When only a single bleached-beeswax candle remains—a fifteenth candle, representing Christ—it will be carried behind the altar and hidden, symbolizing his descent to Hades to free the souls of the righteous. Then comes the strepitus: the congregation bangs books and kneelers against the floor while the organ sounds its lowest note, shaking the room—a commemoration of the earthquake that, according to scripture, accompanied the death of Jesus. The noise lasts about a minute. Then the candle reappears. And everyone departs in silence.
It is the first of four major liturgical services that will unfold at this Pasadena parish between Wednesday night and Easter Sunday, April 5—a week of music-making so ambitious in scope, so deliberately rooted in centuries of tradition, and so deliberately open to the public that it amounts to something between a sacred concert season and an act of cultural archaeology.
“The Catholic Church is the house of prayer for all peoples,” said Steven Ottományi, St. Andrew’s director of music, in a recent interview. “You don’t have to be Catholic, you don’t have to be Christian, you don’t have to be even a believer. If you want to hear some beautiful music, we are delighted to welcome you here.”
A Scholar in the Choir Loft
Ottományi is not simply choosing hymns. A researcher whose academic interests span J.S. Bach, the sacred music of Mozart, historical Gregorian chant performance practice, and the music of the California missions, he plans an entire year of liturgical music during a solitary summer retreat lasting more than a month, working through scriptural commentaries and the writings of the Church Fathers before selecting a single anthem.
“It is a very terrifying responsibility,” he said, “because I’m choosing the words that I’m putting into the mouths of the faithful when they’re worshiping God in his very presence.”
For Holy Week, that responsibility multiplies. The forces he is deploying include the 24-voice Cappella Musica, the professional Schola Cantorum, organist Mark Husey, and a brass quintet—two trumpets, two trombones, and a tuba, drawn from top Los Angeles-area players—spread across roughly a dozen distinct services. On Good Friday alone, Ottományi will serve simultaneously as conductor, organist, and cantor from 12:00 noon until ten at night.
A Treasure From Renaissance Mexico
The musical centerpiece of the week—the Easter Vigil on Saturday night and the 12:30 p.m. mass on Easter Sunday—makes a case that some of the most extraordinary sacred music in the Western tradition was written not in Rome or Vienna but in colonial Mexico.
The mass setting Ottományi has chosen is the Missa Ego Flos Campi (“Mass of I Am the Flower of the Field”) by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla. Written in the Venetian polychoral tradition, the work calls for two choirs of voices and a separate choir of brass and organ, positioned in three different locations in the choir loft so that the sound reaches the listener from three distinct directions. Ottományi describes the interplay between choirs as almost competitive—“as if they’re at war with each other,” each seeming “in competition to see who can be more joyous.”
Alongside the Padilla, the program features two works by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594), considered the prince of church composers: Jubilate Deo at the offertory and Haec Dies at communion, both scored for double choir, brass, and organ in the same polychoral tradition.
The choice is deeply personal. Ottományi is of Hungarian descent in his father’s side and Wendat and Mexican descent on his mother’s side; his mother was almost entirely American Indian, with, as he put it, “one European ancestor in seven generations that we can find.” The indigenous musicians of colonial Latin America, he said, took the European polychoral style and made it “even more fabulous and interesting”—creating something that would not have existed without the mixing of peoples, even amid the brutalities of colonization.
“It’s something that we who are descendants of those people have reason to take great pride in,” he said.
His research has also unearthed music from the California missions—work that predates any orchestras, choirs, or composed music in the English colonies. A setting drawn from the mission repertoire will be heard during Wednesday’s Tenebrae service. This summer, Ottományi plans to collaborate with a group represented by the Peruvian embassy on a performance of Renaissance and Baroque music from Peru, part of a broader project to restore what he calls “an undiscovered treasure” of Latin American sacred music.
The Shape of the Week
Holy Week, for Christians, is the annual commemoration of the final days of Jesus’ earthly life: his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday—greeted with palms, olive branches, and shouts of “Hosanna,” Hebrew for “Come and save”—followed by his arrest, crucifixion, death, and resurrection. The Wednesday before Easter is known as Spy Wednesday, marking the day Judas went to the authorities to betray Jesus. At St. Andrew, each day of Holy Week carries a distinct liturgical character—and Ottományi has scored each one accordingly.
Wednesday: Tenebrae. The Sung Tenebrae service at 7:30 p.m. is celebrated in the original traditional Latin form—a rarity even among Catholic parishes. Beyond the candle ceremony and the strepitus, the service includes Gregorio Allegri’s famous Miserere (Psalm 51), a work whose roughly eight high C’s—“way up in the stratosphere,” Ottományi said—will be taken by six sopranos capable of the note. Even listeners who are, in his words, “not even Christian and who are not religious at all” consistently describe the piece as having an “other worldly atmosphere.” The service runs approximately an hour and twenty minutes.
Thursday: The Mass of the Lord’s Supper. The 7:00 p.m. liturgy on Holy Thursday commemorates the institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood. The musical anchor is the Missa Pange Lingua Gloriosi by the fifteenth-century Burgundian master Josquin des Prez, a work Ottományi calls “one of the greatest of all choral works” and characterizes as almost symphonic in its treatment of voices. During the ritual washing of feet—twelve men, in imitation of Christ washing the feet of his disciples—the choir sings Maurice Duruflé’s celebrated choral setting of Ubi Caritas (“Where Charity and Love Are Present, God Himself Is There”). Later in the service, the men of the choir sing the Benedictus—the canticle of Zachary, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”—as a lament for the dying Jesus. Ottományi calls it “one of the most incredible pieces of music” of the night, “absolutely heartbreaking.” The service ends not with a dismissal but with a procession of the Eucharist to the parish hall, singing the ancient hymn Pange Lingua Gloriosi—because, in the theology of the Triduum, the liturgy does not actually end. It continues, as one unbroken rite, for three days.
Friday: The Passion. Good Friday begins with a stark visual: while the congregation kneels, the priests, deacons, and seminarians prostrate themselves—they lay flat on the ground before the altar, a gesture of total self-giving. There is no sign of the cross to open the service; it started, technically, the night before. From noon to 3:00 p.m.—the traditional hours Christ is said to have hung on the cross—the parish observes the Three Hours Agony, which includes Stations of the Cross and a Seven Last Words service that Ottományi composed himself, each of the seven sayings treated as a short oratorio or cantata with gospel text, a meditative anthem, and a sermon. At 1:30 p.m. and again at 5:30 p.m., the Passion according to St. John is sung in a dramatic setting, also Ottományi’s composition. The liturgy also includes the Reproaches—which Ottományi calls “one of the most sorrowful pieces of music that there is”—and the veneration of the cross, followed by a procession with an image of the dead Christ and his sorrowful Mother.
Saturday Night: The Easter Vigil. The most extraordinary service of the week cannot begin until after full darkness. St. Andrew receives a precise sunset time from the Vatican Observatory and adds a twenty-minute buffer; this year, the vigil is scheduled for 8:00 p.m. It begins with the lighting of the New Fire, from which candles are lit and distributed—each of the 1,200 congregants holding a flame. The choir sings the Exsultet, a hymn specific to this night, followed by Gregorian chant and a cappella psalm settings in near-total darkness until, after the Old Testament readings, the Gloria is sung.
“All heaven breaks loose,” Ottományi said. The electric lights come on. Veils are stripped from the statues, which have been shrouded since the fifth Sunday of Lent. Flowers are returned to the altar. Candles on the altar are lit. And for the first time since the beginning of Lent, the word “Alleluia”—a Latinization of the Hebrew meaning “praise you the Lord,” its final syllable the short form of the holy name of God, which by ancient Jewish custom is never spoken aloud—is sung by the cantor and repeated by the congregation three times, each time a half-step higher.
Then comes the Padilla mass, the Palestrina, the brass—and to close, the Hallelujah chorus not from Handel’s Messiah but from Beethoven’s oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, which Ottományi considers “rather more interesting.” Ottományi has also written a brand new hymn for Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday.
The vigil also includes the initiation of new members into the Catholic Church—baptism, confirmation, and first communion. So many people are entering this year that the parish cannot accommodate them all in one night. Some will be received throughout the Easter season, Ottományi said, because otherwise “we’d be there until three in the morning.”
Beauty Against Ugliness
Asked what emotional experience he is trying to create through the music, Ottományi gently resisted the premise. The role of music in Catholic liturgy, he said, is not to manipulate but to accompany—to serve the texts, the faithful, and their journey. But he acknowledged that each liturgy carries its own affect: mysticism on Holy Thursday, “hopeful sorrow” on Good Friday, and on Easter, “redemption, coming home, freedom, liberty, liberation.”
And he returned, more than once, to a simpler formulation of his mission.
“There’s so much hatred, so much violence, so much ugliness in all its forms,” he said. “The more that we can bring beauty, I think the more we’re accomplishing a good part of our mission.”
IF YOU GO
St. Andrew Catholic Church • 311 N. Raymond Avenue,
Pasadena, CA 91103 • (626) 792-4183
All services are free and open to the public regardless of faith.
HOLY WEEK SCHEDULE (English Services)
Tuesday, March 31 Regular Mass Schedule | Penance Service
(Confessions) with Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, 7:15 p.m.
Wednesday, April 1 Regular Mass Schedule | Sung Tenebrae Service,
7:30 p.m.
Thursday, April 2 Morning Prayer, 8:15 a.m. | Confessions, 8:30 a.m. &
3:00 p.m. | Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, 7:00 p.m.
Friday, April 3 Morning Prayer, 8:15 a.m. | Stations of the Cross, 12:00
p.m. | Seven Last Words, 12:30–1:30 p.m. | Solemn Liturgy, 1:30 p.m.
(followed by procession with Image of the Dead Christ) | Solemn Liturgy,
5:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 4 Morning Prayer, 8:15 a.m. | Confessions, 8:30 a.m. &
3:00 p.m. | Solemn Easter Vigil Mass, 8:00 p.m. (no 5:00 p.m. Mass or
7:00 p.m. Confessions)
Easter Sunday, April 5 Regular Sunday Schedule and Schola Cantorum
with brass at 5 p.m.)
Get our daily Pasadena newspaper in your email box. Free.
Get all the latest Pasadena news, more than 10 fresh stories daily, 7 days a week at 7 a.m.
