions and "cosmic" origins of Gregorian modes,
- breathing and chant: why would any Westerner need yoga, when our culture has such a tradition of spiritual breathing within Gregorian chant,
- "shaped notes" and "singing schools" taught many protestants with no formal education to sight-sing sacred music: why could not square notes do the same with Catholics who have not learned to sight-read modern notation?