Gregorian chant making a comeback

Young people, musicians rediscovering Church’s rich tradition

ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC Jennifer Donelson, a professor of piano at Nova Southeastern University, leads a rehearsal a "beginning schola" during a Gregorian chant rehearsal at a workshop March 7 at Nova. Donelson directs the choirs who sing Gregorian chant during Sunday Masses at St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Michael parishes in Miami. More than two dozen people attended the two-day workshop on Gregorian chant that culminated with a missa cantata (sung Mass) at St. Michael Parish in Miami March 7. The workshop was sponsored by the Florida chapter of the Church Music Association of America and held at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale.

For Jennifer Donelson, the practice of Gregorian chant is not about nostalgia. It is about possessing a more prayerful disposition at Mass.

“(Gregorian chant) tells us something about how to pray,” said Donelson, a pianist and associate professor of music at Nova Southeastern University who directs Gregorian chant choirs at two Miami parishes, St. Michael and St. Robert Bellarmine.

ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC Michael O'Connor, a professor of music history at Palm Beach Atlantic University, leads a rehearsal of an advanced men's schola during a Gregorian chant workshop March 7. O'Connor created and leads a Gregorian chant choir in the Palm Beach area. More than two dozen people attended the two-day workshop on Gregorian chant that culminated with a missa cantata (sung Mass) at St. Michael Parish in Miami March 7. The workshop was sponsored by the Florida chapter of the Church Music Association of America and held at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale.

She noted that although Gregorian chants may all sound alike to untrained modern ears, distinct chants were developed for use at different parts of the Mass, such as during entrance processions or as responsorial psalms. Entrance antiphons even are associated with the Mass for each day.

Chants “tell us something about those distinct places in the liturgy,” said Donelson, 28,
who discovered chant during her first year of graduate school, while taking a course on music in the Church.

“Among my generation, there’s a real desire to really be Catholic and to get rid of fluff,” said Donelson. She added that in Gregorian chant she found “something that didn’t make me decide that I was either a good Catholic or a good musician. I can be very challenged musically and challenged in my faith by how music expresses the liturgy.”

It is a misconception that Vatican II discarded chant, said Susan Treacy, professor of sacred music at Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Fla. She noted that Pope Benedict himself recently pointed out that Vatican II produced “a rupture” with the Church’s sacred music tradition “that was not meant to be.”

ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC Susan Treacy, a professor of sacred music at Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Fla., speaks about the history of Gregorian chant since Vatican II during a workshop March 7. Treacy directs the Women's Schola Gregoriana at Ave Maria and is on the board of the Church Music Association of America. More than two dozen people attended the two-day workshop on Gregorian chant that culminated with a missa cantata (sung Mass) at St. Michael Parish in Miami March 7. The workshop was sponsored by the Florida chapter of the Church Music Association of America and held at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale.

“I also thought that chant had been sort of abolished until I read the documents of the Second Vatican Council,” said Treacy, a convert to Catholicism who grew up in the Episcopal Church.

What happened, she said, is that those who interpreted Vatican II in the 1960s got caught up in “the spirit of the age, this tremendous impulse toward revolution.”

“The idea was to help people to understand the Mass better and bring the people to the Mass,” she said. But the changes wound up bringing the Mass “down to the people instead of bringing the people up to the Mass. People understand the words of the Mass now because they are in English, but do they understand the Mass? Mass is celebrated so often in such a casual way that the idea of the holy is diminished.”

The benefit of Gregorian chant is that “it doesn’t draw attention to itself. It draws attention to the text and to God,” Treacy said.

Gregorian chants are meant to be sung by the choir and the priest, with the people responding at certain parts of the Mass. Some of the chants modern Catholics are familiar with are the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) and Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy).

ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC Jennifer Donelson, a professor of piano at Nova Southeastern University, describes the musical notations of Gregorian chant to a "beginning schola" during a workshop March 7 at Nova. Donelson directs the choirs who sing Gregorian chant during Sunday Masses at St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Michael parishes in Miami. More than two dozen people attended a two-day workshop on Gregorian chant that culminated with a missa cantata (sung Mass) at St. Michael Parish in Miami March 7. The workshop was sponsored by the Florida chapter of the Church Music Association of America and held at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale.

Donelson explained that, because the Gregorian chant choir is doing the singing at some points in the Mass, people are free to watch, listen and bask in the spiritual moment rather than look down at hymnals and worry about lyrics.

“When you are free to watch, then you are moved to go along with it,” Donelson said.

Choirs require more training but “once you get used to the notation and the way that the rhythm and the melody move, it becomes much easier,” she added.

“I think there is a general openness now to Gregorian chant. But maybe not everybody is ready for it and maybe the choir is not ready for it in Latin,” Treacy said. The goal for music directors should be to “bring them to the threshold and take them deeper.”