Living Water College Sacred Choral Music Program
Joseph Lara attended the Living Water College Sacred Choral Music Program in August 2012, and embraced every aspect of the program. Though young, he quickly grasped the importance of integrating his art with his faith and right thinking. Here are his thoughts at the culmination of two intensive weeks.
-Kenneth Noster, President, Living Water College of the Arts
For as long as I can remember, I have loved classical music. Even in a car seat, and throughout my early childhood, my parents would have a CD close at hand just in case I were to get cranky, and “The Four Seasons” or “The Magic Flute” would thoroughly soothe me. Through failures and triumphs, projects and events, I have listened to classical music (I am listening to Handel’s “Messiah” as I write this). Classical music has been with me everywhere.
Well, that is, almost everywhere.
You see, I am a Roman Catholic and, like most Catholics, have grown up with hymnals like “Glory and Praise” and “Catholic Book of Worship 3” and have sung from a collection of no more than 45 hymns, the ones everyone seems to have memorized. I, like most Catholics, have never encountered at Mass any classical music from the over 1000 years of Catholic musical tradition. I have grown up loving classical music, but I have never experienced it in the most important place: the Mass. But I, like most Catholics, just ignored this fact and continued singing “church” music. I didn’t question it, and neither did any one else in my parish.
However, all this changed with the Sacred Choral Music Program at Living Water College of the Arts. There, I learned what can be sung at Mass, and I learned how to sing it. I also learned about the philosophy of music, and why it is so important to the Church and to humanity. I learned why humans perceive beauty as it is, and I was given hints as to why beauty was so captivating, why the classical music I had grown up with moved me. Most importantly, I came to know more of Christ himself.
The beauty that lay behind those amazing Handel arias, piercing chords, and vibrant voices that I came to love was really Him, but I couldn’t see it before, I couldn’t make the connection. From my experience, “Church” music was always folksy or pop-inspired. Of course I had heard of Mass composers such as Palestrina and Bach, but they always existed in faraway lands like Italy and Germany, in concert halls, but certainly not at Mass.
Joseph Lara, centre
At the Sacred Choral Music Program, I realized I was not alone. There were many like me, with their images of classical music and liturgical music separated by a bottomless ravine. We learned and sang, and to tell you the truth, no type of music felt better suited to the sacrifice of the Mass. We felt not only united as a choir but as the body of Christ, as cells making up a single organism. I felt that I was truly praising and adoring Christ, being part of his body and still raising my voice unto Him. My parts in the choir were distinct from the other parts (as each part of the choir has its own job), but I still felt part of a whole, a cohesive and organic unit. It’s fulfilling, and I feel that no musician should live without experiencing it at least once.
The community at Living Water is profoundly Catholic in prayer and charity; but that didn’t matter most. What really mattered was that I found an expression of Christ that I have been craving my entire life, but hadn’t really seen until those glorious moments when I was singing Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus” for and to Him.
In the end, finding Him and knowing Him is really all that matters.
Following the two week program in Sacred Choral Music, the Living Water College Choir sang during Mass at St. Joseph’s Basilica, Edmonton. This video features the live recording, and students, including Joseph Lara, sharing what the program has meant to them personally.
