Music in Honor of Mary

Strategic Placement of Sound

A month later, the prism concert will take place, a compilation of Marian music. “We did this once before, and it was very successful,” recalls Scott Turkington, Director of Sacred Music at the Shrine. “So we decided then and there that we would try to do this annually in May as an offering to Our Lady.”

The idea of a prism concert, Turkington explains, is of fairly recent origin, and involves the music sounding from various parts of a building in turn, like light refracting through a prism. Musicians or singers, occupying different places all around, take turns performing. “The concert unfolds without interruption; there’s no applause. And this is to create the feeling of a one-hour piece of music that flows from one piece to another, one movement to another, one musical gesture to another, and utilizing the special visual and aural properties of the Shrine Church, which are extraordinary.” These properties will be used to full advantage, with performances by the Shrine choir and a brass ensemble.

Music and Composer Selected

The pieces for this year’s prism concert are taken from nearly half the Church’s history. The earliest was composed by St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), a Benedictine abbess, mystic, scholar, and Doctor of the Church; the most recent, by a twenty-first-century composer, the late Charles Callaghan. “We’ll be spanning all those centuries’ music in between, and there’s something for everyone,” Turkington says. “It’s an offering to Our Lady, a public offering—to the community, to the Shrine pilgrims, etc. Like all of our concerts.”