Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Sad, Sad News
Apparently, the beautiful parish church of St Charles Borromeo in North Hollywood, (a favorite of Himself's and mine when we lived in LA and stumbled upon it, in the days before I knew you could find faithful liturgies and reverent music via the internet...,) is to be subject to a... renovation, and perhaps to the ministrations of Richard Vosko, or at least, someone who shares his liturgical and aesthetic sensibilities.
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6 comments:
And you heard Paul's choir out there?
Yes indeed.
I didn't know who he was at the time, I just was hearing, for the first time, a Catholic parish whose musical excellence compared with the higher Episcopal churches to which I'd been.
And you have to understand, this was in the days when as far as I knew, the options were 1) parishes like mine, that used "missallettes" but had not thrown out their old St Gregory Hymnals and had choirs that mixed a few competently but uninspiredly performed Latin motets or parts of ordinaries in with solid protestant hymnody, (and from time to time howlers, like the Ave Maria from Otello,); 2) places with guitars and ghastly plastic "hymnals" that occasionally used "art" music such as the Gather provided; and 3) "renegade" traditionalist chapels.
Knowing that there was something else out there?
It was such an epiphany.
So, my aesthetic sensibilities could be satisfied, at least -- who knew at that point that there were also parishes that would satisfy liturgical yearnings? Not I...
(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
I've been lucky (proximity in CA) to catch a number of one on one's and performances, seminars/workshops with PS. He and Mahrt apparently had the same reaction when change hit the fan in their bailywicks: a quiet "Yeah, right, as if."
Remind me next (in Pitt?) to tell you his pedagogy to awaken altos.
Charles....
Please share that here, as I won't be in Pitt, and I have altos in serious need of either: 1) awakening, or 2) shooting.
Dad,
Honestly, I hesitate only because the two times I've heard Paul's method, you have to actually hear his rendition. But, here goes:
He asks all gathered (conductor workshops and the like) if they'd ever seen Mel Brooks' classic "Young Frankenstein?" Most respond affirmative. He then asks everyone to recall, which he then enacts, the scene where Gene Wilder's Dr. Frankenstein introduces Peter Boyle's "monster" to a white tie scientist0filled audience in a theatre. And, of course, the coup de grace after the monster does some rudimentary movements, Wilder and Boyle take off their doc frocks and launch into "Puttin' on the Ritz." At this point Paul would then start lightly singing until the tag line, as done by Boyle, he imitates with a rumbling, hairy chested "PUTTIN' ON DA RIIIIIIITTTZZZ" After we stop laughing, he says his altos delivered just the right formant tone in perfect blend!
No kidding.
Love it!
(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
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