Coming up, we're preparing for the final week of Advent and the singing of the O Antivons as we speak with Zachary Turner, Director of Sacred Music at St. Mary's Seminary. Welcome to Around the Archdiocese. Sharing information, insights and stories about our Catholic faith from across the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, you're listening to, Around the Archdiocese.
Here's your host, Sean O'Driskel. Hello and welcome back to another episode. My name is Sean O'Driskel. I'm blessed to serve as the Senior Communications Manager here for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and your host for this show.
This week we are blessed to have with us in the studio Mr. Zachary Turner, who serves as the Director of Sacred Music at St. Mary's Seminary here in Houston. Welcome.
Thank you. It's good to be here. Now, as we are now in the middle of the Advent season, we're coming up on the O Antivons, which is what we're going to be talking about in a minute. But I want to say that back before we get into those, because the whole way that we sing those starts with a larger conversation about specifically your title, Director of Sacred Music, not just music, but sacred music.
What does it mean to be a Director of Sacred Music? Oh, that's a great question. I was hoping you would tell me. Well, I think the distinction needs to be made even between sacred music and religious music.
There's much wonderful religious music out there. It's devotional. It has an appeal. It helps to bring one in a certain mind.
Sacred music, I think, has a liturgical function. It serves the texts in the Liturgy be it the Divine Office or the Mass. And like all analogies, this is probably a poor one. But I think good sacred music functions are really well-tuned to telescope.
If you consider the text of a Liturgy like a heavenly body, let's just take the moon for instance. The purpose of a telescope is to help us to really apprehend and find detail aspects of that. It's finally ended to be a good telescope, certainly, but its purpose is to help us to grasp that. And so those who work in sacred music, I think, have a charge to explore what sacred music is, continue to crack that nut and open that.
But to the service of the Liturgical function of the text, of course, the worship of God's people in Mass and in the Divine Office. So having that Liturgical foundation in focus, what would you say are some of the characteristics of sacred music? What makes something appropriate for the Liturgy? I actually think the best sacred music, if you will, paradoxically brings one to a state of silence, a state of contemplation.
And I don't necessarily mean like a transcendental Zen-like mode, but the vibrations of sacred music help to kind of focus one's mind and attention, particularly to the text that has a primacy in the sense that's what's kind of conveying the Liturgical sense. And, for instance, a good hymns, chant, well thought out, antifons, melodies that are easy to grasp and sing, but also give clarity to what is being sung. That I think lends itself to good sacred music. Is it just a matter of taste then?
Is it I like this type of music, or I prefer this style, or I like that particular setting versus this particular setting? How much is your own personal feelings? How does that relate to sacred music? Yeah, the question of taste.
So I think another analogy, again, probably a weak one, let's take salt, right? Steak is fantastic, right? And of course we place salt on it because it helps to kind of bring out the nature of the steak, right? It magnifies it in a certain sense.
Taste comes from a perspective, but it also has a formative aspect. Music to a certain degree is something that we ingest, that we imbibe, and I think that good music around great text helps to kind of bring the nature of what it is we are seeing, or what we are taking in how it complements it, right? And we discuss aspects of nature, both of music and text, right? Both of food and seasoning, and how they complement each other, and that process of, you know, it leads to a kind of certain contemplation of these things, right?
A process of refinement and discussion, but also just kind of sitting back and a certain kind of maybe even wonder and realization of the truths that are being presented to us, again, whether it be a good steak or a great surgical text. I think it's bigger than just simply taste of perspective, right? It's what it actually does to the listener in response to an encounter. And the church kind of gives us some guidelines when creating sacred music.
I know oftentimes people hear sacred music and they immediately think, chant. What is it about growing a chant that makes it appropriate for the liturgy? Chant has come from traditions, particularly in the Aztec traditions, right? Where you have had men and women set with these texts, in many cases they're actually writing these texts over centuries.
And so, you know, this that we hear, for instance, in a Benedictine kind of tradition, Lexio de Vino, right? They're savoring this, right? They're actually taking this in and they're sitting with it and they're gnawing on it. And also the melodies which emanate from that, I think, fittingly have a certain nature which works well with that, right?
It's not necessarily just about immediate appeal or draw. Those things can be helpful, you know, no question. There's many wonderful hymns, for instance, that kind of catch you. There are wrestling in a certain sense and immediately so.
There's metrichesations which kind of grip us. When it comes to chant, however, I think that that has such a long history of development, along with the church, as she in her mind, has developed liturgical traditions and has contemplated the mystery of the liturgy itself. And music's complementary role in that. So I think approaching something like chant, for instance, with the mind, like, oh, well, this doesn't sound like, you know, particularly interesting, right?
I can't make any meaning out of this. It doesn't sound like what I hear on the radio. That's something that's secondly unfamiliar with. That might be a good thing in some ways, but it's not its purpose, right?
I think what it would, what one ought to do is call themselves in a certain sense and really just start to take it in. There's something about the sacredness when you hear, when you hear the grain chant, you hear those modes that are used in the music. There's something inherently that draws you in a little bit more. There is, and I think, sophistication, you know, as one, I'm an amateur compared to many others, but as one kind of gets into, you know, the modalities, the various modes, the various types of scales that are used, right?
Why are those used? How are they used? You know, you begin to see that no one shances exactly like the other, and it's just a treasure house of wonder. Most of these are composed anonymously, or they come from very, very long traditions.
We'll be discussing the Oantophons. Those are ancient. Not only, I mean, those are even, you know, their ancient references, right, of Christ. The melodies themselves, you know, represent in their modality their particular melody, probably some of the oldest musical expressions that we have in the church.
And so it is this time capsule, and of course, you know, obviously we need to do credence to what things have been added on since right over time and what have you, but at least it still has symbolences of very, very long musical textual liturgical traditions coming through. And so when you're encountering it, you're not encountering something that is supposed to be immediately appealing to, you know, this chronological time, right? This is something that has a kind of eternal weight to it. And so it means you do have to kind of sit and just sit with it.
I do want to ask because we often have people in the parishes and in the pews who will respond to Gregorian Chander even the discussion of sacred music by saying, well, it doesn't lift me up. I don't feel the emotional response. You know, if we play, you know, more contemporary Catholic hymns, that gives me a different emotional response to the liturgy from your experience, the seminarians, the young men that are coming in to be formed for the priesthood. What is their response to the sacred music program?
Oh, well, it's been enthusiastic. I mean, they're a robust group of singers, and it's an honor and privilege to be working with them. We still manage to have many, many men, you know, sometimes the rector or whoever celibre Massumus Sunday, you know, may make the comment that the chapel, the choir and the tip and all sitting that's down there is somewhat empty because many of the men are up in the choir lot singing, you know. So I get in the choir and they're actually in the sense that they're, you know, although we have visitors like for our recent lessons and girls, that becomes very convenient because we're available.
But no, they sing heartily and they engage heartily. Those that are singing in school, but even those, you know, who may have other jobs or, you know, school is not their thing, for instance. I noticed that they participated enthusiastically even, you know, down in the nave. So I think it's been very healthy.
And I've been pleased with just the response overall. You mentioned school for those who aren't familiar with what that is. Yeah, school, school, so this is a specialized group, if you will, I mean, it's volunteers, those who would like to sing, you know, the motets or the chance that we prepare for each Mass will come together. We have weekly rehearsals and we'll fine tune those and rehearse those.
And, you know, that comprises about 17 men, 17 to 20 men at a given time. Again, they're really called upon to a lot throughout the house. So, you know, perhaps sometimes I'll be left bring her serving what have you, but really, I couldn't be more pleased with the dedication of everyone that's involved with the music there. Now, last year, we had the opportunity to work with you and the school to record the O antiphons, which we mentioned earlier.
Can you tell us a little bit about the O antiphons, what they are and, you know, what their importance is during the seventh season? Sure. Well, the O antiphons are Old Testament prefigurments, right, of Christ. And so the church beginning on December 17th uses them as antiphons for the, the chemical of Mary Lamonificat, that's on Vespers, Vespers is the hour in the Divine Office.
It's unusually late afternoon or evening. That's prayed by the church. And so the antiphons, but antiphons is a kind of a return call, right? So you begin with the antiphon and you sing them on Vespers, you end with the antiphon or of course, if you're doing a song or what have you.
These particular antiphons are as the intensity is rationed up as we kind of crescendo in a certain sense to Christmas, they begin on December 17th and we get to these, these prefigurments starting with, I think it's a wisdom and moving with various, you know, typologies, types as we finally get to Emmanuel, which is on December 23rd, I believe. And the name of the antiphons comes as you said, because each antiphon begins with O. Correct. Wisdom O.
That's right. They're in the vocative, right? So it's this invocation. It's O and then of course, the imperative come, right?
In many ways, they function up. Father Earthling, who's our director of the surgical formation, you know, he's the expert on this, but I was kind of thinking on this. They function a little bit like a collet, for instance. This is the prayer that we hear before the readings at Mass, right?
You may have an invocation of God in some form and then, you know, grant, we beseech the right. And then of course, you're in the formula. This is somewhat like that, I suppose, right? You know, O Lord of Nations, O root of Jesse, O wisdom, and then come and, you know, and then the rest of the antiphon, which exists a little differently, I suppose, from other antiphons.
Which, you know, may be a part of scripture outlining an aspect of the gospel, for instance, on Sunday, or the reading that is occurring on a given Sunday. This is a very direct and I think intense invocation. And again, I use that word crescendo, you know, the beauty of it is, you know, this is a retrieval of all of these types in the Old Testament that we were sound with the magnificote, right? The magnificote of all of things, which is, you know, Mary is recording the gospel, is singing during the visitation.
And so it's, uh, this, this theme that kind of washes over the magnificote as you're singing it and then you return to it. That's beautiful. That's absolutely beautiful. Now, I know when we did the recording and when there's some, you sung them in Latin.
Correct. Why Latin? I know often with a grain chant, it's done in Latin and that's un purposefully, but what is it about Latin for these chants that I know for some people, it makes it feel almost like it's a little inaccessible. You know, if I don't speak it, if I don't know the language, then I don't know what I'm singing.
So how am I supposed to allow the music to draw me deeper into the words or the prayer? I think encountering just the universality of the Latin, right? And our church is a universal one and that these melodies that we sing are the garment in which they come to us, right? I think there's something, as you sing through it, as you sit with it, you realize the latent beauty and its expression.
And it's not so difficult. I mean, for instance, you know, oh, translates to, oh, in English. Very, very literal translation there. You know, oh, oh, stop the enciame, oh wisdom.
I think that if you do, if you, if you strive just a little bit, right? And maybe just have a little patience and give yourself the benefit of giving it a chance, right? I'm speaking on a very kind of mundane, maybe practical level. You can begin to make these correlations that open a rich world, right?
I mean, the reason why we go back to the classics of anything is a little bit like reading a great book or some other classic movies, right? You know, Casablanca, that's a great movie. Love that film. You know, it took me many, many years until I finally watched it.
I wish I would have watched a lot sooner. It's a great film. And it contextualizes so many other films forming that come after it, right? And now I have an appreciation for what it means to make a great film and great acting, right?
And this is a classic, right? It will always, you know, because it's a bit, it does what a film should do, right? I think there's a little bit of that, right? When we're working with singing, reading, sitting with contemplating, countering, Latin.
I think just to kind of reject it offhand because of preferences, I can respect those, right? You do yourself a disservice. You know, imagine, you know, come on, you faithful, right? We can sing that in English.
It is immensely pleasing to sing in Latin, right? A dis-defe-de-lays. There's a certain kind of exuber, it's a certain strength to it. You know, it'll come in manual, which is, you know, Neil's poetic translation in English, right?
But you can also, it's a Latin hymn, they need any Emmanuel. There's something very pleasing about singing that in Latin. I think if you give it a chance, you'll find that. Knowing that these antiphons, like you said, have in some sense, you know, we're talking to 8th century.
We're talking 1,300 years of every advent around the world, people praying, seeing these exact same words, and using the Latin, that universality, and that history that really unites us to really that thread, that ongoing story of Christianity, that is to remember that the incarnation, while it happened at one point in history, is something that we continue to experience and celebrate and remember year after year, because that incarnation is still so much needed in our own lives, that we still need that presentation of Christ coming into our lives, to be present here with us, to walk with us. And so these antiphons, going back to those, as you said, those Old Testament pre-figurments, it's that reminder of we're part of something so much larger than ourselves, and so much beyond this one moment in time. I think you said that really well. I mean, tying that into the tradition, right?
It's very profoundly mysterious and wonderful, and it's inevitable, really, to think that we can be singing something that was sung, you know, 1,300 years ago, and that's not just kind of a polyanopion of pie-in-the-sky kind of thing, right? We're carrying on a tradition. That's a profound responsibility. It can be a profound way.
It's a profound privilege. We get to do this, right? And so I thank you for paying that in the light of carrying on the greater tradition, you know, to access that, not to toss it off-hand. Oh, well, this is not immediately kind of accessible.
That's not its point, you know, it's that, you know, kind of individual accessibility is not the point, but, you know, you're actually called, right? There's an invocation, right? You're called to carry this on, and it's exhilarating, right? Especially when you do it with all of your might and you do it well.
There's something about that responsibility that pass on the faith and when the sacred music becomes part of our evangelization, it becomes part of our catechesis, in addition to an integral part of the liturgy itself, this liturgy that not only glorifies God, but is meant to sanctify us. And a huge thank you to Mr. Zachary Turner for joining us on today's episode. As a special gift for our listeners, we're actually going to be releasing the recordings of the Skola at St.
Mary Seminary, singing the O'Antiphons, one each day from December 17th through the 23rd, right here on our podcast. We're also going to be putting the videos on our YouTube channel, and links to everything will be on the website and social media. So join us in prayer as we continue in preparation for the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior, this Christmas. And, as always, if you want to learn more about the ministries and offices of the Archdiocese, you can find us online at archgh.org.
That's A-R-C-H-G-H.org. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time here on Around the Archdiocese.