Our new Mass setting was ‘born and raised’ right here in
Shelton, CT!
Last August, the composer of ‘The
Mass of the Prophets and Martyrs’,
a few members of our own St. Joseph’s Little Schola and assorted
music staff met in the church on a sweltering day in August - and
locked the doors.
A recording session was about to begin.
They were joined by two seminarians from the Diocese of
Hartford, Michael Ruminski and Pat Firillo (a former
professional sound engineer), to record the MP3 files you can hear
on St. Joseph’s own website by clicking the New Mass icon. When you
do, you’ll be hearing our organ, our choir, in our building. With
no air conditioning (too noisy) and lots of prayer (‘O God, whom
saints and angels delight to worship in heaven, help your servants
here on earth, and please, no fires sirens in Shelton!’) the
Mass
was recorded in one session. It was so hot the sound engineer had
to call a break to put a fan on the recording unit to cool it down!
The composer of this new setting was born in
Ansonia, earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Church Music from
Stetson University in
FL and a Master’s Degree in Music from SMU, where her
commissioned setting of a Mass was sung for many years in Perkins
Chapel at SMU. A long career in church music included three
published anthems, two by major publishing houses, commissions and
self-published works. Several of those anthems have been heard
here, at St. Joseph. The anthem, ‘Just One Thing’ was sung at the
beginning of the
Divine Mercy Chaplet this year and during Triduum. The
published anthem, ‘Worthy is the Lamb’ was done at Easter, two years
in a row. And this new Mass, ‘The
Mass of the Prophets and Martyrs’,
will be published this Fall in the
Vatican II Hymnal.
The
Mass
can also be listened to on the
Corpus Christi Watershed website (publishers of our Psalms)
at,
http://www.ccwatershed.org/media/pdfs/11/03/04/01-18-56_0.pdf,
where 700 downloads have already been made by church musicians from
around the world using the New Mass translation.
Jeffrey Ostrowski, B
Mus, composer, conductor, and President of Corpus Christi
Watershed, when asked for comment, said, ‘"At last, a musical
setting of the new Mass translation for parishes that is dignified,
inspired, and honors the textual accentuation, yet is still able to
be sung well by congregations! MASS OF THE PROPHETS AND MARTYRS
will be welcomed by Catholics in English-speaking parishes
everywhere." The artist who made the Mass logo,
Michael Patrick of the Catholic ‘Sweetwater
Haven’
blog called it, ‘This deeply moving and traditional composition for
the Mass.’
By now you might suspect that ‘the composer’ is our own Music
Director, Linda H. (Columbkille) Simms, and you’d be right. Like so
many daughters and sons of the Valley who have lived and worked away
for a while, there was that tug back to the four
New England seasons, the old home, traditions and family.
Linda had already been through a translation revision in the 1980’s.
She was concerned that there be just the right Mass to take the
place of the
Heritage Mass
- something with a touch of majesty but not too difficult to learn,
enough repeated parts but not trite or easily worn out, something we
could do on our organ with our resources. In addition, the Catholic
Church has important guidelines for Mass setting that must be
followed. Scanning the new settings available, she couldn’t find
one that met the criteria.
So Linda spent her last year’s vacation week working on the Mass.
Her husband, Doug, one of our Cantors and a computer expert, used
state of the art music software to make a publisher-quality score
for us to read. Ginny Harger, our wonderful secretary and
administrative genius, found a way to fit it all on card stock to
slip into your Missal, and Joe Gorel has uploaded it on our website
so you can even download it to your ipod!
In future weeks, we’ll be having congregational rehearsals to begin
learning
‘The Mass of the Prophets and Martyrs.’
We hope you like it, and it blesses St. Joseph Church for a long
time.
Born and raised, right here in Shelton, CT!
