Fr. Roger J. Landry
\nPutting into the Deep
\nThe Anchor
\nDecember 12, 2014<\/p>\n
One of the great joys I had during my college years was attending the 8 am daily Mass at St. Paul\u2019s Church in Cambridge. It was a Missa Cantata<\/em> in which the priest celebrants beautifully sang all the prayers of the Mass and, unforgettably, the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School (BACS) sang the hymns, Psalms and Mass parts. It was like a principal Sunday Mass almost every day lasting about 50 minutes, finishing just in time for me to scamper across Harvard Yard to make my 9:00 am classes.<\/p>\n Daily exposure to that liturgical beauty really had a huge impact in stoking my priestly vocation. Leaving that experience after graduation left me in a sort of spiritual withdrawal even though I had entered the Seminary.<\/p>\n Those memories of a quarter century ago have been coming back to me as I\u2019ve been listening to Christmas in Harvard Square, <\/em>the recently-released CD from the St. Paul\u2019s Choir School, as the BACS was renamed two years ago. It\u2019s one of the best CDs of Christmas music I\u2019ve ever heard. Lots of performers record Christmas music. Many choirs pound out Christmas hymns. But few make it sound truly ethereal. And few are recorded well enough that you sense you have an entire choir singing live in your room.<\/p>\n What makes this CD particularly special for me is not just the happy memories of my halcyon days as a university student. It\u2019s also because my 13-year-old nephew Christian, the oldest son of my twin brother Scot and his wife Ximena, is a member of the choir and has three different solos. \u201cFinally a Landry worth listening to!,\u201d one friend recently joked to me.<\/p>\n The story of the making of the CD is providential. Kevin Fitzgibbons \u2014\u00a0who with his wife Monica founded in 2007 AimHigher Recordings, which has produced chart-topping CDs from the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles and the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist \u2014\u00a0happened to be in Boston and attended Mass at St. Paul\u2019s when the choir school was singing. When Monica was a student at Boston University, she used to come to hear the choir school frequently and recommended it to her husband. Kevin ended up recording the boys on his phone and texted a cut to Monica suggesting that the Choir ought to be their next project. The Choir School agreed and Grammy award winning producer Blanton Alspaugh was eventually brought in to record them.<\/p>\n The CD has 19 tracks, including \u201cO Come All Ye Faithful,\u201d \u201cHark! The Herald Angels Sing\u201d and \u201cAngels We Have Heard on High\u201d that are among the best renditions I\u2019ve ever heard. There are also many hymns from the English Cathedral School tradition that beautifully ponder the mysteries of Bethlehem but that most Americans have unfortunately not grown up hearing. And there\u2019s superb, heart-lifting polyphony: my personal favorites are the \u201cO Magnum Mysterium<\/em>\u201d and \u201cOmnes De Saba Venient<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to listen to the CD just as background music, because the variety leads you to pick up the jacket and ponder the lyrics. The fact that one can\u2019t sing along with all the tracks communicates that the mystery we\u2019re pondering is greater than our attempts at domestication.<\/p>\n It\u2019s nice that St. Paul\u2019s Choir School is finally getting the attention it deserves. The BACS was founded in 1963 by the legendary Theodore Marier and it remains the only Catholic boys choir school in our country. The school is now led by the superlative young Music Director John Robinson, headmaster William McIvor and St. Paul\u2019s Pastor Fr. Michael Drea.<\/p>\n 50 boys from the greater Boston area presently attend. To be admitted, incoming fourth- or fifth-grade boys must be academically bright and pass an audition to show that they have a promising musical ear and can hold and repeat a tune.<\/p>\n In addition to a rigorous academic curriculum of math, history, science, English, Latin and French, students also take music theory, music history, learn the piano and recorder and practice choral singing an hour a day in addition to chanting the daily Mass. Students also receive one of the finest and most challenging educations in the Catholic faith I\u2019ve seen in any Catholic school. Everything leads to form boys to glorify God through singing, study and the spiritual and moral life.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a surprise that many priestly vocations have come out of the Choir School.<\/p>\n Students enter as \u201cProbationers\u201d in fourth grade. If they persevere, they are eventually invested in the \u201cTrebles,\u201d where they continue through fifth grade. In sixth, they enter the principal\u00a0choir, the Choristers, where they stay until their voice changes and they enter the Schola Cantorum<\/em>.<\/p>\n Since the release of the CD, the boys have been fittingly getting a lot of attention: a PBS special, a segment on Raymond Arroyo\u2019s The World Over, <\/em>and opportunities to sing for national audiences on the morning programs in New York. They\u2019ve pre-recorded a session that will air on Good Morning America<\/em> Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for a gift that will allow you to give Christ this Christmas and support a great institution, I\u2019d encourage you to order Christmas in Harvard Square <\/em>from Amazon or directly from the Choir School\u2019s website (stpaulchoirschool.com).<\/p>\n This CD leads listeners from Harvard Square to Bethlehem and evokes the angelic choirs singing to God\u2019s glory who greeted the Shepherds on Christmas night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor December 12, 2014 One of the great joys I had during my college years was attending the 8 am daily Mass at St. Paul\u2019s Church in Cambridge. It was a Missa Cantata in which the priest celebrants beautifully sang all the prayers of the Mass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1013,708],"tags":[7474,7476,7473,7478,7479,7480,7481,7482,7475,7477],"class_list":["post-7908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anchor-column","category-articles","tag-boston-archdiocesan-choir-school","tag-christian-landry","tag-christmas-in-harvard-square","tag-john-robinson","tag-kevin-fitzgibbons","tag-monica-fitzgibbons","tag-o-magnum-mysterium","tag-omnes-de-saba-venient","tag-st-pauls-choir-school","tag-theodore-marier"],"yoast_head":"\n