So what are you up to on Christmas Eve? Maybe you’ll be wrapping presents or baking cookies well into the night. Maybe you’ll be getting a jump on the holiday at a family gathering. Or maybe you’ll be trying your best to ignore the whole thing.
But if you can’t get enough of the season — if you’re a pure traditionalist — there’s a fitting way to mark the moments as Christmas Eve turns into Christmas Day. Cantantes in Cordibus, Jersey City’s homegrown classical choir, will be raising their voices at a Midnight Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows (75 Claremont Ave.). Their program includes a performance of Mozart’s Sparrow Mass and a Christmas Oratorio by the lesser-known composer Giacomo Perti. Plus, there’ll be holiday carols, including, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” “Adeste Fidelis,” and, just as the mass is ending, “Silent Night.”
It’s no accident that this music has endured for centuries. These melodies are designed to stir the heart — and maybe even open it to the fantastic, cosmic possibilities that underpin the Christmas story. Cantantes in Cordibus has entrusted this music to a pair of very safe hands: pianist, organist, choirmaster, and artistic director Simone Ferraresi, a classical musician born in Emilia-Romagna and educated at the Music Academy in Vienna and the Royal Academy of Music in London. He’s ours now, and he and Cantantes are bringing us music that you’d normally have to cross the Hudson to hear.
We caught up with Cantantes In Cordibus board member Daniel Sexton to chat about the choir, its repertoire, and the resonance of Christmas music.
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Tris McCall/Jersey City Times: Tell me about the Cantantes in Cordibus Choir. How long has you been together and making music in Jersey City? How did the group form?
Daniel Sexton: Cantantes in Cordibus came together when the old rite Latin liturgy was restored to Holy Rosary Church (344 6th St.) in May 2002. Prior to that, some of us had sung together on the concert scene where this music has pride of place, but rarely in Church since there is a puzzling lack of enthusiasm for it by many contemporary priests. CIC was founded to ensure the stability and growth of the choir. We thought that the beauty and power of this music would be appreciated by believers and non-believers.
Around ten years ago, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit was set up to assist with financial needs. The core group has been made up of devout Catholics but also includes non-believers. Since there is so much musical talent around, we set our bar high. Cantantes in Cordibus sees no contradiction between Ars gratis Artis [“art for art’s sake”] and Ad maiorem Dei gloriam [“for the glory of God”]. We are united in our mission that, as Dostoevsky put it, “beauty will save the world.”
TMC: What does Cantantes in Cordibus mean?
DS: Singing from the heart.
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom: teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles, in grace singing in your hearts to God.” [Colossians 3:16]
TMC: How did you start singing at Our Lady of Sorrows? Is that the headquarters of the choir? You’ve called Ocean and Claremont a forlorn corner of Jersey City. That’s appropriate to Christmas and the Christmas story according to Luke, isn’t it?
DS: Cantantes in Cordibus was welcomed to Our Lady of Sorrows three years ago after a period of wandering around Jersey City. The pastor, Fr. Esterminio Chica, administers both Christ the King parish and Our Lady of Sorrows. Christ the King is the historic Black Catholic parish and remains an important anchor to this community in Jersey City.
Ocean Avenue remains an avenue of sorrow and pain even as the rest of Jersey City has, for better or worse, been monetized. Our Lady of Sorrows has a strong history of charitable endeavors with an extraordinarily well-run food pantry and a robust ESL program for immigrants. This neighborhood has had its challenges and, just as Messiah was born in a stable, it is a privilege to bring beauty and peace to Ocean Avenue.
TMC: For those who’ve never done it: why go to mass on Christmas Eve? Why have a communal experience in a church when you could be home, tucked in and waiting for Santa Claus?
DS: Nothing is more traditional than Midnight Mass! It figures in poems and literature and, until recently, it was a shared part of people’s psyche. The current Netflix horror series of the same name aside, Midnight Mass serves as a beautiful and meaningful way-station in people’s lives. It is the backdrop in pivotal scenes in Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, and Maurice Pagnol’s Le Chateau de Ma Mere.
Christmas, from its first telling, was a story of the night. St. Luke writes:
“And there were in the same country shepherds watching, and keeping the night watches over their flock. And behold an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them; and they feared with a great fear.” [Luke 2: 8 – 9.]
The apostolic tradition was firm that Christ was born at Midnight. It is well attested that in the year 440, Pope St. Sixtus III erected a small chapel, with a manger, at the Church of St. Mary Major in Rome. Because of the already long-standing Christian belief that Christ was born at midnight, Pope Sixtus celebrated Mass at midnight that year, a custom which became the norm throughout Christendom and remains so today wherever tradition is followed.
Proust, a nonbeliever and aesthete, expressed well what the experience of a Sung High Mass is in his stirring essay written against the de-consecration of churches in France by the anti-Clerical Third Republic:
“There is therefore more than one way of dreaming before this artistic realization — the most complete ever, since all of the arts collaborated in it — of the greatest dream to which humanity ever rose; this mansion is grand enough for us all to find our place in. The cathedral, which shelters so many saints, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, kings, confessors, and martyrs that whole generations huddle in supplication and anxiety all the way to the porch entrances and, trembling, raise the edifice as a long groan under heaven while the angels smilingly lean over from the top of the galleries which, in the evening’s blue and rose incense and the morning’s blinding gold do seem to be “heaven’s balconies” — the cathedral, in its vastness, can grant asylum both to the man of letters and to the man of faith, to the vague dreamer as well as to the archeologist.” [La Mort des Cathedrals, Proust, 1904.]
TMC: Why sing Mozart’s Sparrow Mass on Christmas Eve? Does it have a Christmas signification?
DS: The Sparrow Mass, or Spatzenmesse in German, is a joyful piece ideal to be used on important liturgical celebrations. It was possibly first performed on April 7, 1776 in a mass for Easter at the Salzburg Cathedral, and it is often performed at Christmas. Its nickname is derived from violin figures in the Hosanna which resemble bird chirping.
The evocation of nature is appropriate. The hypostatic union — that is, the mystery of God taking on human nature — often inspires revery about all of nature in awe of this miracle. “Let heaven and nature sing,” as the carol enjoins. In scripture, sparrows are repeatedly used to demonstrate the inexhaustible love and mercy of God.
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” [Matthew 10:29-31].
Finally, the Agnus Dei is the most elaborately developed part of this Mass, particularly the phrase dona nobis pacem [“give us peace”], which is most appropriate on the birth of Prince of Peace.
TMC: I don’t know anything about Giacomo Perti or his Christmas Oratorio. Who was he and when was it written?
DS: Giacomo Antonio Perti (6 June 1661 – 10 April 1756) was an Italian composer of the Baroque era. He was mainly active at Bologna, where he was Maestro di Cappella. He remained in charge for exactly sixty years until his death at age 95. Perti was a prolific composer of operas and sacred music, and was recognized as a distinguished musician not only by other composers, but by aristocrats and emperors, including Ferdinando de’ Medici — one of the last of the Medici — and Emperors Leopold I and Charles VI. Perti was highly regarded for his sacred music and his operas.
His “Inno e Responsi per il Santo Natale” is a setting of the Office of Matins for Christmas Day. These are very appropriate for the musical prelude to the Midnight Mass because traditionally, Christmas Matins were celebrated prior to the First Mass of Christmas at midnight. The excerpts to be sung will be “Quem Lucis,” “Hodie Nobis,” and “Sancta et Immaculata.” The responsories [anthems sung by the choir] constituted a sort of synthetic commentary, with poetic references to the mystery celebrated through the use of fragments of sacred and theological texts.
TMC: What’s the relationship between the music and the service? Are the priests at Our Lady of Sorrows involved in the performance?
DS: Music is integral to the traditional Catholic liturgy as it is to the Eastern liturgies. It is not an add on but is an essential aspect of the music. The genius of the Western liturgy was to combine an aggressive traditionalism with a musical approach that was bold and innovative. That created many of the great masterpieces of the Western musical tradition.
The Latin Mass in Jersey City was started by a Jesuit — Father Kenneth Baker — and has been served by many priests over the last two decades. The Rev. John Perricone is the community’s priest at this time and is assisted by priests from the Friars of the Renewal when Father Perricone is traveling.
TMC: Christmas and music go together like no other date on the calendar and any other art form. Holiday music begins long before Thanksgiving and continues in circulation until the end of the year. Why do you suppose Christmas is such a musical happening? What is it about music that brings people closer to the spirit of the holiday?
DS: What a great question! And it is so true. In December 2023, one thinks — after all of the anxiety of the pandemic, and with commentators on the Left and Right who see World War III unfolding — of the Christmas Truce of 1914, when Germans singing “Heilige Nacht” were met by the English returning “Silent Night Holy Night.” Shared Christmas music brought foes together despite the risk of being accused of treason. And in the account of Luke, the first Christmas was announced by choirs of angels singing “Gloria in Excelsis.”
Christmas makes everyone a traditionalist because the songs with origins lost in history vie with new compositions or new productions of ancient pieces. The music of Christmas communicates the joy and mystery which we all partake.