![]() When my boots clatter on the floor, that too is a sound created by my body, but my footfalls are incidental to the unfolding of my activity of movement. I don’t mean only that we use our bodies to create sound when we sing. As a result, our performances often attract wonder, sometimes at the simple fact that we are singing this music in public and sometimes – when all goes well – at the music itself. Still, I suspect that churches – such as my own, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, with its Anglo-Catholic tradition – are more likely places than recital halls to hear polyphonic music. ![]() There is a lively community of enthusiasts for so-called early music in New York City, and, as with nearly every kind of music, there are concerts and recitals of Renaissance polyphony footnoteaplenty. I love these words of John’s: we sing the music we love because we love it and we love to share it. Others are Jewish, and still others have no particular faith tradition. There are a few practicing and committed Christians in the group. The message is clear: the music is religious (virtually all of it written for use in Christian liturgy), but you needn’t affirm any particular belief to be absorbed by its beauty. Before we start singing, John makes note to the audience, if there is an audience at the start, that the concert is free and that we are singing the music we love because we love it and we love to share it. Well, not always in the streets – on cold days in the winter we repair to the Graybar Passage in Grand Central Terminal, one of the most acoustically perfect spaces I have ever made resound.įor two years, I have been a member of the Renaissance Street Singers, directed by John Hetland, who founded the group in 1973. ![]() In more ordinary times, on Sunday afternoons twice a month, I can be found on the streets of New York with a dozen other singers, performing the sacred music of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe.
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