Westminster Abbey choir sings for Pope Benedict with the Sistine Chapel Choir; Archbishop to address Summer School of the Irish Church Musicians Associations; New Cornerstone music videos from Hillsong Live; tobyMac and Mark Hall win at BMI awards; Worship online including links to Choral Evensongs
Westminster Abbey choir sings for Pope Benedict with the Sistine Chapel Choir
Westminster Abbey’s Choir sang for Pope Benedict XVI, with the Cappella Musicale Pontificia ‘Sistina’, the Sistine Chapel Choir, at the Papal Mass marking the Solemnity of St Peter and St Paul in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, on Friday 29th June, a historic occasion of great significance for Anglican-Catholic relations.
The service was broadcast live across the world and was the first time in its 500-year history that the Sistine Chapel Choir had sung alongside another choir during a service.
The Abbey Choir was invited to Rome by Pope Benedict XVI, following his visit to the UK in September 2010, during which he attended an ecumenical service of Evening Prayer at Westminster Abbey. This reciprocal visit is a further fruit of the Pope’s visit to Great Britain and is a powerful symbol of the communion already achieved between the Anglican and Catholic churches.
The Dean of Westminster, The Very Reverend Dr John Hall said: ‘It is not hard to detect behind this invitation from His Holiness a papal project to restore some of the Church’s musical tradition to the liturgy. The experience of participating in these liturgies in Rome has enriched the Abbey and its Choir and the Anglican tradition of worship.’
A comment in The Huffington Post stated –
Ecumenical significance aside, the real question is what happens when English and Italian choral traditions meet.
Organizers of the historic performance have tried to downplay the differences or at least acknowledge that while deep theological problems remain, culturally the two churches can come together.
“In diversity you can find points of unity,” said Monsignor Massimo Palombella, the choirmaster of the Sistine Chapel Choir. “And I dare say, it’s not just that you can find it, you must find points of unity. To do this, we use culture.”
That said, the uniting isn’t going to be easy. The two choirs are vastly different in style and come to liturgical music from very different backgrounds. And to many ears, Westminster is simply better.
“It is a splendid choir,” said the Rev. Jerome Weber, a Roman Catholic priest who reviews sacred music for Fanfare, the respected classical music magazine. Known for its precision, attention to detail and tonality, the Westminster choir is recorded twice a year by Hyperion, the British classical music label.
The Sistine choir, on the other hand, is simply of a lesser quality: warm as the Roman vocal tradition requires, but often loud with a “harsh, bombastic tone,” he said.
Colin Mawby, the English composer, recently wrote a glowing review of the Sistine choir’s May concert at the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral, saying the pope’s singers had unfairly suffered from a bad reputation when in fact they were “a superb and expressive group.”
“One tends to listen to the Sistine Chapel Choir with English ears and then foolishly compare it with our own, with their fussy attention to technical detail, detail that is often achieved at the expense of musicality,” Mawby wrote in a review for the cathedral’s magazine that was reprinted in the Vatican newspaper and is now featured prominently on the Sistine choir’s website. “However the Sistine Choir isn’t an English choir. It’s Italian and reflects the Italian vocal tradition.”
Archbishop to address Summer School of the Irish Church Musicians Associations
This evening the Archbishop of Dublin will be in Maynooth where he will preside and preach in St Mary’s church as part of the Annual Summer School of the Irish Church Musicians Associations.
New Cornerstone music videos from Hillsong Live
Hillsong Live have released music videos for their upcoming album release Cornerstone
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/new.cornerstone.music.videos.from.hillsong.live/30174.htm
tobyMac and Mark Hall win at BMI awards
Broadcast Music Inc BMI celebrated the songwriters and music publishers behind the past years most performed songs in Christian music during its annual Christian Music Awards in Nashville
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/tobymac.and.mark.hall.win.at.bmi.awards/30115.htm
Worship online
1. The bells of St Peter’s Cathedral, Adelaide, South Australia – BBC Radio 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01k9m2v
2. Choral Evensong from Sheffield Cathedral – BBC Radio 3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jz401
3. Choral services from the chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge
http://www.sjcchoir.co.uk/webcasts
and New College, Oxford
http://www.newcollegechoir.com/webcasts.html
4. Holy Communion at the Pearusa Celebration – Archbishop Rwaje preaches – Anglican TV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpSK8KJP4s0