The age-herald., 1901-10-20


 Mfr. Guckenberger is in his right ele- ment at last leading a Catholic choir. As the musical director of St. Paufs he win have a scope and opportunity that he never had before and never could have had outside the old historic church.
 Born and reared in the German Evan seficai church and having been choir master c< several Protestant denomina- lions he has had wide experience in scc1esiaticai music. but after all no song composed for the house of God seems so fitting as the great masses. the stabat Masters. the Magnificats the Ave-Marias and the venerable Latin hymns.
 Luther, musician, recognized fully the beauty of the mass form and in con- structing new nturigicai service re- tair1ed the Kyrio Eieison and cert ain oth- CT parts Of the Catholic service. He did, however, make an innovation when he in- troduced the ohoraie. a noble hymn style, especially adapted to congrerational singing. Johann Sebastian Bach develop cd this form and the Protestant Germans sing, these chorales today to the exclu- sion of almost all other music.
 The church of England includes in it's impressive liturgy the Glorias the Te Deum, the Jubilate, the Venite and the Benedictus, and for evening prayer the Magnificat Some good English composers have written Te Deums and Magnificats for the Episcopal service, But where one master has composed Episcopal music twenty or more have written masses for the Catholic church. Composers no mat ter what their religious views happen to be never feel satisfied until they set to ss4aan nafn k1.- the Kyrie, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Credo (the Nicene creed) the Sanctus, the Benedictus and the Agnus Dei. with some times the Dona Nobis as a separate number. These grouped together sym metrically give variety and sweep that cannot be found in any other choral service of Chirstendom.
 Bach was Protestant, but he was im- pelled to write for the Catholic church and his loftiest work was his B minor mass. His Passion music composed for the Lutheran church Is regarded as pro- foundly religious and extremely classic, but it does not measure up as an artistic achivement to his mass.
 Mozart and Haydn were Catholics and very naturally each of them wrote many masses. Beethoven. coming after Mozart and Haydn. was christened a Catholic but he does not seem to have been much of ohurchman. Yet he like the other masters, was impelled to write masses, and his highest achievement in choral music is found in his ''Missa Solemnis." :"
 And since Beethoven's day nearly every composer of merit has written one or mose masses. Hence 1t is that no direc- tor can be ranked in the first class unless he has studied and interpreted the great works of the Catholic church.
 It has sometimes been charged that the music of the mass is too operatic. But anA Frfa | that many masses by mediocre composers are frivolous, worse than operatic, and therefore unsuited to the church. Leo XIII. has strongly condemned these op- cratic masses and there is talk of an or der from the Vatican requiring the pas- tors to allow only the plain Gregorian ~-~->-<<<>>-<~->-s->->- York to spend several weeks, and was accompanied by Miss Zemma Mastin. who will attend school at Miss Huger' 8 this winter Miss Ruth Huger will re- turn with her sister and will be one Of the debutantes of the coming season. l MT. Monty Marshall has returned from | a trip to New York. where he went to at | tend the yacht races. MT. Marshall Is | an enthusiastic yachtman and owns the l handsome steam yacht. The Annie. Miss Ethel Hodgson, one or our most popular society girls, and editor of Chat. is visiting MT. and Mrs. J. M. Davidson in Montgomery.
 MT. Thomas Boone, who has been very ill is able to be out again.
 Mrs. Mark Lyons, nee Miss Sadie Lage. is very i'll and her friends and relatives are extremely apprehensive about her.
 Among the new corners in our midst,