♪…I’m in the teach…alllllll byyyyyy myyyysellllllfffffffff… ♫♩

…at least for the next few days anyway. This will literally be the first night I’ve spent alone in this house. Where did everyone go, you ask? Well, the Teach Bhríde crew decided to embrace the Irish custom of going on holiday after the holidays, because, as everyone here knows, you need a holiday after celebrating the holidays. Obviously. So, all of us are taking some time to travel and spend time with good friends from back home: Patrick and Jessica are in London, Clarisa is in Rome, and I just returned from a few days in Vienna. My trip was freezing, but amazing; Vienna is very much a pilgrimage for a lifelong student of piano and classical music in general. I paid my respects to Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and Schubert at the Zentralfreidhof Cemetary, saw a performance of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel at the Vienna Volksoper Theatre, I also attended High Mass at the Augustinerkirche, where a choir and chamber orchestra performed a beautiful setting of the Ordinary by Anton Diabelli, along with a beautiful traditional Austrian Christmas carol. It strongly reminded me of Wexford’s Opera Festival Mass of 2009.

My friend and I actually made a point to attend several Masses while in Vienna. First of all, it’s a great way to visit beautiful churches (we dubbed this kirche-hopping), but second of all, and much more importantly, it’s also an incredible way to experience the universal Church, much like Teach Bhríde did during our visit to Paris. I think what surprised and impressed me most about the Austrian liturgy was the emphasis on congregational singing, even at a daily Mass attended by about four people (two of whom didn’t speak German!). Everyone had a hymnal, the priest announced a number, sang the first phrase of the hymn to establish a key, and we were off. During the Mass at the Annakirche, we (and by “we” I mean the members of the congregation who actually understood the numbers called out by the German-speaking priest) sang an Opening and Closing Hymn, as well as all of the parts of the Ordinary, completely a capella.

Here in Ireland, there is also a strong desire for congregational singing: often during the daily Mass we attend at Clonard, the congregation will join the priest in singing the Gospel Acclamation, the Memorial Acclamation, and sometimes even a closing hymn. I suppose the main difference is that the Irish congregation sings from memory, while the Austrian and Germanic cultures primarily use hymnals (which makes sense, given that movable type was born in that part of the world). In this part of the world, though, the Irish culture is famed for its oral tradition, and every time I attend a music session I am amazed at the fact that everyone knows the words to every song, and if they know the song, they’ll sing it with full heart and voice, whether they’re at a house session, at a pub, or in a pew. If they know it, you’ll know they know it. This can be difficult for us sometimes, given that many of the hymns so familiar to us are brand-new to our Irish congregation, and vice versa, but it’s always a joy when we discover a hymn common to the American and Irish Church. Incredibly enough, the musical overlap even happened in Vienna: the traditional Austrian carol we heard at the Augustinerkirche was an air I had learned for Christmas as a 6th-grader in my parish’s youth choir back in Wichita, Kansas. It was a beautiful moment for me, and in a country where I understood three or four words at most, I was able to feel at home in the universal Church through the music that I heard during the Mass.

As nice as it was to get away, it has been even nicer to come back home. For the moment, the house is quiet–too quiet, really. I’ll get some work done over the next day or two, but I’m already looking forward to having the community reunited next week. After a joyful celebration of Christmas and New Year’s, and after the chance to take a little holiday, I feel refreshed and rejuvenated, ready to begin 2011 and my last six months in Wexford. Please keep Jess, Patch, and Clarisa in prayer for safe travel, as well as the many visitors who will be gracing our home over the coming weeks and months, and once again, Happy 2011 from Teach Bhríde!