CHURCH MUSIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 15, 18 January 1941, Page 11

CHURCH MUSIC

SUMMER SCHOOL

CONCLUDING SESSIONS

The summer school of Catholic church music conducted by the Church Music Commission at St. Patrick's College, Wellington, completed its fourday session yesterday.

Father A. Loughnan, of Dunedin, concluded his lectures on Plainsong and he also rehearsed again the various sections of the Masses and soras of hymns.

. Mr. Foster Browns, oi Christchurch, spoke on polypnonic music. He stressed the need for the best mu.3ic and the highest effort in all the work done. He showed how, from the modal scales, harmony was gradually evolved and instanced specially the work of Palestrina and Byrd, the greatest polyphonic composers in Italian and English history.

He played as a demonstration part of Byrd's five-part Mass, and some of Thomas Weelkes, mainly madrigals. He also rehearsed a lovely motet of Palestrina, all present forming the choir.

At the close of the discussion, his Grace Archbishop O'Shea said the success of the summer school had been marked, and he was grateful to the three lecturers, each outstanding in his work, for the inspiring help given to the school. He expressed the opinion that a result would be a return in time to the ideal set forward by Pope Pius X, and stressed ths value of such, music to worship in the Church. Father F. L .Dignan, chairman of the Church Music Commission, recalled the close interest taken by his Grace in the work of the commission and also thanked the lecturers for their painstaking work during the school. He said he hoped that one result.would be to put out completely much music that was not good and that soon the music of the Church would be what the Church authorities desired.