Mission
"This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy to the heart of man..."
Pope St. Paul VI,
Address to Artists,
Closing of the Second Vatican Council
The Catholic tradition has a rich treasury of recited prayers that millions of Catholics lovingly know by heart, including beautiful prayers straight from Sacred Scripture. We also have a wonderful tradition of artists, including brilliant and creative composers.
But sadly, the artistry of those composers, and this rich treasury of prayers, have not yet joined each other to create beautiful sacred polyphony in the English language.
Compositions from Angelico Sacred Music strive to fill this gap, creating beautiful, Renaissance-inspired music with English lyrics that you can easily understand. This is done by drawing from the compositional styles of renowned Catholic Renaissance composers such as Palestrina (1525 - 1594), Thomas Tallis (1505 - 1585), and Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548 - 1611), and blending them with the styles of contemporary composers who are rooted in more classical schools of composition, such as Henryk Górecki (1933 - 2010) and Ola Gjeilo (1978 - present).
"[T]here should be an attempt to reclaim tonality, and to use it in some new way that will capture the attention of the young. The question is, how is it to be done?"
Sir Roger Scruton
Moving from the subject of tonality to compositional structure, ASM compositions are highly rhapsodic in form. This means that unlike sonatas, hymns, or praise and worship songs, the music has no verses, no repeat signs, no refrains, and nothing that resembles any of those features.
Consequently, every second of music provides fresh material for the listener's ear, and if a theme or melody is reintroduced, it is done so in a different key, in different vocal parts, with different chord progressions and harmonies, etc. This style is much more engaging for our present age, when nearly all encounters of musical listening are through digital recordings, rather than live performances.
In a certain respect, great sacred art, such as Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistine Chapel, Palestrina's musical setting of the Salve Regina, and the architecture of the Spanish mission churches along the Pacific coast of North America, is universal. Yet concurrently, in another respect, sacred art always uniquely speaks of the time and place in which it was created, providing a beautiful touchstone in Church history that the society of its birth can truly call its own.
The mission of Angelico Sacred Music is to help build such an artistic touchstone by creating beautiful, Renaissance-inspired musical art specifically for English-speaking Catholics of the 21st century. Further, we hope that when people listen to ASM compositions, their minds will be drawn away from the unedifying distractions of our age that constantly disappoint our deeper longings, and toward the eternal, peace-giving, and beautiful glory of the one, true, Trinitarian God, so that they may grow in loving yearning and anticipation for meeting Christ the King of Heaven, with all His saints and angelic choirs, in the life to come.