A Renaissance in Church Music?
Hymn to St. Michael Competition Evokes Music in Church Tradition
BY JOSEPH PRONECHEN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
October 28 - November 3, 2007 Issue | Posted 10/23/07 at 9:47 AM
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NEW YORK — The Feast of the Archangels on Sept. 29 took on an extra dimension for William Conroy and Paul Jernberg this year.
In February, Conroy’s Gift of Faith Foundation announced a contest for composers: Write a hymn using the text of the Prayer to St. Michael.
Reading about the competition in the Register, Jernberg answered the challenge. So did 151 other composers.
His winning composition, “Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel,” received its first public hearing at Mass Sept. 30, in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Manhattan, which was celebrating its 150th anniversary.
“I think it’s a beautiful hymn written in faith and with faith,” commented Father Myles Murphy, pastor.
Conroy was surprised and overwhelmed by the number of entries. He found the quality of the entries made judging no simple task.
“I whittled the selections to the 20 best pieces submitted and turned them over to the judges,” he said. “In my judgment, those 20 final pieces were all worthy of consideration, and all beautiful.”
One of the two judges was EWTN host Father George Rutler, who has written about sacred music. “Most recent music has been emotive or even sentimental, lacking the intellectual sturdiness of objective worship,” he said. “Our music reflects our culture, which is at an aesthetic low ebb. I’m glad to say that the winning hymn is a happy exception. It is fine sacred music.”
Father Rutler, who is pastor of the Church of Our Saviour in Manhattan, said many composers today “do not have good models, and so they produce cocktail lounge music, just as architects produce churches that are theaters instead of temples.”
One of Conroy’s goals was to encourage artists to help return culture to its Christian roots. Jernberg saw a hope for an authentic renewal of Catholic sacred music and art in this country.
“I intended the hymn to have a classical feel, a connectedness to the tradition, but also have a certain vitality and freshness that would speak to people today,” he said. “I had a real concern to make it as universal as possible and not to do something that would please one group and not others. I was writing this hymn to make it a bridge that would work for younger people and older people together, and also different cultural groups.”
He already sees the hymn helping youngsters to pray. He is founding director and musical director at Magnificat Academy & Choir School in Warren, Mass., where the choir recently recorded the hymn on CD.
The renewal of sacred music is an important dimension of the school, founded in 2005 for boys and girls, grades 4 to 12, with the blessing of Worcester Bishop Robert McManus.
“Hopefully, it can be another means this prayer can take root,” Jernberg said of his new hymn.
Jernberg credits his 10 years in Europe, primarily Sweden and France, as among influences on his work as musician and composer. He became a Catholic in 1992, and while working for the Baptist Church in Sweden he regularly associated with a Franciscan monastery that had daily Gregorian chant.
As for primary major influences, he credits the “wonderful benefit of clearly articulated guidelines formulated by the Church,” especially the Second Vatican Council’s Musicam Sacram (Instruction on Music in the Liturgy) and Pius X’s motu proprio Tra le Sollecitudini (On Sacred Music).
“For me, these documents are like trumpet calls that can inspire us to greatness and help us to measure our success in fulfilling our vocation as composers,” he said.
He said the documents note the foundational importance of Gregorian chant and call for new forms that take into account present needs while not ignoring the past.
Pope Benedict
He made his comments around the same time Pope Benedict XVI, in a visit to Rome’s Pontifical Institute for Sacred Music, said the Church needs to guide the development of sacred music, not by “freezing” it in a certain style but by “seeking to combine the legacy of the past with the worthwhile novelties of the present.” The Pope said Oct. 13 that this ideally would “achieve a synthesis worthy of the exalted mission [sacred music] has in the service of God.”
Jernberg said he is “constantly working for a synthesis of artistry, prayer, connectedness to our heritage and holy inspiration.
Conroy found that the people at the Mass where the hymn premiered “very much appreciated” it. One was lifelong parishioner Jeanne Caffrey, who found the melody “beautiful” and the words “so apropos.”
“You just wanted to sit and listen to it,” said Caffrey, who would like to see the St. Michael hymn be part of every Mass.
In fact, the Gift of Faith Foundation’s second competition goal was to inspire use of the hymn at the end of Mass. For more than 80 years, priests and people recited the Prayer to St. Michael after Mass, the only vernacular words they spoke together during or after the liturgy. But when the Mass was reformed in the 1960s, it was omitted. The prayer originated with Pope Leo XIII, who in 1886 directed it to be recited publicly after Mass. He composed it after experiencing a profound, frightening vision of present and future struggles of the Church against the devil.
Two individuals already offered to publish Jernberg’s hymn.
Said the composer, “My fervent prayer and hope is that it’s a little, tiny piece in the greater renewal of sacred music in our country and the Church.”
Staff writer Joseph Pronechen
is based in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Copyright © 2007 Circle Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
