Dear Jeffrey,
Congratulations to you and Professor Mahrt for a major "exhortation." My wife, who will join us in Chicago, was transfixed.
However, if Arlene was in attendance, could you yield the microphone to her the next broadcast? She is ever so effervescent and cute.
I'm going to reproduce this on DVD (w/perm. from EWTN) and hand them to my priests.
Bravo, job well done.

I thought that Prof. Mahrt did very a fantastic job setting out the essentials lucidly and in an organized way, which isn't easy to do in a conversation-style interview.

Although he said the chant tones for the lesson, epistle, and gospel were simple, I'm already having trouble remembering them. Is there a PDF somewhere on the MS web site that has them (and maybe examples too)?

I'm watching the repeat on EWTN's internet broadcast right now. Excellent program.

UPDATE: I did a Google search for "chant tone epistle" and found Prof. Mahrt's essay, "Gregorian Chant as a Paradigm of Sacred Music", which has an image of the tones for the readings. More reasons to love Google and MusicaSacra.com.

I think it'd be beautiful to have the readings sung at the Easter Vigil Mass... however, my parish uses a different reader for each reading, and that would require a lot of people (plus the pastor!) getting on board. ;) It'd be nice to hear the readings sung on big feast days, like Christmas, Easter Vigil & Easter, Pentecost, etc.

EWTN sells tapes and DVDs of the shows. Go to their website: ewtn.com. They take online and phone orders.

I was amazed at how well Prof. Mahrt was able to be professorial and still get his ideas across in the interview. Especially, I loved Prof. Mahrt's "performance" of the proper parts of the Mass to prove his point about how different each part is. Very engaging.

I had a group of people over to watch it with me, cradle Catholics who don't much care about music in the liturgy as a topic. They loved it!

The reach of ETWN is phenomenal. I witnessed its scope first hand before I started regularly watching it; I was on a pilgrimage to Israel. Fr. Joseph Mary, who is the first friar in Mother Angelica's Missionary Friars of the Eternal Word, travelled with us as one of three priests to provide spiritual direction. When our group was passing through the Amsterdam airport, a Filipino couple rushed over and asked me to take a photo of them with Fr. Joseph because they watched him saying Mass on EWTN all the time. But most moving was how several of the beleagured Catholics in Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem came up to him and took his hands and told him that EWTN is their lifeline.

I hope fame doesn't bring any harm to Prof. Mahrt. After this EWTN interview,I suspect he's in a for a big dose of it.

EWTN Masses have sung ordinaries all the time, as Father Fox and Father Pacwa mentioned.

G,
I dealt with the same paradigm shift as well. But being on the Left Coast we could watch the whole program live before going to our duties for OLGuadalupe (which, at least, more resembled a Mass than what I experienced in years past.)
But the re-reform movement will eventually encounter the real crossroads of the worship paradigm shift vis a vis enculturation, whether it's OLG, Simbang Gabi, Fatima Festas, Hula or Polka Masses. WE know that what re-reform is selling is priceless and will work, if (as Prof. Mahrt consistently stresses) given time and resources. But the example that Fr. Pacwa cited of the hybridization of polyphony in the colonial new world cannot re-occur in the face of Mass Media et al. Gonna be a hard row to hoe.

CMAA's editor and our very own moderator, the eminent (handsome man about town and bon vivant Jeffrey Tucker;) back at ya, Michael. Tho' I still wanna see Arlene next time!!!
Oh, and someone should look into booking Jason Pennington onto EWTN LIVE someday.

The only thing missing was a really hardcore modern music person to challenge some of his statements. While I agree with Prof. Mahrt's ethos of sacred music, I disagree that some of today's music will not be held dear by people in the future. The music written in the early 80s which continues to plague (my word) the liturgy is already held quite dear by a lot of 40-somethings I know. Ironically this stuff has become the "traditional" music for so many Catholics. This new sacred music movement is still in its infancy. When I look at the numbers that attend the LifeTeen Masses, I'm not so sure that there is a hunger at this point for mature, really sacred, music. It will take some brave pastors to set aside a Mass for sacred music or to insist on integrating chant into all the Sunday Masses before people will ever get a chance to experience it.

moconnor

"It will take some brave pastors "

Well yes, that is the crux of the matter, the best educated, best intentioned, best informed musicians can accomplish almost nothing without the support of the pastor.
And everything that is accomplished can be undone with one transfer from the diocese.
So it is going to take some wise bishops creating a haven for these "brave pastors" to create space for sacred musicians.
The good example of an appropriate music program at the cathedral works wonders. I know we have a least one cathedral music director contributing here -- would that there were more like him.

(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)

rich_enough

Of course it's not appropriate for Mass, but the challenge is to show people why it's not. Especially in the U.S. where novelty, popular culture, and the will of the people is prized, this is a tough sell. I think that the more chant services that people hear, the more they will come around to the idea because it is so compelling. So many Catholics are not even clear on the basic catechism, though. I think this is the root of the problem. Many folks see the faith as a democracy. Another disturbing aspect that I have observed is that many people see the Church as simply a place to raise children. Why else would so many people stop coming to church after the last kid is confirmed? They see nothing there for them as adults.

moconnor

A couple years ago when I heard Prof. Mahrt lead the choir in Palo Alto,
there was a nice older gentleman who sang the OT and Epistle. He didn't
come off as a trained singer (he wasn't in the choir, and his pitch was a
little off) but seemed to do just fine. It brought even more dignity to an
already dignified and reverent service.

Aristotle, have you found a clean link to the video?

They said that we could put this up at a .wmv file on musicasacra, but it involves writing a note and etc., and we may not host it on youtube or google or something -- which strikes me as a very bad policy actually. They should permit all programming to be aired anywhere through any means.

No unions in Alabama. We are barely getting by as it is. Unions would shut us pretty quickly.

I suspect it just might be a confusion and a sense of losing control. Lots of people are very mixed up about digital media and the internet, running away from its radical possibilities rather than embracing them.