(bold upbeat music continues) (bold upbeat music continues) - lift the clouds off of... - virtual weather, only on kpix and pix+. good morning. on behalf of the archdiocese of san francisco, welcome to mosaic. the topic is music, sound,

ordered progressions of sound from a single pure voice or instruments up to a complex orchestra or massive opera with tones, harmonies, vibrations and rhythms that pull you in, fill you up or take you places that suggest wonders. is there more powerful or more captivating art the music? today we will talk about sacred music in the catholic tradition. we are not talking about the history of catholic music or music of the past, our guest today is a much honored composer who was writing a brand-new mass that will appear here in san francisco. we will talk to frank about the path of beauty in music as a path to god.

welcome to mosaic. my guest today is frank, thank you for joining us. a brief bio, you are from new jersey. you have been here for 30 or 40 years. >> moved here in 1974 when i came out to do my graduate work at cal berkeley. >> went to yale and got in undergrad in music. you were a teacher of music, composition at cal state east bay. and you

retired from that. >> i started in 1981 and hung up my cleats in 2019. >> you are a well-known composer, much awarded. what we want to get today is the work you are doing for the archdiocese of san francisco. my understanding is that you were setting mass and you also write secret music. why the interest in sacred music? >> the interest in secret music came to me relatively late in the total span of my career as a composer. i've been writing music broadly understood as in the classical style since 1971. but until a significant moment in my life in the late '90s,

you can call it, i think, a kind of religious conversion experience, i had no interest at all in sacred music. but, i became convinced that in order to live a life that was well ordered where what i did for work and what i believed in terms of religious commitments, needed to not be in conflict with one another or occupy worlds that were too far apart. the other thing is, while i was raised catholic as a boy, i drifted away for quite a number of years. when i had this kind

of conversion experience in the mid-'90s, it was a powerful disruption to my entire worldview. as it began to be reconstituted through learning what christianity was, with the mind of an adult, not the mind of a child, i began to realize that this needs to be at the center of my life's work. it is what i spend most of my time doing. i was enormously grateful even though it was painful and disruptive, i was enormously grateful for this experience that i had, and at the same time i was given a kind of understanding, i guess you would say that i had to do

penance for the sin that i had indulged in all those years that i was away from any kind of religious practice. and there is of course a great tradition in the psalms and in other sacred text, psalm 50, 51 and the protestant numbering, i'm actually not sure. i get those mixed up. create in me a clean heart, o god, and renew a deep spirit within me. when i read words like that well studying scripture or otherwise engaged in religious reading i would just be stirred to my very core. and if, what an artist, certainly in my case, what an artist feeds off of his

inspiration, well, that is where i was finding it. >> and i would think, you mentioned penance, that is an interesting concept, your penance seems to be self-imposed are called into vocation by god, to write music . >> a lot would consider the writing of the music to be penance. but i consider it my offering to god in the music that i write. it has to include a penitential component. penance not just in a punitive sense but penance in the sense of making sure that i never forget where i used to be and where i am now and the fact that god brought me here. and as it says in that psalm, i know my sins are forgiven but i want to keep them right there in front of me. not in any morbid or self-destructive way, but just as a way of turning neither to the right nor to the

left. and to give thanks to god for having rescued me out of the pit of muck and mire. >> your music now, sacred music you've been writing for 10 years or so as i have it, it has a goal of reaching god and/or honoring god. >> giving glory to god. staying in communion with god, but also, particularly in music that will be heard in liturgical settings, to serve as a portal of grace for people. and for mass. the technical term is sacramental. it is not a sacrament, but the candles, the vestments, the everything of beauty in the mass is a sacramental. it is a portal through which god offers

us grace if only we would cooperate with it, and that is what music should serve as in a liturgical setting, is one of those portals of grace. >> that sounds good. we will keep that in mind, we will take up brief break, come back and talk more in detail and listen to some of your music.

hello, welcome back. it is so enjoyable to talk about music. it is a basic human creation that goes from the deepest most elemental parts of our being to the most complex and mathematical versions of us. frank, we want to listen to a couple of pieces of your

music. we will bring up, we have to disappoint you, they are each 5 to 7 minutes long. we will do a brief excerpt from each, listen, and look and frank will tell us something about what is happening musically and illogically. click one from frank la rocca, please. >> ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

>> it is a piece of the psalm,

grace is poured out. what is going on with this piece of music? >> this is the communion proper for the feast of the blessed mother mary's queen ship of the world, august 22nd. commissioned for me by the diocese of oakland for the 50th anniversary of the diocese celebratory mass that took place august 22nd, queen ship of mary. the text itself is rich with images of royalty, as you would expect for the queen ship of mary. there is images of rich ropes, fragrant garments, houses of ivory. so the approach that i took in writing this was to make it sound sumptuous. to give it an error of -- air of gravity but

also a air of light. >> as an opening of a portal to god, i'm sorry we couldn't vanish that, i wanted to see where it wound up. >> you can watch the rest of the clip on youtube. >> frank la rocca's website has youtube links . let's take a look at the second clip.

>> ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

>> so, again, we have to interrupt what comes next but we have about a minute and a half to talk about, what is the meaning, what is going on? >> this is a christmas text, so obviously with all those images you can tell it is text having to do with the nativity. but more than just the nativity, the richer theology of the incarnation. in the book of revelation it talks about the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. so those images, at the beginning, and i'm the one who made the little video accompaniment,

look at the universe information. right, and then christ comes to earth and you see the image of the earth. then right as the musical phrase swells, what you see? you see jesus in the manger. what i'm trying to convey is a kind of contradiction because the word that is being sung then is large and volume and yet all the images are of this tiny baby . >> the great mystery is the tiny child. let's leave it there for this moment. taking a brief break and be back with you very shortly to finish up talking with frank la rocca.

(upbeat music) - this is the new pix+ with the only 8:00 and 9:00 pm news, the primetime edition: weeknights on the new pix+. 44 cable 12. (bell chiming) >> welcome back to mosaic. i like to call for our slide for this last segment , please, so we can see that. just some basic information. this is frank la rocca. you can see his website. go to it, listen to the music and learn about the band. the other is that benedict 16th institute, an initiative of the archdiocese to bring beauty and splendor back to liturgical and sacred music and it is for this group

that frank is the composer and resident and has been commissioned to write mass that we will talk about now. so frank, tell us about the mass of the americas that will premiere here in the cathedral on december 8th. >> this is a really interesting project. it takes me into very new territory as a composer. the inspiration for it is actually the feast day of our lady of guadalupe in the celebrations renting that, and this year it coincides with the immaculate conception. we will have sort of both things happening at the same time at the december 8th mass. what is interesting about it is the archbishop vision , and i've known him for a number of years and he has often talked about this, using music as a cultural bridge. so that is what he asked me to try to do with this mass. trying to find a way to weave into the fabric of the

music certain, very popular devotional tunes associated with mexican catholic culture. when we talked about a model for this, he and i were both familiar with colonial days where the friars would use the popular songs of the day. it was a way to draw people to the church. musicians would stand outside, play popular music, everyone would gather. then they would try to see if they can get them to come into church and attend mass as part of the evangelization process. something similar happened with the music and the california missions. once they were inside the church, then it was primarily the music of the spanish baroque, whether they

were from spain or spaniard composers who moved to the new world. the archbishop's vision takes it one step further and wants to get the popular music across the threshold and into the church. as a result, we have a mass that is , hopefully, will reveal the unity of the immaculate conception, patroness of america, our lady guadalupe a, by having high church music, such as i typically write, but woven out of pieces of these popular tunes. >> i'm coming to this thing. it's going to be good . >> it will be interesting. and the instrumentation to a certain extent supports appeared we have a choir, string quartet and guitar and

one particular song, we have in the mass texts, spanish, english, latin and for the communion meditation we have the aztec language. i propose this to the archbishop because i knew it was the language that our lady guadalupe addressed juan diego during her operations in 1521, 31. recently it occurred to me that another thing it accomplishes, a bit of a strong image but i think it is important, is the aztec priests who performed human sacrifice on those stone altars also spoke this language. to bring this language into the sacrifice of the mass, the true victim, jesus christ, who died for our

sins and who can remit them on our behalf. to me this is an absolutely beautiful image to essentially redeem this false understanding of the meaning of sacrifice with the true understanding of the meaning of sacrifice. >> that sounds daring. >> i have a setting during what we know as ave maria with violin, organ and it is a native south-central american instrument. >> the mass world premiere in the cathedral on december 8th will be done down in texas next year ? >> yes, i'm given to understand that this past weekend the archbishop was visiting in dallas and was a guest homilist at the dallas cathedral and proposed to their bishop, bishop burns , that

this mess of the americas be sunk there next year for the feast of guadalupe and their cathedral is the cathedral of lady of guadalupe and many of them throughout the greater southwest. >> frank, we have to close up. i want to say thank you so much for being with us. tell the viewers to come to mass on december 8th. also it will be live streamed and broadcast. thank you for being with us. and thank you for your work in music. thank you for being with us on mosaic. - lift the clouds off of... - virtual weather, only on kpix and pix+. when migraine strikes,

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