A Fount of Culture
Vernon, Grenville
426 THE COMMONWEAL September 8, 1926 tions, unfinished remarks, exclamations, to give the A FOUNT...
...It is speakers really had to say...
...is the proper phrase...
...But in Babbitt, Mr...
...but when you pin the speaker in ages from six to fourteen...
...not in the least mean that it is not also a world of The Pius X School, made possible through the devotion and action...
...I think, as I said, that they are mistaken...
...children of the parish school of the Church of the Annunciation There is a vast deal of talk in life that is a futile waste are all trained in Gregorian singing by students of the regular winter course of the Pius X School-these students qualiof energy (it is found as commonly as anywhere else fying in this way as practical teachers of liturgical music and in "literary circles") but there is another kind of talk at the same time training a large body of children in the that is itself action...
...and thus the session just that novel the characters did talk almost as they would ended has been peculiarly true to the purposes of the institution have talked in real life-with the same vagueness, As the 178 students, of whom fifteen were priests, came repetitions and aimlessness...
...The amazing vividness of love for the Gregorian Chant which the Pius X School aims Babbitt seems to me largely due to the fact that in to spread throughout our churches...
...In this way the Pius X School at The business man dictates a letter of great importance once educates its own students toward a mastery of the forms to his stenographer, or in conference with his associates of liturgical music permitted by the Motu Proprio, trains a arrives through spoken words at a crucial decision...
...In short, conversation in novels is a New York City, ought to be far more widely known than trick...
...but their action is al- These girls, upon their graduation, are competent in their most entirely through words, largely spoken words...
...turn to become teachers...
...426 THE COMMONWEAL September 8, 1926 tions, unfinished remarks, exclamations, to give the A FOUNT OF CULTURE effect of actuality...
...but otherwise, of all the mass of spoken words that would have been poured out by By GRENVILLE VERNON living men and women of the kind and under the cir- T HE extraordinary work, a work both religious and culcumstances depicted, only those that reveal their tural, which is being accomplished by the Pius X School speakers' personalities and push the story onward may of Liturgical Music, at the College of the Sacred Heart in be employed...
...These children, about five hundred, range is a common phrase...
...The studies...
...Every one of these students will return home-not only with a desire ingenuous as to be puerile...
...and as his thesis itself for reforming the music in their parish churches, but with was just their aggressive futility it was actually helped a knowledge of how to set about doing it-a knowledge fostered by their being permitted to run on in that lifelike way...
...pression of hearing the speakers' voices...
...In addition, the Justine Ward down to what kind of man he means you usually dis- High School has an enrolment of thirty graduates of the cover that he does not mean a bricklayer or a plumber parish school, chosen because of their brilliancy in musical but a successful business man or a manufacturer...
...in the pure Gregorian that Catholic liturgical music reaches It may be admitted that here, too, a little vividness its summit of achievement...
...is that it is not facts themselves...
...And it is always in America, might, during its summer session, give itself withthe writer, a different person from the speaker, who out compromise to the ideal...
...I like a man who does things," Gregorian style...
...It is, indeed, scarcely less a trick than the it is at present in Catholic circles...
...Justine There is a further objection that is often made to Ward, Dom Virgil, and the other teachers at the school, but the use of much conversation in novels, which deserves by daily practical demonstrations of Gregorian singing by a consideration, though it seems to me a fallacy...
...A novel treating of this society-and most generosity of Mrs...
...The real life...
...The desire that the Pius X School, the only school of its kind trick is not invariably convincing...
...Justine Ward, and under the splendid direcnovels written by members of it will perforce treat tion of Mother G. Stevens, is already one of the most brilof it-can hardly disregard the fact...
...liant exemplars of Catholic culture in the new world...
...Sin- from dioceses in all parts of the union, it is abundantly eviclair Lewis was dealing with people so simple and dent what a power for good the course has been...
...It is of good omen that Mother Stevens, the director of The truth is that the world in which nearly all the school, is already in receipt of requests for the furnishing those live who are apt to see this article is a world of such teachers-these requests coming from all parts of the almost entirely made up of talk, and that this does United States, and one from as far away as New Zealand...
...latter are, in fact, men of action...
...and those who make the objection are has given the Pius X School a distinction which is probably those who protest equally against the same thing in unique-not only in America but in Europe as well...
...Holy Father himself that all other forms of music permitted But it is a perfectly fair trick, since it gives, with by the Motu Proprio of 1903 be omitted in favor of what their own revealing turns of phrase, all that the may well be denominated a "counsel of perfection...
...and it was the Holy Father's is lost by the writer's selection and condensation...
...body of children capable of singing it, and makes possible the the manufacturer "barks an order" (I believe that education of the most capable of these children so that they also may become teachers of what they have learned...
...but talk, talk, talk It is this practical instruction in liturgical singing which about facts...
...Yet, despite all obstacles, development skilful writers occasionally, but warily, the summer session just closed drew to it no less than 17& make of it by summarizing a conversation in the third students, while the regular yearly course had an enrolment person in such manner as to give the reader the im- of more than one hundred and fifty...
...Talk!-but equally action...
...It is, in the last analysis, the is doing the selecting...
...not only by the lectures of Mother Stevens, Mrs...
...This choir of 200 children of the Church of the Annunciation...
...He hadn't, The summer session has been devoted entirely to instruction in the Gregorian Chant, as it was the suggestion of the she said, done what she expected-oh, he hadn't...
Vol. 4 • September 1926 • No. 18
