When he discovered Gregorian chant near the turn of the century, he was inspired to reconnect with the Church.
“This music was so different and mysterious to me,” Senson told Catholic News Service during a recent interview. “It was telling me something. It was leading me somewhere.”
It eventually led him to Catholic music ministry and the 33-year-old is now music director at St John the Beloved Catholic Church in McLean, Virginia, a parish community where Gregorian chant is the principal sound.
This church community is unique in that the ancient sounds of Gregorian chant are deeply woven into its fabric, interlaced in every Mass, every choir and the education of the students in the parish school.
Church leaders at St John the Beloved made the bold decision in 2005 to switch its music from the praise and worship genre to sacred music featuring Gregorian chant, decades after the practice fell out of favour following the Second Vatican Council.
It turns out that parish is part of a growing trend in American Catholic culture in which Gregorian chant is slowly being re-embraced.
That movement began following the success of a 1990s album titled “Chant,” recorded by the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, Spain, said Timothy S McDonnell, director of the Institute of Sacred Music at The Catholic University of America.
“People became interested in it,” McDonnell told CNS. “Then you would start to hear Gregorian chant as samples in popular music. You’d start to hear it in soundtracks, things like that. So, Gregorian chant became popular with all kinds of people with all kinds of belief systems.”
That was a turning point for some church officials who recognised the music had intrinsic value, he said. “That this is our proper music for our liturgy. That movement of recovery of this material I think started at that point when it was recognised more broadly as a tremendous treasure.”
Though still not the core music in most American Catholic parishes, Gregorian chant continues to gain popularity among the youth, said Scott Turkington, director of sacred music at Holy Family Catholic Church and the parish school, Holy Family Academy, in St Louis Park, Minnesota.
“If you give Gregorian chant to kids, they love it,” Turkington said.
