The Liturgy in California
THE LITURGY IN CALIFORNIA A FEW years ago, Mr. Redfern Mason, the music critic of the San Francisco Examiner, described, in a private conversation, an interview with Archbishop Hanna, in...
...Thoroughly mastering the Gregorian Chant under Dom Ferretti, together with the history of music and aesthetics, Father Boyle also studied polyphonic music and choral direction under Monsignor Casimiri of Saint John Lateran...
...It is the expressed desire of His Grace...
...Mason found himself in confidential possession of something highly important which he could not write about...
...He put in two years of study at the Pontificial School of Music in Rome, under the late Reverend Angelo de Santi, S J., and later under Abbot Ferretti, O.S.B...
...As the official organ of the diocese of San Francisco, The Monitor justly says: "The Sisters are teaching the children, and it is the children who will do much to revive the chant in the diocese...
...Perhaps the greatest work done by Father Boyle has been the formation of the Schola Cantorum in the Sacred Heart Church in Oakland, where sixty-five boys have been thoroughly trained...
...and vocal teaching methods with Signor di Pietro, one of the masters at the conservatory of Saint Cedlia, Prom Rome Father Boyle went to Solesmes in France, where he studied under Dom Mocquerau and Dom Desrocquettes, following the Benedictine rule while he was at the Abbey, and thus saturating himself with the spirit as well as the practice of the liturgy...
...The cultural mission of the Church was carried out as always it has been done in new countries in addition to the supernatural task of saving souls for the Life Eternal...
...Today he has under his care more than four hundred pupils receiving weekly instructions...
...As The Monitor also remarks: "It is the law of the Church that we should sing the Gregorian Chant...
...Mason's regret, it was a condition of the interview that no publicity was to be given at that time to what was being discussed...
...When Junipero Serra and his Franciscans appeared bearing the Cross, and dotted the cost of California with those missions the mellifluous names of which today, as Charles Warren Stoddard somewhere says, makes die veiry time-table of California railways read like a litany of the saints, they brought art and its civilizing influence with them, together with the Gospel of Christ...
...Art in the Golden State was in the old Catholic days of the mission period intimately concerned with the actual and fundamental affairs of humanity...
...A summer course has been conducted there and one also in the Dominican College of San Rafael, where the liturgical music holds sway...
...Like many another journalist, Mr...
...It should be the greatest pleasure for the pastors and assistants to hear our own music and not the sensuous music of the stage ringing out in our churches...
...Very much to Mr...
...And now it returns, as the lesser yet still glorious manifestations of the Faith always return when the Faith itself is resurgent and positive, as most fortunately it is today, and nowhere more than in this country which was given to the world by the pioneers of the Cross...
...Proceeding to Paris from Solesmes, [Father Boyle studied with Joseph Bonnet, one of the master organists of today, and in London he paid particular attention to the science of cultivating boys' voices under Sir Richard Terry of Westminster Cathedral, perhaps the greatest authority in the world on that subject...
...Time passed without premature disclosure of what was really going on...
...Now, however, the time has come to add the archdiocese of San Francisco to the growing list of Catholic centres where one of the most valuable Church reforms of modern times, that of liturgical music, is being energetically and wisely accomplished...
...Justine Ward has based her magnificent work, which is now displaying its results throughout the country...
...harmony under Monsignor Refice of Saint Mary Major...
...This primary principle is the one upon which Mrs...
...So while a rough plank and a crust of bread were all that Father Junipero or his friars needed for bed or board, they built wonderful temples in the wilderness and made them as beautiful as they could devise, and from them, by the margin of the sea where the surf boomed upon the sand, or amid the sunny quietude of interior valleys, arose the sound of Indian voices singing the plain chant...
...The wisdom of the Archbishop's reticence as to publicity is now clearly apparent...
...Returning to San Francisco, Father Boyle started his work...
...Reverend Edgar Boyle was sent abroad by His Grace several years ago...
...The Sisters of Notre Dame at Belmont are now carrying out all their offices in the pure liturgical music of the Church...
...The latest development is the formation of a Schola Cantorum among the clergy of the archdiocese...
...The Sisters of the Presentation have also taken up the great work, together with the Sisters of the Holy Name, and the Holy Family Sisters, and it is expected that the Ursuline Sisters at Santa Rosa will commence their study of the chant within the very near future...
...That the liturgical music of the Church should rise again in California is most appropriate...
...Redfern Mason, the music critic of the San Francisco Examiner, described, in a private conversation, an interview with Archbishop Hanna, in which that Prelate spoke of his hopes for the development of liturgical music in his diocese and described his tentative plans to realize them...
...the organ with Signof Renzi, the organist of Saint Peter's...
...Robert Louis Stevenson heard their descendants continuing the tradition in the old Mission Church at Carmel-by-the-Sea...
Vol. 3 • April 1926 • No. 24
