Choir director Nick Chalmers said that “to put it very simply,” providing music at Mass is a means to help people pray more deeply or to pray better. Music in the liturgy is never strictly in the foreground, nor completely in the background either, he said.
“It’s sort of adjacent to the prayerfulness of the faithful and uplifting the liturgy,” said Chalmers, director of choirs at Chesterton Academy in Hopkins and director of music at Annunciation in Minneapolis. Outside of the Mass, there’s an inherent objective beauty to choral music specifically, he said. “I just think that it’s important to consume in our lives all forms of art, sort of in general.”
Nick Chalmers
Chalmers serves as artistic director of the Minneapolis-based Mirandola Ensemble, a professional choral ensemble founded in 2011. He recently joined “Practicing Catholic” radio show host Patrick Conley to discuss choral music and the ensemble’s upcoming performance at Holy Cross in Minneapolis.
“Mirandola” refers to Renaissance philosopher and theologian Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who lived 1463-1494. About 80 percent of the time, Chalmers said, the ensemble performs music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods and earlier music. But in recent years, the ensemble has had a bit of an emphasis on contemporary music as well, he said.
A performance should be an all-encompassing sensory experience, and the venue and lighting are important, Chalmers said. The way the ensemble is positioned at the venue and uses the acoustics also matters — “perhaps singing a piece or two from the back of the church and something from the side.”
“That’s not because people require this,” he said, “but because it does add to the quality and the enjoyment of the performance.”
Choral music was written with the acoustics of the church in mind, Chalmers said.
“And I think there’s an ambient element to this as well,” he said. “You’re in a beautiful space like Holy Cross; you could see beauty. You can smell the incense from the Mass that just got done with. You can hear beauty. You can hear the voices and the instruments echoing — sort of like being at a baseball game, and you smell the hot dogs and you hear the anthem.”
The ensemble will perform sacred works of the Flemish Renaissance 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 23 at Holy Cross. Ticket information for the performance, details of other upcoming performances and samples of music are available at themirandolaensemble.org.
To hear the full interview, listen to this episode of the “Practicing Catholic” radio show. It airs at 9 p.m. Oct. 15, 1 p.m. Oct. 16 and 2 p.m. Oct. 17 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes interviews with Deacon Mickey Friesen, who gives an overview of 50 years of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Venezuelan mission, and Archbishop Bernard Hebda, who discusses the upcoming Synod of Bishops called by Pope Francis and its relationship with the Archdiocesan Synod.
Listen to all of the interviews after they have aired at:
soundcloud.com/PracticingCatholic
tinyurl.com/PracticingCatholic (Spotify)
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