Theology & Church Music

My interest in theology, although a general one, is nowadays mainly focused on questions of liturgy. I am a strong believer in the usefulness of the documents of Vat. II and therefore try to implement their contents for active usage in the liturgical celebrations of the places of worship to which I usually come to pray.

My strong engagement in these questions comes from fact that I was part of the Catholic Students' Community of Vienna for a long time and got to know two Dutch people there: Drs. Joop Roeland, OSA, our old priest and spiritual father therein, and the professional church musician Jos Wilderbeek from Utrecht. The latter became my most important teacher in the field of liturgical music apart from Philippe Harnoncourt, brother of the internationally renowned musician Nicolaus Harnoncourt.

Within the above-mentioned spiritual community I came across the prayers and texts by Huub Oosterhuis. Possibly the best way of getting one's hand on these - if also mainly in the Dutch version! - is to make contact via Leerhuis & Liturgie whose Website just recently came online again in a very much renewed and augmented form, offering a wealth of up-to-date information (in Dutch; however, people there would be able to respond to inquiries in English as well, I guess, or else you could try and write in German...) on their community and liturgy. Most of Oosterhuis' work that is currently available could be obtained via this site, I guess. [And as a plus they also carry pointers to some of the German and English editions on their site!]
Lately I have occasionally been lucky in my hunts for older works of his via several second-hand bookshops on the Internet as well. So, if you are really desparately trying to find some edition that is no longer in print, that may pay off as well.

There are German versions published and through my search in the amazon bookshop I found that there were several professionally translated versions to English as well, unfortunately they were all marked out of print (hard to find). You can hardly imagine my joy when I learned recently that there is a wonderful publisher in the USA, Oregon Catholic Press (or short: 'OCP'), who has two newly printed collections available:

Wake your power, available as CD, Cassette and Sheet Music (Songbook) and
Turn your heart to me, available as CD, Cassette and Sheet Music (Songbook) as well.

Apart from these collections you can also find several choral octavos for songs with texts by Huub Oosterhuis (in their authorized English translations) with this publishing house.
And they also carry (the English version of) Bernard Huijbers' widely-acclaimed book "The Performing Audience" in stock - highly recommended! (No, I do not work for them...)

Besides, I am committed to contributing to various working groups on church music, one of them being an ensemble at the Diocesan Conservatory for Church Music in Vienna, another a community assembly in Vienna's 'youngest' parish, etc. These are all 'workplaces' where interested church musicians encounter and are taught high-quality modern sacred music for the use within worship surroundings in their parish communities.

Apart from my very personal background which is mainly rooted in Vienna I should like to draw your attention to a little village in Burgundy, France, as well which has been perceived as a new ray of morning light for a lot of (mainly young) Christians in their search for a deeper source of faith: the ecumenical community of Taizé. Not only do young people travel to Taizé to live and pray (often with repetitive short songs) with the brothers for some time during all of the year, the brothers have gathered a multitude of young people at the turn of each year in one of Europe's major cities to share each other's lives, concerns, hopes and prayers on a way towards reconciliation and trust between all people that live on the earth, as well. If you should see any chance of being a part of it and feel like, why not try making it come true? It will well be worth your time...!

By the way: Did you know that Jacques Gaillot has an URL for his virtual diocese 'Partenia'? Check it out!

Any questions or comments? Email me!