Magdalen College students immerse themselves in the great tradition of Catholic sacred music by participating in the all-college choir for four years. In response to the prevailing culture of passivity and consumption in relation to the arts, Magdalen College students become active contributors to sounding beauty, even if they have never sung before.
The primary purpose of the choir is to enrich the liturgy through the singing of chant, polyphony, and the best of the Church’s hymnody. Through participation in the choir, students not only immerse themselves in the musical treasures of the Church and experience beauty in new and profound ways, they also become attuned to the rhythms of the liturgical calendar.
The full choir or smaller ensembles have the opportunity to sing at the Cathedral for the annual Red Mass, for the Advent Lessons and Carols Service on the feast of Saint Nicholas, and at other local events and parishes. The highlight for the choir each year is Holy Week and Easter. Over the years the choir has produced five cd’s and has been invited to sing at parishes and events across the Northeast.
The choir of Magdalen College also serves the greater Church by creating a model for liturgical renewal. After experiencing the beauty and reverence of a liturgy enhanced through sacred music, many students take their experiences at the college to their parishes and contribute to beautiful worship for many years after graduation.
The Magdalen College Polyphony Choir is a select group of students who sing more challenging sacred music including motets by Palestrina, Byrd, Tallis, Gabrieli and Victoria. The Polyphony Choir is an extension of the mission of Magdalen College, offering the best of ourselves to God in the liturgy, expressed through music. The Polyphony Choir sings monthly at Mass on campus as well as at special events throughout each semester. The highlight of the group’s musical activities is the Polyphony Choir Tour, a four-day tour throughout New England.
The Magdalen College Chant Schola sings the great chants from the church’s beautiful sacred music tradition. The Chant Schola prepares music for Masses in the ordinary and extraordinary form as well as the Melkite Divine Liturgy. They typically sing the traditional chants for All Souls’ Day, All Saints’ Day, the Presentation of Our Lord, Good Friday and Easter Wednesday. Previous experience singing chant is not required to participate in the Chant Schola.
In this studio course, students learn the fundamentals of Byzantine iconography, being guided through the basic process, art, and language of the icon. Students are led step-by-step through the creation of a simple and beautiful icon of Christ or of our Lady with her son.
Through the studio art courses, students can shed the noise and distraction of the week, spending time drawing and painting while “learning to see again.” The fall drawing course uses a variety of exercises to help students “see what’s really there” and experiment with the challenge of representing three dimensional shape and value on two dimensional paper. Students in the fall course draw faces, landscapes (plein air), natural objects, architectural and perspective exercises using pencil, pastel, and charcoal. They learn how to set up a scene that pleases the eye and how to avoid common mistakes. Value, line, composition, perspective, and proportions are taught.
Building on the semester of Studio Drawing, the spring semester introduces color theory and painting techniques, particularly with watercolor as well as tempera, pastel and acrylic or oil, according to student interest. Advanced students may work on individual projects.
In this course students explore both the philosophy of art, through reflection on how art is made, and aesthetics, through reflection on our experience of art. Students take up writings by a wide variety of authors, including Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Kant, Tolstoy, Benjamin, Sontag, Maritain, Gilson, Hildebrand, and Pope Saint John Paul II.
To honor the memory of Josef Pieper and to contribute directly to the renewal of culture, Magdalen College has created the Josef Pieper Prize, a prize awarded for a new work of art created by a student in dialogue with an existing work of visual, musical, or literary art.
The winner of the prize presents his or her work to the collegiate community as part of the Easter Vigil Feast, thereby linking directly and publicly those elements–according to Pieper–that give birth to the creation of culture: sacrifice, worship, feasting, and leisure. The winning work is performed for the collegiate community or, in the case of a literary submission, distributed to the community.
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