Recently, I wrote a piece on Pandora Radio, a Web service that allows you to create your own personal “radio stations” tailored to your musical taste. I posted a link to “Bingen Radio” on our FaceBook Fan Page, and I invite you to check that out. Now let me pose a question: What music, liturgical or non-liturgical, inspires you as a Catholic or non-Catholic?
I’m prompted to post this question thanks to a couple of reader comments. In particular:“James” offered some personal favorites: Nearly all Gregorian chant (“having sung in a Cathedral choir as a boy”), Henryk Gorecki's “Misere” and his Third Symphony (“a musical response to the Holocaust”), and also the soundtrack to “Into Great Silence.” (The picture is Gorecki, not James.)
“S.” began by recommending Libera’s version of the ”Gloria,” which you can hear by clicking here. When I responded by saying that I found this Gloria especially beautiful (I’m also partial to the “Heritage” Gloria, which we sing in our choir), S. replied with a longer list—
- Vesperae Solennes de Confessore (Coventus Choir, Hayley Westenra)
- Rachmaninov, Vespers, op 37:1 (Choir of King’s College)
- Corpus Christi Carol (Hayley Westenra)
- Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F Major, op 90, 3rd movement
- “Let me Lie” — “May it Be” — “River of Dreams” (Hayley Westenra)
- “Dark Waltz,” from “Phantom of the Opera,” on YouTube with Hayley Westenra
- “And lastly (for now!) in a different vein,” Steven Curtis Chapman’s “‘Cinderella’—written before the death of his daughter, but performed more poignantly afterwards (many YouTube versions)”
