Much music composed for the Roman Catholic Mass over the last millennium and more has found a wide and appreciative audience outside of its original liturgical context. Listeners with little or no connection to the Church often react favorably to the transcendent and timeless qualities of plainchant, and sixteenth-century choral settings of liturgical music are a staple of concerts and recordings by vocal ensembles. In this talk, Weaver will relate this music to the gestures and ritual actions of the Mass of the Roman Rite as practiced from the sixteenth century to the present day, with an aim to enriching the understanding of modern audiences from outside of the Western Catholic tradition. He will also discuss the role that liturgical music (especially plainchant) played in older, Church-run models of music education, and how these might be adapted for use in teaching music to children today.
topics: Mass, liturgy, ritual, Western Catholic tradition, plainchant, lecture
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Charles Weaver is on the faculty of the Juilliard School, where he teaches historical plucked instruments and Baroque music theory. He was music director for Cavalli’s La Calisto with New York’s Dell’Arte Opera in summer 2017, when The Observer remarked on “the superb baroque band led by Charles Weaver . . . it was amazing to hear what warm and varied sounds he coaxed from the ensemble.” He has served as assistant conductor for Juilliard Opera and has accompanied operas with the Yale Baroque Opera Project and the Boston Early Music Festival. As an orchestral musician, he has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Virginia Symphony. His chamber appearances have included Quicksilver, Piffaro, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Folger Consort, Apollo’s Fire, Blue Heron, Musica Pacifica, and others. He also works with the New York Continuo Collective, an ensemble that mounts workshop productions of seventeenth-century vocal music. He has taught at the Lute Society of America Summer Workshop, the International Baroque Institute at Longy, and the Madison Early Music Festival. He is the schola director at St. Mary’s Church in Norwalk, Connecticut, and he is pursuing a doctoral degree in music theory at the City University of New York.
