Christendom Music Colloquium Attracts International Crowd

By Clare MacDonnell
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the issue of 6/29/00)

FRONT ROYAL — For Paul Salamunovich, conductor of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and organist and choirmaster for the past 51 years at St. Charles Borromeo Parish in North Hollywood, Calif., Church music has never changed. The Second Vatican Council came and went while he was still a young choirmaster, and still nothing changed, unlike for so many others. While guitars and contemporary hymns became the fashion at other parishes after Vatican II, High Masses by Palestrina and Bach were the mainstay at Salamunovich's parish.

Salamunovich's continuity and his world-renowned talent are the reasons he has been part of the music colloquium at Christendom College in Front Royal since it began in 1991. The 80 people gathered at the colloquium this year are searching for that continuity of Church music, in the Gregorian chant, polyphony and the history of sacred music, which assures them they are in pursuit of the "music of the Church."

This year's colloquium was held under the direction of Father Robert A. Skeris, former chaplain and head of the theology department at Christendom College. Experts included the expertise of Father Ralph S. March, former choirmaster of Cologne Cathedral in Germany; Laszlo Dobszay, a world expert on folk music and Gregorian chant, conductor of the Schola Hungarica, president of the Hungarian Church Music Association and member of the Early Music Department, Institute of Musicology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest; and Theodore Marier, head of the graduate program in Church Music at the B.T. Rome School of Music and director of the Centre for Ward Method of Studies at Catholic University in Washington.

Salamunovich conducted colloquium participants in daily sessions, teaching them new techniques of chant and polyphony. Although he had never worked with the group before, he was able to teach them to blend and control their voices as if they had always sung together. For Salamunovich, it is a privilege to pass on the tradition of sacred music, which he has been upholding since he became a member of a boy's schola at age 10.

"The Church from time immemorial has been the fosterer and preserver of great art and Church music is known and respected by secular conductors all over the world," he said. "It is the unorthodox who want to throw it all out and I am trying to keep it alive. I am upholding what Vatican II said," ("The Church recognizes Gregorian chant as being specially suited to the Roman liturgy. Therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services" "Sacrosanctum concilium").

Salamunovich believes that sacred music is one the Church's greatest tools in reaching out to the secular world, which, he said, is lacking in culture.

"When people learn to render sacred music on such a high level, the quality of the music lifts up the listeners out of the secular world," he said.

Similarly, he said, sacred music is an aid to the liturgy in that it lifts up the congregation to the contemplation of higher things.

"Sacred music inspires people to know the presence of the tabernacle and how to behave in that presence," he said. "Why are most churches so noisy these days? What ever happened to meditation?"

He likes to make the comparison of sacred music in the Church to the music used in great movies. He said if there is a religious scene in a movie, we can be sure the director will choose a classical piece of music which exhorts the movie-goer to believe what he is seeing to the point of evoking tears. He uses the example of the movie "The Song of Bernadette" which, he said, contains "inspiring music." He said if you watch the miracle scene with the sound turned off you may still enjoy it, but if you watch it again with the music, "it gives you goosebumps." The experience of the Mass is similar, he said, in that when people attend a Mass with sacred music they notice a difference.

"When tourists come to my church, they often tell me how inspired they were by the music and it's because they're hungry for it," he said. "There is enough noise in the world, we need solitude and meditation in church. We need to stop the music that demands applause because we don't have to applaud the presence of Christ and if we don't have the presence of Christ, what are we there for?"
It is Salamunovich's hope that the colloquium will encourage people to be missionaries through sacred music. He hopes the participants will "go out like the disciples and bring this back to their parishes."

Dobszay echoed Salamunovich's words, noting that there has been a great loss in many parishes in the last few decades. He noted that most people are just not knowledgeable enough about sacred music or the liturgical theology it is based on to make informed decisions about it. He spoke of the misconceptions about sacred music, one of which is that chant is only sung in Latin, which he said, is untrue. To dispel these notions he said sacred music should be a regular part of catechesis.

Dobszay has been interested in Church music since he was a child and as he grew he explored pre- and post-Vatican II Church music. He found that the changes came about not because of a change in Church teaching, but because of the introduction of the vernacular language.

"Until the Council there were strict norms of Church music and a stable repertory, which people didn't always follow, but there was still an objective norm," he said. "After Vatican II, with the introduction of the vernacular, each nation tried to turn over its own liturgical music which resulted in great confusion."

He noted that we can get back to that unity if we examine how we view the liturgy.

"If the liturgy is something that is defined by God and the Church, we have to make efforts to grow up and pray and sing appropriate to the content," he said. "If we simply express our religious feeling we remain on that level, but we need something more than ourselves."

He remains hopeful, mainly because of forums like the music colloquium, that the tradition of sacred music will be respected and revered in the Church.

"There are 80 people here and 1,100 members of the Church Music Association in this country — what does that mean in a country of this size? Well, there were only 12 apostles," he said.

Two of those "sacred music apostles," Patricia and Donald Donatio, drove seven hours from Winston-Salem, N.C., to take advantage of the expert faculty. Fairly new to the sacred music scene, the Donatios thoroughly enjoyed their colloquium experience, even if at times it was more advanced than they are used to.

The retired couple, who have been singing in a 10-member schola for four years, see the colloquium as an opportunity for people to learn techniques which they can teach to their parish communities. They were amazed at how Salamunovich could come into a new group of people and in a matter of hours, make them sound like a well-trained group. The Donatios learned through his technique that they need to sing slower and softer, "letting the music flow."

Although this was their first colloquium, the Donatios said they have much to learn and it won't be their last. Donald's reason for pursuing sacred music is simple and it echoes the general tone of the colloquium — "it facilitates a lost art," he said.

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