We were in Rome last week, and decided to attend the 10:30 sung mass at St. Peter’s. I had hopes because Benedict is a musician.
Several years I met an American musician who lived in Switzerland. He had negotiated with he Calvinist Cathedral in Geneva to host a Catholic choir, the first Catholic choir to sing there sinceteh Reformation. He wanted the Sistine Choir, but a friend warned him that he should go to Rome to hear them first. They were disappointingly mediocre. John Paul II had no ear for music.
A schola sang at the high mass. They may have been good, but I couldn’t tell, as they used an amplification system so tinny that it sounded like an old car radio.
The elderly cardinal who said mass knew the music, but his voice was cracking with age.
Alas, is there no place in the Catholic world that has consistently good music – not spectacular, but sung on key, with everyone stopping and starting at the same time. I have not come across one yet.
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