The latest issue of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association’s magazine, One, includes a fascinating article, A Renaissance in Georgia,
reporting on the resurgence of interest in Georgia’s medieval chant tradition and more…
A Renaissance in Georgia
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7 responses to “A Renaissance in Georgia”
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Thank you for posting this! Trying to be as positive as possible –complying with the Holy Father’s request–!
Although the thought does occur to me that having the young people sing ancient chants does speak to the Church’s timelessness. Georgians (and Armenians) are very proud of a Christian heritage stretching way into the first millenium!
Such a revival also might impinge on the time for young people to practice drums and guitars for Mass, at least as certainly the American Catholic musical menu impinges on and robs us of 90 % of our Catholic musical heritage.
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George;
practice drums and guitars for Mass…
They actually DO that?
You have of course heard the old joke…
Q: “How do you make a guitar player turn down the amp?”
A: “Put some sheet music in front of them…”
Couldn’t resist… mea culpa and three Hail Mary’s for me!
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I never ceased to be amazed by the fact that folks can bad mouth liturgical
ensembles and the people who serve in them and no one bats an eye.
But let someone intimate that a person connected with chant or the EF may be closed minded or the like and there is a great hue and cry of “un- Christian” and “lack of charity”!I’m just sayin’…..
from a director of a liturgical ensemble who reads music, studies liturgy and knows the proper volume for her acoustic amp!
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Interesting – I’ve seen the opposite – give comparatively mild criticism to those who perform rock-style music and it’s uncharitable, but call EF folks gay, or homophobic, or both, or anti-woman, or anti-semitic, or clericalist, or idol-worshipers, etc, and it tends to be tolerated.
Maybe we just see what we want to see and in reality one side is no worse than the other in this regard.
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I meant no insult to guitars, etc….
I was trying, badly, to point out that each time a particular musical style or piece is selected, it is necessarily a choice against the myriad of alternatives. When – in a high school Mass or youth Mass – only modern music or hymns penned by Protestants are selected then the end result is to entirely omit our Catholic heritage.
Those who do this are not intending to obliterate our Catholic memory, nor to marginalize us old fogeys, but ntl that is the result.
The Georgians mentioned the article have found a musical style which apparently appeals to all and marginalizes no one.
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This article is on the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. In Georgia, the only rite that is in use that is in union with the Pope is the Latin Rite. There are two Latin Rite Catholic Churches in Tbilisi, the Cathedral which reopened about 10 years ago and Saints Peter and Paul which was never shut down by the Soviets, the only Latin Rite Church not shut-down by the Soviets outside of Moscow. When I visited Saints Peter and Paul in 1999, it was my parish’s sister parish, the Liturgy and music was rather western but in the Georgian language and also Russian.
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Thomas Aquinas had an apt thought for the topic of insult. and who should protest:
“To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.”
When chant musicians defend ensembles and vice versa, we’ll know we’ve arrived. Meanwhile, it’s back to sacrifices, oblations, and non-contrite hearts.
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