MTSM Hosts February Solemn Vespers, Organ Recital

The Sacred Music Institute (SMI) at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology (MTSM) hosted a Solemn Vespers and Organ Recital on Sunday, February 15 in the Chapel of St. Gregory the Great.

The music from the Solemn Vespers, drew from colonial Latin America from the late 17th century to early 19th century. The music included pieces by Juan Gutierrez de Padilla (c. 1590-1664), Francisco Lopez Capillas (c. 1614-1674), Andrew Flores (1680-1712), Manuel de Sumaya (c. 1678-1755) and Sor Maria Clara of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

You can watch one of the villancicos performed by the Athenaeum Chorale below.

Prior to the Solemn Vespers, an organ recital was performed by Matthew Geerlings, the Director of Music for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter in Chains in Cincinnati. Geerlings’s program included pieces from Nicolaus Bruhns, Francisco Correa de Arauxo and Christa Rakich. You can watch the entirety of Geerlings’s recital below.

The next Music & Liturgy event at MTSM will be on Sunday, March 22, the annual Solemn Passiontide Vespers and Organ Recital. The organ recital will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Chapel of St. Gregory the Great and be performed by Michael Dailey, the Director of Music at Our Lord Christ the King Church in Cincinnati. Solemn Vespers will begin at 7 p.m., with the Mount St. May’s Latin Schola. The program will include plainchant drawn from several different rites: Roman, Ambrosian, Dominican, Mozarabic and Sarum. For more information, click here.