“What tears I shed in your hymns and canticles! How deeply was I moved by the voices of your sweet singing Church! Those voices flowed into my ears and the truth was distilled into my heart, which overflowed with my passionate devotion. Tears ran from my eyes and happy I was in those tears.”
– St. Augustine of Hippo
Traditionally, the month of November is a time when the church remembers and reflects upon those who are no longer with us on Earth. This weekend, we begin the month with the celebrations of All Saints and The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, also known as All Soul’s Day. As we remember our beloved dead, I want to also shine a light on another great piece of music that resonates with me as a pastoral musician. Gabriel Fauré’s beloved Requiem, or Mass for the Dead.
My time at the University of North Texas gave me, among other things, a deeper understanding of the intertwined nature of western music and the Catholic Church. While I had sung a decent amount of sacred classical music in my high school career, most of it was “lesser” works – not necessarily in value, but in scope. Bach chorales, Haydn anthems, psalm settings by Mendelsohn or Bernstein and the like were no less profound, but always standalone pieces around five minutes in length or under. It wasn’t until college and UNT’s Grand Chorus that I was introduced to more large scale works. The Grand Chorus was a major force dedicated to major works; composed of all members of the auditioned choirs combined, the ensemble featured roughly 200 voices in any given semester. Fauré’s Requiem was the first piece we studied and performed in the fall of my freshman year.
Singing in an ensemble such as this is an experience like no other, and something I would encourage anyone to try at some point. Each singer is of a professional caliber, but disappears into the sea of others, creating these truly epic waves of sound, greater still than the sum of its incredible parts individually. When I stepped into the rehearsal room and we began the “Introit and Kyrie,” (the first movement,) I remember feeling both overjoyed to be a part of something so great and powerful, and at the same time humbled that my voice, as good as it was, was a tiny fraction of this magnificence. So it is with the Church. Our parish communities are a unique and irreplicable gathering of the Faithful, but put in context with the Communion of Saints – past, present, and future – we are a drop in the celestial bucket that is the people God has called and who join with us at every celebration of the Eucharist.
There were a number of truly remarkable works that we performed in my time with the Grand Chorus of UNT: Mahler’s 2nd Symphony (“Resurrection,”) Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Brahms’s Requiem (“Eine Deutsche Requiem,”) to name a few, but the Fauré resonates most vividly for me. The beauty of his harmonic language is undeniable and resonates the texts of the funeral liturgy in a profound manner, and while I could go on for pages on the technical merits of the piece, it’s the grandeur of the experience itself that I feel left me with the greatest impact. This November, may you experience the joy and fulfillment of “joining with the choirs of angels and saints,” and reflecting just a little bit more on all of those voices that have gone before us, but sing with us all the same.
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.