Musically speaking...

For those of my colleagues who have yet to discover the Choral Public Domain Library (henceforth in this blog referred to as CPDL), I suggest you become intimately familiar with it quickly.

For too long, one of the biggest obstacles to (or excuses for not) building a quality music program in a church is the cost of purchasing the music. http://www.cpdl.org has thousands upon thousands of wonderful scores that have entered the public domain, and I will cite it very regularly in the "Musically speaking" posts. All of these scores are free to print and copy.

In these latter days of Ordinary Time, as we begin to ponder the inevitable final days of Earth's existence, there are many choral pieces to choose from.

One text that is rarely used anymore, but that is quite appropriate to this time of year is Estote fortes in bello. The translation is below:

Be valiant in war
and fight the ancient serpent
and you shall enter the everlasting kingdom.
Alleluia.

The text is strongly militant, which could well be why it is rarely used and nearly never set to music any longer, but the texts of the orations and readings describe the Church in a struggle against evil and the eventual victory.

There are two fairly well known settings of the text, neither of which is painfully difficult. One by Victoria and one by Italian composer Luca Marenzio, who was far more renowned for his madrigals than his sacred music.

For those choirs with limited resources, consider Palestrina's Jesu Rex Admirabilis, a lovely simple motet for SAB Choir.

For many parishes, November is "Stewardship month". Now, I am not at all a fan of making the entire Mass focus on stewardship. Frankly, a nicely-worded homily does just fine. However, for those parishes that simply must have music that talks about stewardship, there's no reason to not have quality music. Consider Christopher Tye's Give Almes of Thy Goods. The piece is simple, lovely, and easily fits into the "stewardship" category.

If you are ever looking for a piece for a particular topic, event, or scriptural reference, please always feel free to email me at adam@starofthesea.net and I'll address it on a future post as well as directly.