Anniversary

On a hot, HOT June day in 2000, The Church of the Transfiguration in Orleans, Gloriae Dei Cantores' home church, was dedicated.  We were packed in like sardines, standing room only, to celebrate the day we had been waiting, planning, working and hoping for for over 10 years!  You could practically taste the anticipation in the air - the electricity of joy contained, like a caged tiger, poised and ready to explode free as soon as the latch was lifted.  Where now, brilliant colored mosaic and fresco tells the tale of our heritage of faith, bare concrete walls held us, bouncing back the sounds of our celebration.

A bishop's staff on a bronze door, words of proclamation, a swirl of banners and the swell of people pressing through the doors.....and the music!  From the peaks and valleys of the Mass by Samuel Adler, to the soaring melodies of hymn tunes by Bruce Saylor and Mike Hale, to the other-worldly shimmer of Dominic Argento's "The Vision" with text from Dante's Paradise....it was as though all the sounds present in creation stepped in to receive our best efforts of praise.

June 16, 2013 - thirteen years later....the walls are adorned with pigment of frescoes and tiny squares of hand cut glass and stone - vibrant colors adding to the centuries of story past and yet to come - stories of He who we worship in this space - and among the colors are sounds -  carefully placed neumes from the Liturgy of the Hours morning and evening, the rumble of final chords by Widor , Bach and others who best brought forth the organ's voice, the cries of funeral hymns, the joy of weddings and baptism and the other 12 anniversaries.  And a myriad of words and tunes from Palestrina to Brahms to Mozart to Schoenberg....the Our Father sung in languages now loved and understood, Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei!  And still the stone takes it in - no end to the capacity to contain what generations have put their pen to, and others have given voice.  So like the human heart - a bottomless well to fill with the sounds of conversation between Creator and created.