?The Spirit Comes to Our Aid? during Madeleine Festival

Intermountain Catholic

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Melanie Malinka, director of music at The Madeleine Choir School, conducts Marc-Antoine Charpentier's ?Judicium Salomonis? during The Cathedral Choir and Chamber Orchestra's concert for the Madeleine Festival of Arts and Humanities at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City May 17. The Festival runs through June 7. The concert's selections were put together by Gregory A. Glenn, conductor and director of liturgy and music at the cathedral. IC photo by Priscilla Cabral

SALT LAKE CITY — The Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City is not only significant as a place to worship for Catholics in Utah, it also has an important role in the humanities as a catalyst for arts and culture in the state.

In 1988, Msgr. M. Francis Mannion founded the Madeleine Festival of the Arts and Humanities "to inspire artistic expression and to make the fruits of that artistic expression available to all."

This year, the festival prepares the community to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Cathedral’s dedication with grand performers, some of them seldom seen in the church’s space. This is the case of the renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra. The 360 volunteer singers, who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, opened the Madeleine Festival with a repertoire of sacred songs from around the world.

The festival is also bringing all-time favorites, such as Tenor Michael Ballam, who will be performing May 24, said Drew Browning, festival director.

Other favorite and ever-present performers are The Cathedral Choir and Chamber Orchestra. The selections put together by Gregory A. Glenn, conductor and director of liturgy and music at the cathedral, for their concert May 17 were from the 17th century.

"I liked the concert a lot. The works by Johann Sebastian Bach are always crowd-pleasers," said Browning. The concert also included selections from Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Jean-Baptiste Lully.

The opening piece was the motet "Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf" or "The Spirit Comes to Our Aid", which Bach composed for the funeral service of his friend Johann Heinrich Ernesti, rector of the Thomas School and professor of poetry at the University of Leipzig. Bach chose biblical texts to illustrate the motet’s main theme: The influence of God’s will in our lives through the Holy Spirit.

The motet is composed of two verses from Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (8:26,27) and the third stanza of the chorale by Martin Luther.

"Bach is so famous, you can easily recognize his music. The motet was not very funereal. It was more joyful; it was lovely," said Browning.

Glenn is very careful when picking pieces for the festival. He takes several months, sometimes almost a year to put selections together, said Browning.

"Glenn tried to pick something meaningful to our times," he said. "Today, it is nice to have a joyful outlook."

The other selections were "Judicium Salomonis" or "The Judgment of Solomon" by Charpentier and "Te Deum" or "We Praise You" by Lully.

The latter was composed as a theme of thanksgiving for the recovery of King Louis XIV from an illness in January 1687. Ironically, Lully died after he struck his foot with a staff while conducting the performance of "Te Deum" and his toe wound developed into gangrene.

Charpentier’s fate was not better than Lully’s. Charpentier was not a celebrated artist during his lifetime, perhaps, to his rivalry with Lully. He acknowledged the audience’s lack of appreciation for his work in his own epitaph cantata:

"I was a musician, considered good by the good ones, scorned as ignorant by the ignorant. And since those who scorned me were much more numerous than those who lauded me, music became to me a small honour and a heavy burden. And just as at my birth I brought nothing into this world, I took nothing from it at my death."

Fortunately, artists, like everyone else, cannot take anything from this world at death, including their work.

"In rough times, music and art work as a standby to lift our spirits," said Browning.