Catholic Music

The Catholic Church has a very long history of great music. Unfortunately, many parishes today limit the selections sung at Mass to songs written within the last 30 years, ignoring all the beautiful chants and sacred hymns that have been sung for hundreds of years. The parish to which my wife and I formerly belonged was one of these parishes. We have since joined a different parish where the choir sings a nice range of music, including many traditional chants and hymns. My wife recently joined this choir. This past Sunday was her first time singing with them. They sounded great! After Mass, she came down from the choir loft with a few sheets of music that she was to practice for future Masses. I was quite excited to see William Byrd’s arrangement of Ave Verum Corpus. I’ve included a video of this beautiful composition below.
This, of course, has left me wondering why other parishes ignore all this great music from the past and only sing songs written since the second Vatican Council. Encourage your pastors and choir directors to preserve our great culture and traditions!
In the meantime, listen to the song below and read the book, Why Catholics Can’t Sing.