Music: Choiring Celt

The greatest liturgical composer who ever lived and one of the musical wonders of the ages was Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose lacy counterpoint was the pride of the Vatican under Pope Sixtus V (1585-90). The best U.S. interpreter of Palestrina is an Irish-American named Father William J. Finn, former choirmaster of Manhattan's Church of St. Paul the Apostle, who has behind him nearly 50 years of high musical achievement.

Last week Father Finn published a book (The Conductor Raises His Baton; Harper's, $3.75). Extremely technical and written in a style of truly Celtic luxuriance, it is almost completely incomprehensible to laymen. But it is a required volume for students of sacred music and a fitting capstone to a distinguished musical career.

Father Finn's musical specialty (the a cappella* choral music of the 16th Century) occupies the middle ground in the three great divisions of liturgical music. The others are: 1) the Gregorian Chant, pure, unharmonized 6th-Century melody, best heard in recent years from the Benedictine monks of Solesmes, France; 2) the "modern," which in liturgical circles includes all church music written since the beginning of the 18th Century — including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Verdi. Since 1904, when Pope Pius X pronounced on the subject of sacred music in his famed encyclical Motu Proprio, the use of "modern" music by the Catholic church has been sharply restricted.** But Palestrina's 16th-Century creations (best performed recently by the Sistine Chapel Choir of Rome, the Westminster Cathedral Choir of London and Father Finn's choristers) are regarded by Catholic authorities as liturgically flawless.

The Father. An Irishman, handsome as he is unmistakable, Father Finn rehearses his chorus in a polo shirt instead of a cassock, and can spur a choir boy to a Palestrinian high E with a flick of the eyebrow. Born 62 years ago in Boston, he became organist there at the Carmelite Monastery as a child. He began conducting Palestrina in Chicago's old St. Mary's Church in 1904, a year before he was ordained. "I was 25 years trying to find out how to conduct it," he says. In the meantime his Paulist Choristers became world famous. In 1918 Father Finn left Chicago for Manhattan.

During the past 35 years, he has trouped with his choir from California to Rome, where he was a great favorite with Pius X. In Milwaukee his playful choir boys stuffed the trombones and tubas, for an accompanied number, full of newspapers. The resulting tone, says Father Finn, "sounded like everybody was playing a fine-toothed comb. I had to ring the curtain down so we could fix things." In Regina, Saskatchewan, Finn found himself without a baton. A gentleman, "a true gentleman," says Finn, "took the rung of his chair and whittled it down so that it would fit between my third and fourth fingers, which is where I hold a baton. Halfway through the concert that baton flew out of my hands and struck a boy chorister across the face, but we continued."