Saturday, September 09, 2006

or maybe the mass in B minor?

It's a shame it's too long to be a real mass, I promise I'd sit through it all if it were ever done as such. And it's a shame that such beauty would be out of place in Protestant congregations today. The only way Bach can make any entrance into a sanctuary [or "gymtuarium", I think, was somebody else's clever term from the comments on the ochlophobist's previous web-log, but don't know whose] in these last days is as a concert piece completely divorced from the actual liturgical life of a church except insofar as beautiful things done well glorify God whenever they're done [S.D.G.!].

But Palestrina sometimes is performed as a real mass, and that will have to do, if I can ever find it being done.

4 comments:

Stacy said...

S.D.G.????

Mr. G. Z. T. said...

Soli Deo gloria. He wrote those initials at the end of his manuscripts.

Stacy said...

Do you like the Tallis Scholars?

Mr. G. Z. T. said...

who couldn't love people devoted to Renaissance sacred music? I'm no connoisseur or anything like that, though.