A celtic mass for peace
Composed by Guitarist Sam Guarnaccia, with Lyrics by Philip Newell, this beautiful CD was inspired by the haunting spirit of the Celtic world. Purchase your copy by visiting CD baby at the following link:
A Celtic Mass for Peace
Songs for the Earth
CD Price: $20.00
MP3 Price: $--.--
Sam Guarnaccia
composer
Samuel Guarnaccia, a Vermont native, studied classical guitar in Spain and has performed throughout parts of Europe and North America. Having taught at The University of Denver and Middlebury College, he is now on the faculty of the University of Vermont, a Spanish scholar, player, and composer with deep ties to the history, struggle, traditions, and spirituality of ancient and contemporary Indigenous peoples.
A Brief History
Sam Guarnaccia
Early in 2005, when introduced to Philip Newell's writing by my wife Paula, who had read 'Listening for the Heartbeat of God', I was captivated by his clear and powerful exposition of the Celtic expression of the life and teaching of Christ. My son Dino had also for some time been exploring the Celtic world, the history, spiritual traditions, art, language, and mythology; so in the fall, Paula arranged for a group of interested people in our community to meet Philip at a weekend retreat at Kirkridge, Pennsylvania.
While at Kirkridge with Philip, we invited him to come to Vermont to do a workshop for the community at the Charlotte Congregational Church. As a classical musician, I had been experimenting with Celtic music, improvising with a friend who plays bagpipes and Irish whistles, and we played for interludes as counterpoint to Philip's presentations. He stayed with us for the weekend, and I then arranged a place for him to write for a few days following the event. While on the shore of Lake Champlain that week, he wrote the text for 'A Celtic Mass for Peace'.
By the time he left Vermont, I was deeply inspired by the particularly poignant and haunting mood and spirit of the Celtic world, the power of music to reach and express the indefinable, and the profound spiritual insights of Philip's writing. I asked him if he would be willing to respond and even guide me from a distance if I were to write some music to express the deep longing and great reverence for the Creation and the Christ of the Celtic experience, history, myth, and imagination. He responded by sending me the full text, with an invitation to write music for the 'chants' of 'A Celtic Mass for Peace'.
The model before us was the recently finished 'Sounds of the Eternal', Philip's chant texts set to extremely simple melodies, accessible to anyone upon first hearing, primarily for meditative or liturgical settings, and beautifully performed and recorded in Scotland. As I wrote over the next few weeks, it was therefore important that the emerging melodies be chant-like, easily sung and repeated upon first hearing, both meditative but also expressive of the profound and sometimes complex poetic texts Philip had written. It became impossible to resist being drawn upward and outward into the universality of words that demanded both utter simplicity of expression, but also passionate, cosmic, yearning, intensity of emotion in that particularly haunting Celtic vocabulary of sound and feeling ....oriented both from and to the depths of the Earth and the heights of Faith and Imagination, all inextricably linked gifts of God to us.
My hope was, that as in the high Baroque tradition, the universality of the elements (as in much of Bach's music), would lend themselves to everything from a very simple presentation (basic melody and simple accompaniment), to the fullest possible expression of the deep emotion, subtle textures, and creative possibilities of the words and music, requiring the use of many classical forms and structures. The 'full score' reflects the latter....the 'minimum' number of instruments that allow for a full exploration of the music's expression of the words and of what is inevitably 'beyond' the words. It is possible to perform the Overture with as few as four instruments, and as in the Baroque tradition, instruments can be substituted quite easily.
An early 'demo' CD was made in August, 2005....I on classical guitar, my daughter Reina singing the melodies and additional vocal lines of the 'chants', friends playing some violin and Irish whistle. I sent it to Philip, and he loved it, making plans to visit Vermont that November. He requested two changes.....a more powerful expression in the Sanctus, and a more yeaning and passionate expression in the first part of the Song of Peace. The AMEN wasn't written until the following October. We arranged an Easter event in April of 2006, for which I began writing an 'Overture' and musical interludes for several sections including an extended instrumental for the 'Communion Song'. Philip's wife Ali and their son came to Vermont in April 2006 for the Holy Week service. Both Philip and Ali asked that I consider returning to the 'original' themes for the Sanctus and Song of Peace, since they are easier to sing, and they felt the expression could be achieved in the interpretation of the singers. This is how we now have two 'versions' of those two sections. The 'new' themes (only brief parts of both sections) do come closer to the 'power' and 'passionate yearning' of the texts, though are somewhat more 'difficult' to sing. They are used in the recording, and the alternate 'original' themes are offered in the published music.
Philip returned to Vermont in November 2006, for which we did the full Overture and the newly written AMEN for a 'Symposium on Christianity and Social Justice.' He then brought Paula and me to Scotland for a celebration in St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, as part of the Edinburgh International Centre for World Spiritualities (EICWS) conference.
We met again in Nashville in November, 2007, where Philip presented me with his new words for the "Lord's Prayer', crafted for his role as Companion Theologian for the American Spirituality Centre of Casa del Sol in the high desert of New Mexico. He asked me to set it to music and include it in A Celtic Mass for Peace. In the spring of 2008, the music for this new section appeared and I wrote simple tone poems as backdrop to the eight spoken prayer-songs. The entire cycle of 'A Celtic Mass for Peace, Songs for the Earth' now stands as an integrated whole in this recording.
Listen Now!
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What people are saying
- "The highlight of the experience for me was the 'Celtic Mass for Peace.'"
"The hauntingly-beautiful music was somehow both ethereal and earthly at the same time."
"If ever the world needed to hear the message of peace, it is now, and your compelling composition proclaims that message in profound ways."
Paul Eyer
Pastor, St. Luke's
Lancaster, PA 17603