Considering the huge repertoires and familiarity with sacred music so many of you have, I am asking if anyone can suggest some good sacred music to download for listening on a road trip. I was thinking maybe something related to Pentecost, or even looking ahead to feasts and solemnities of the summer, etc. The kids got me an iPod for Mother's Day, and it an be hooked into the car's system, so I have high hopes for some good listening on the trip, but need suggestions for music. Thanks!
Tallis, Spem in Alium. Not for any reason related to the calendar, but because the glorious wash of sound isn't of a kind to take your concentration off the road!
On the same grounds, from left field (and stretching the term 'sacred music' a bit, but what the heck) : Gavin Bryars, Jesu's Blood, ideally the 25 minute Bryars version, though the 75 minute Tom Waites release isn't bad, if a little overblown. It has a mesmeric quality that's not unrelated to plainsong.
Hildegard "Ordo virtutum". How often do you have time to sit and listen to that straight through? or, again not seasonal, the tenebrae of Couperin, Charpentier, or Lambert, also worth an extended sit and listen.
Even though you didn't ask for this, I suggest you go into iTunes and search the store for "catholic podcast". They're all free, and there's really some excellent content out there of all types. It's kind of like subject-specific radio programs delivered right to your iPod. I'm finding that I tend to listen to that even more than music these days.
Thanks for your input! I wound up with Fr Z podcazts and EWTN The World Over because we didn't have time to figure out how to get music off Rhapsody onto the iPod. I did attempt to bring music along on CD (something was wrong with it, it wouldn't play) but if we had been able to hear it, it would have been from some of those suggested above. I couldn't get his Lux Aeterna from Rhapsody but I got Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium - Wow! - and Elgar's Lux Aeterna - soaring, dramatic and beautiful. I also downloaded some of the polyphony slated for the colloquium this summer, just so I could eat my heart out. (I am looking forward to the Corpus Christi Watershed recordings).
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