150th anniversary Mass for St Paul's Parish, Harvard Square
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,464
    This was a wonderful, lovely celebration in prayer, Word, Sacrament, and music of a place long beloved in my heart and memory, a place that went through a rough pastoral leadership patch 10-15 years ago (towards the end of which the Hymns, Psalms, and Spiritual Canticles (HPSC) hymnal was defenestrated, as it were), but has come through it. I got to see at least few people from the diaspora that arose in that period. A feast of music, of course: the combined choral forces of the St Paul's Boy's Choir and the new version of the St Paul's Schola, the Back Bay Brass, and the St Paul's Parish Adult Choir (in the transept) - which is not the 35+ voice ensemble of my years in it (when it had a mighty power alto section, and the inner voices kept the choral trains running on time, a rare thing in Catholic parish choirs). And at least they had the decency to include the responsorial psalm setting by the late, great, inimitable Dr Theodore Marier (d. 2001) who with the late Msgr Hickey (the first of several magnificent pastors) made St Paul's Harvard Square a special place for sacred musical prayer excellence from the mid-1940s onward and a rare place in American Catholic parish life. For those of you unfamiliar with the context in which HPSC and its predecessors developed over decades, this may provide more color on that context.

    https://www.youtube.com/live/n7lN-ZkyJnw?si=svjMWWylafLBLB9h&t=305
    Thanked by 5CHGiffen davido cmb M. Jackson Osborn chonak
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,464
    Abp Henning is a solid homilist. In the middle of his homily, after breaking open the first reading from Habakkuk, he pivoted to the first two parts of the Ordinary - the Kyrie and the Gloria - and y'all might enjoy this bit in particular:

    https://www.youtube.com/live/n7lN-ZkyJnw?si=UsUvJ_IlrTru92fs&t=2017
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • David Sullivan
    Posts: 363
    Thanks for posting this.
    I was able to take Dr Marier's chant class back in 1996, but never made it to Sunday Mass at St Paul's.
    Thanked by 1Liam
  • Joseph Michael
    Posts: 257
    Whose setting/adaptation of the Schubert Mass was this? John Robinson's? There are some tricky rests near the beginning of the Gloria.

    I see that they did not use Dr. Marier's accompaniment to Credo III, which, in my opinion, is a masterpiece of clean, lean Gregorian accompaniment. (Marier only goes into four-voice harmony for the words "Et homo factus est.")

    It is evident that great care and love went into the music playing and singing.

    God bless the parish on their 150th anniversary.
    Thanked by 1Liam
  • kevinfkevinf
    Posts: 1,237
    You can tell that the current music director is Anglican....
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,486
    You can tell...
    Red cassocks, surplices, Vaughan Williams and ruffled collars on choir boys are admired by many Catholic musicians. You may be (and probably are) right, but it's not a shoo in.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,464
    The accompaniments are obviously not Marier's, but come from the hymnal that replaced HPSC, presumably JR's. (I loved Marier's accompaniment to Credo III; I can still hear it in my mind's ear, as it were.)

    I could do without ruff collars. The long customary attire for the boys and schola at St Paul's was simply a choir surplice over black cassock. The Marier practice hewed much more towards the Continental Roman practices than Anglican for reasons we don't need to dwell on in this context.

  • Diapason84
    Posts: 140
    I've never been fond of that parish (for a variety of reasons, not just musically), but it sounds like this was a fine program (except Thaxted), and if it lifted up the spirits and prayers of the attendees, all the better.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,464
    THAXTED was vigorously engaged by the congregation. Many other choices could be made for hymns; those were not the kinds of hymns Marier leaned into (his more likely choice would have been Alleluia Alleluia Sing A New Song to The Lord*, which essentially functioned as the parish anthem, as it were, for a few decades). But that congregation sang its heart out after the introit was completed.

    * For folks unfamiliar with the hymn tune (and it was composed as a hymn tune, not a folk song tune): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU4tBC-z0Fg
    hymnal-110-Alleluia-Alleluia-Sing-A-New-Song.pdf
    182K
    Thanked by 3davido CHGiffen Joseph Michael
  • kevinfkevinf
    Posts: 1,237
    As an addendum, Marier spent a summer at Duquesne University teaching with Ann Labounsky ( this was some years before he died). I had the good fortune to be present at that gathering and Marier really made an impression upon me. He was, for me, the first real "Catholic" musician that I came into contact with. I think that he really espoused the depth of the Catholic tradition and I will always feel indebted to him. Others probably knew him better and can better speak to his wisdom but I will never forget the conversations that I had with him.
    Thanked by 4Liam CHGiffen Joseph Michael Jeffrey Quick
Add a Comment