Are Sacred Composers Lost?

An introduction to the contemporary sacred music of Paul Jernburg

When we speak of music in the Catholic Church, the sad truth is that it is clearly divided into two groups: the lackluster music of the last hundred or so years and the beautiful hymns and chants stretching back all the way to Thomas Aquinas and even further. 

Where is the contemporary sacred music? It seems jarring to ask. We’re so used to ancient dates and old names in the bottom right hand of our favorite hymns of old musty hymnals and smudged scans of plain chant. Did not all music come from a time before the present? 

And yet, it could not, and did not. So then why are modern hymns so controversial, so different from Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven; so alien to Tantum Ergo and Little Town of Bethlehem? Is this a heralding of the end of the world that we have no music both new and sacred in which to continue the tradition of beautifying sound for the marble walls of our churches? Has the tradition died, never to return as the Church continues to suffer from Universalism? 

In Chicago, 1953, Paul Jernburg, Jr. was born, and his calling was music. His early career was spent in secular music, especially as a musical theater director. But in 1983, Jernburg went to Sweden where he grew into choral composition and direction. Even more importantly, in his ten years in Sweden, the Franciscan Friary with which he became greatly familiar with, introduced him to Sacred Gregorian and Eastern Orthodox music, shaping his career for the next 40 years. 

Since his return to the US, Paul Jernburg has been a parish music director, composer, and educator, and in 2005, he became the founding director of Magnificat Academy, a full-academic curriculum Choir School. Unfortunately, this school closed down in 2008 due to lack of funds, but Jernburg continued on, furthering his mission by starting the Magnificat Institute of Sacred Music in 2017. From the site’s Mission Page (https://magnificatinstitute.org/our-mission): 

This mission has three vitally important dimensions:

1.) To facilitate a more widespread rediscovery of the beauty, genius, and importance of our great traditions, especially among those for whom they have effectively become a “foreign language.”

2.) To cultivate the composition and use of new liturgical music which resonates with holiness and beauty in people of good will today.

3.) To provide educational opportunities for clergy, church musicians, and laity to understand the vital principles which have been the basis for the development of Catholic sacred music throughout Church history, and which open up fresh new vistas for growth today.

In 2014, Jernburg’s Mass of Saint Philip Neri, the first published musical setting of the entire Ordinary form of the Mass in English, intended for congregation and 4-part harmony, was recorded by the Schola Cantorum of Saint Peter the Apostle. This Mass, and numerous other pieces composed by Jernburg in the tradition of Sacred Music, are available on his site (https://www.pauljernberg.com/pt-other-works) both for listening, and for purchase by anyone, but with the specific intent of church choirs, for use in and with the Catholic Liturgy, for the continued glory of the God of Song.