Scott Walters, the Rector at Calvary Episcopal Church, expressed his astonishment and gratitude, stating that they had almost given up hope. He said that even though they were people of faith, they had been on the verge of accepting their loss.

We are grateful beyond words," he shared. "We do not seek revenge, but rather, to move forward and heal." Read more

News outlets reported that Calvary Episcopal Church in downtown Memphis had loaded a truck with nearly 2,000 organ pipes for transport to Spencer Organ Company in Boston, where they would be restored. Instead, the church discovered on Sunday that the truck and the almost 90-year-old pipes were gone.

Spencer Organ Company owner Joseph Rotella said in a police report that the pipes have limited value to whoever has them. Read more

Expert presenters offered keynotes, workshops, showcases, and over 45 dynamic breakout sessions to over 330 participants from all over Australia and New Zealand, covering a wide range of topics and musical genres. Read more

Margaret Hurley was awarded a Benemerenti Medal, a decoration awarded by the Pope and sent straight from the Vatican, during a service at New Plymouth's St Joseph's church on Sunday. Continue reading

Now I admit, the blessing of the palms and the reading of the Passion we're moving, and the homily was first rate!

But, as good as it was, two hours later I'd have to really think to remember the homily! But that hymn.

Four hours later I was still humming it!

I couldn't get it out of my head! Not just the tune, the words, echoing in my brain.

Even now as evening hastens on the chorus impresses itself upon me!

A Methodist Hymn, doctrinally sound, but a Methodist hymn all the same.

With the exception of a hand full of Latin hymns and a few Marian songs, you'll only hear them if you go to Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, modern Catholic Church music is, at best, forgettable, at worst heretical, and universally unsingable.

I couldn't fail to notice that even on that powerful old anthem, the cantor and I were singing a duet.

Most Catholic Church music is simply a recycling of insipid folk rock, left over from the 1960's.

We're talking stuff Peter Paul and Mary wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole!

Remember, Peter Yarrow wrote that beautiful hymn, "Morning Has Broken," I used to hear that occasionally at Mass! And the late Dave Brubeck wrote an amazing "Pie Jesu" for Pope Saint John Paul II, so "church" music doesn't have to be banal!

I've agonized watching caters struggle with tortured harmonies and award lyrics.

If a professional can't sing this stuff, how can we expect the congregation to??? Is it any wonder Catholics don't sing?

I grew up protestant, mostly Methodist and Presbyterian, we had great music.

One of my favorite hymns growing up was "Faith of Our Fathers"

Little did I know it was a Catholic hymn!

I thought it was about protestants facing persecution from Catholics. Turns out it was quite the opposite, English Catholics persecuted for the Faith! Wow!

This great hymn had been co opted!

To my point, I was ruminating all day about that great old hymn.

When I was a child in my Presbyterian Sunday School, we learned to sing the Gospel before we could even read, "Jesus Loves Me," "Jesus Loves the Little Children."

It's not just in church, we've always learned through song, many of us first learned our ABC's through a song.

This teaching method is ad old as the scriptures themselves, the Acrostic psalms are organized alphabetically, with a section for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

All the verses in each section began with the same letter.

Remember the Psalms were sung; Jewish children learned their faith and their alphabet at the same time!

John Westley, an Anglican minister started the Methodist Church.

He was, by all accounts, a fiery preacher, but his brother, Charles was a hymn writer without equal!

His hymns taught the faith to millions, Methodist took off among the illiterate poor of England!

John couldn't be everywhere, but the hymns of Charles Westley, sang Methodist across the world!

Song are a powerful tool for evangelization.

Martin Luther turned a German beer dining song into an anthem that turned the world upside down, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God".

Wesleyan songs along with not a few powerful Catholic hymns sang to my soul as a young boy!

I remember singing them at the top of my lungs while swinging on my back yard swing set!

I internalized the content of these great old hymns!

As I indicated earlier I'm a convert to The Catholic Faith, and over the years since, I've watched the Church borrow from Protestantism, mostly the wrong things, discipleship programs, fund raising, etc. But we cling to our insipid, banal , just plain bad folk music!

I have always loved the music of Bach, he wrote church music that reinforced the sermon!

There's powerful, single music out there that is doctrinally correct and orthodox!

Music that teaches the faith! Music that can reinforce a good homily, or overcome a bad one! Music that can teach the faith and set the faithful on fire for the Gospel!

I have a modest proposal!

Recover our Catholic musical patrimony! Recapture those great anthems of the faith stolen from us by protestants or relegated to the musical dust bin, in favor of bad folk music!

• By Robert Atkinson, M.I. First published Catholic365
• Image: Maxwell Fernie Trust

Loren Patterson enthusiastic performance in a church choir stole the show. Have look at the video
(Click on the picture. You may need to turn off the mute.)

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Peter was born in England but travelled to New Zealand in 1958 to take up the position of Lecturer in Music at Auckland University, which he held from 1958-1973.

Later he became Professor of Music until 1982 (1974-1982). During this time he directed Auckland's Dorian Choir. He was then Director of Music at St Paul's Cathedral in Wellington (1983-89) Continue reading

He is only the second New Zealander to win the competition, after New Zealand-born organist Dame Gillian Weir in 1964.

In 2009, as an 18-year-old, Gaynor was the first recipient of the Maxwell Fernie Centenary Award.

Fernie was the director of music at St Mary of the Angels from 1958 until his death in 1999.

The trust continues Fernie's legacy by awarding scholarships to students of the pipe organ, choral music and conducting.

As a young boy, Gaynor learned the piano for a while but was transfixed by the power of the organ when he was listening to a concert at the Wellington Town Hall.

His mother thought it was unusual, but she found him an organ teacher at St Paul's Cathedral, where from the age of 11 he learned to play. He went on to be honorary sub organist there, later working as the organist at St Mary of the Angels.

In May, while visiting New Zealand, Gaynor gave a recital in St Mary of the Angels on the newly refurbished Maxwell Fernie organ.

It was the organ's first recital after the church reopened following its earthquake-related work.

Douglas Mews, artist teacher in organ at the New Zealand School of Music, says St Albans is probably the most famous organ competition in the English-speaking world.

Winning St Albans launched a huge career for Weir: "So I imagine Tom's career, which was already very successful, will be rocketing to the stars now," Mews says.

Held every two years in the historic city north of London, the two-week long, multi-round competition ends with three finalists giving a solo recital, then playing a concerto with the Royal Academy of Music Chamber Orchestra at St. John's Smith Square in London.

Sources

• Stuff
• Thomas Gaynor
• Stuff
• The Masons
• WelCom
• The Maxwell Fernie Trust
• Image: Event Finder

On Sunday at his beloved Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, Peter Gilmour received a Papal award, the Benemerenti, which translates from Latin to meaning great work. Continue reading

Sir James MacMillan will conduct singers in his St Anne's Mass at the 5.30pm Mass in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral on 23 July.

He will speak later at the Music Centre adjacent to the church. The event runs from 4-8pm, starting with rehearsals.

A CD of MacMillan's work was recently featuring in the top ten on Radio New Zealand Concert's Classical Chart.

He has previously conducted the NZSO, but on this visit to New Zealand he is conducting the National Youth Orchestra.

"I have always enjoyed working with young musicians, and have written for them over the years in various ways. I'm always keen to find out what new music is like in the various countries I visit."

"I especially enjoy performing new work by my younger colleagues"

MacMillan was first internationally recognised in 1990. His prolific work has since been performed and broadcast around the world.

He was Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic from 2000-2009 and Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Kamer Filharmonie until 2013.

MacMillan composed a congregational setting of the Mass which was used when Pope Benedict XVI visited the UK to beatify Blessed John Henry Newman.

He is a committed Catholic and his music reflects his Faith, Scottish heritage, social conscience and close connection with Celtic folk music.

The Catholic Herald named him Catholic Herald's Catholic of the Year 2015.

"We are honouring him for his fight against the new secular establishments, in the United Kingdom and especially in Scotland, that mock and marginalise the Catholic faith that Sir James has always upheld, whatever his political leanings."

Source

• Catholic Diocese of Christchurch
• New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
• New Zealand Catholic
• Voxy
• Catholic Herald

Image: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Catholics involved in school and parish music were invited to register for Exalt, a weekend of music workshops, time for Mass, adoration, along with free-form worship.

Feedback was positive from six of the conference participants. Continue reading in NZ Catholic

"I would love if this conversation would inspire people who are writing these beautiful… gospel songs, write a song about their bad marriage.

Write a song about how they're pissed off at the government. Because that's what God wants from you," Bono said.

"Why I am suspicious of Christians is because of this lack of realism." Continue reading

But even more potent, I'd argue, is church music that isn't so much cheap as embarrassingly bad.

I can't speak for other denominations, but I'm convinced that the distinctive awfulness of the music in many Catholic parishes helps explain why Mass attendance has fallen off a cliff since the 1970s.

I'm lucky. I live in a London parish where the priest can tell the difference between a good hymn and a bad one. The tragedy is that so many priests either can't or, more likely, don't want to upset the choir by banning the dispiriting rubbish written "in the spirit of Vatican II".

The choice of music at Mass matters as much as the quality of the sermon. That's always been my opinion, anyway, and recent experiences have only served to confirm it.

At the 9.30 Sunday Mass a few weeks ago we sang "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken". The tune is by Joseph Haydn. He wrote it as an unofficial Austrian national anthem and was so proud of it that he used it as the basis for the slow movement of his "Emperor" String Quartet.

It was the last music he played, falteringly on the piano, before he died.

Later the Germans stole it and sang it to the words "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles". It's still their national anthem, though funnily enough that particular verse has been dropped.

But I digress. The organist at this Mass was a professional musician who revealed the lovely proportions of this apparently simple hymn, on which Haydn worked extremely hard.

And people sang - not lustily, exactly, but loud enough to be heard. It's a congregation of many nationalities; I doubt they knew the words (I certainly didn't); but they recognised the tune and liked it. Hearing it made my day. Continue reading

• Damian Thompson is associate editor of The Spectator and editorial director of the Catholic Herald

Sister Mary Winefride Blake was a teacher at St Mary's College in Wellington New Zealand for many years.

She says a highlight of her long career was founding St Mary's Schola, which became a major source of entry for young singers into church choirs and other regional choirs.

From 1953 until 1992 this group of 24 college girls, aged 14 to 17, were taught skilfully to sing in beautiful harmonies.

She also trained individual singers, some of whom went on to become notable performers in New Zealand and Internationally. They included Andrea Creighton, Suzanne Green, Val Sinclair and Rosaleen Hickmott. Even now she has one or two students.

From 1944 till 1964, she organised concerts in the Wellington Town Hall. She conducted the students from behind a black screen because it was not considered appropriate for nuns to be seen in public at night.

Sister Winefride was born in Kelburn on March 14, 1914, grew up in a musical house.

"My grandmother was very, very musical and my aunts. My father used to sing duets," she said.

She was trained as a singer before she entered St Mary's Convent on her 19th birthday in 1933 . She became a Sister of Mercy in 1936.

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

The style of worship is not their primary focus, wrote Dr Thom Rainer in the Christian Post.

Their focus is on theologically rich music, authenticity and quality in worship, which reflects adequate preparation in time and prayer.

What they want is from music in worship is that it has "rich content", Dr Rainer writes.

"They desire to sing those songs that reflect deep biblical and theological truths," he continued.

They also desire authenticity in a worship services.

"They can sense when congregants and worship leaders are going through the motions."

And they will reject such perfunctory attitudes altogether," he noted.

They also want a quality service, which reflects this authenticity.

This will reflect the preparation of the worship leaders spiritually and in time of preparation.

Dr Rainer's conclusions were based on research with 1200 young people in the millennial bracket.

He is president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States.

He wrote that "millennial Christians, and a good number of seekers among their generation, are gravitating to churches where the teaching and preaching is given a high priority".

"They are attracted to churches whose focus is not only on the members, but on the community and the world.

"Inwardly focused congregations will not see many millennials in their churches."

Millennials will "walk away from congregations that are still fighting about style of music, hymnals or screen projections, or choirs or praise teams", Dr Rainer wrote.

"Those are not essential issues to millennials, and they don't desire to waste their time hearing Christians fight about such matters."

Dr Rainer has co-authored a book about the millennial generation with his son, Jess.

There are about 79 million "millennials" in the United States, making this America's "largest generation".

Sources

• Christian Post
• Image: Times Free Press

With his band Seventh Angel he toured the world and shared a record label with metal giants such as Metallica and Slayer.

Now you might think that a minister wouldn't mention such a past that much, or would even try to hide it, but not Broomhead. He is now the vicar of the Order Of The Black Sheep, a heavy metal church in Chesterfield, UK.

As uncompromising as his favorite music genre, the church focuses on uniting followers through their love of metal, being 'as uncomfortable as possible for people who'd go to an ordinary church' at the same time. Continue reading

He says that the album's title, 'Into the Deep' describes the connection that his music makes with listeners, even with those who have no religious beliefs.

Malcolm said, "We never expected the whole charts thing to happen. It came out of the blue. It was an unexpected and gratuitous event. I was amazed at how quickly it became something I wanted to manufacture and control."

"I was reminded of the Israelites in the desert. God was feeding them with manna that fell from the heavens. The only rule was that you couldn't take anymore than you needed for that day (except the day before the Sabbath). If you did, it would go off and make you sick. The Israelites had to trust in God's provision more than their own preparedness and planning. They had to believe in the faithfulness of God and his constancy. They had to relinquish control. They must have found it hard. I know I do."

Source

• Voxy
• OneVoice.org.nz