“Train the young in the way they should go; even when old, they will not swerve from it.”
– Proverbs 22:6
I realized that, despite having worked in some capacity at Most Blessed Sacrament for over a year (and at Incarnation for just over seventeen years now!) that to many parishioners at both parishes, I’ve never gotten the opportunity to fully introduce myself or share the story of what brought me here – both to the Melrose/Wakefield collaborative as well as into professional music ministry in general. So since this covers a number of formative facets over my lifetime, this “musical musing” will be broken down into three parts over the coming weeks – The Indiana years, my time in Texas, and Shipping Up to Boston.
My father had been playing guitar and my mother singing in the folk group at St. Charles Borromeo Church since before I was born, and when they moved from Fort Wayne, IN to South Bend, began a “guitar Mass” there at St. Anthony de Padua as well. Some of my earliest memories involve playing fetch with our dog, Ralph, in the basement stairwell while they rehearsed with the rest of the choir in our living room above, talking to my dad about which songs I thought we should be singing at church while he planned for the upcoming weeks, or attending rehearsals with them at church, where my dad would take a fistful of loose change and toss it into the pews (so I could occupy my 4-year-old self collecting them instead of distracting practice.) So it really is no exaggeration to say that music ministry has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.
In 1st grade, I began piano lessons. At the time, all students at St. A’s attended Mass twice a week – Monday-Thursday was divided between every two grade levels and Fridays were all-school Masses. At one parent/teacher conference in 2nd grade, my teacher noted that I was not only the most vocal in my class when singing at Mass, but “he’s not just singing… he’s singing harmony lines.” A couple years later, I was singing with the school choir for the Friday Masses, and by 5th grade, had been asked to start playing piano for them as well. (By this point, my parents were still singing and playing guitar, but the parish had hired a music director – a new development for a mid-sized suburban parish in the late 80’s.)
By the time I reached high school, I was occasionally playing a song or two for Sunday Masses on occasion, (not just for the school services,) and filling in as a substitute from time to time as well. The pastor at the time, seeing and recognizing my contributions to the church and wanting to foster them, sponsored me to begin organ lessons through a program at Notre Dame. This was my first (and to date, only) formal training on the organ, and I confess, at least in part, responsible for my distaste in using the organ in general. (I had been matched with an instructor who made it his goal to convince me, a high school freshman with eight years of piano experience, that the organ was the far superior instrument – a notion that I was not particularly keep on adopting.) Regardless, I had private weekly lessons at the university for a little under a year. It was then that my father’s job was being transferred to the Dallas area (and where we’ll resume in next week’s column.)
Please accept this invitation to participate more fully, more actively, in our parish’s music ministry. If you are interested in singing in the choir, leading the congregation as a cantor, or enriching our liturgy as an instrumentalist, email Shawn Gelzleichter at sgelzleichter@gmail.com or call the rectory at 781-662-8844.