Michigan parish prepares for 500th Palestrina celebration

The year 2025 marks the 500th anniversary of perhaps the most famous composer of Catholic sacred Music: Giovanni Palestrina.

At the flourishing parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the anniversary year will be marked by a festival of faith including monthly concerts of the finest quality, solemn Masses, and public outreach.

Jonathan Bading, music director at Sacred Heart Parish, spoke with CWR recently about the Palestina500 project.

CWR: Who was Palestrina? Why should we learn more about him?

Jonathan Bading: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594) was a composer, cantor, conductor, and organist in a Rome reeling from the Reformation. He held some of the most prominent directing positions in the Eternal City, including director of the Julian Choir, the clerical ensemble that sang for Papal Masses at St. Peter’s Basilica. He was the leading sacred musician at the time of the Council of Trent, and the Council Fathers thus esteemed his music as the exemplary model of sacred polyphony, and pointed to it as a means of liturgical unity in a fractured Church.

Palestrina influenced many major composers after him, perhaps most notably J.S. Bach, who copied his music and even troped on it. His oeuvre is enormous: he wrote over 100 Mass settings alone, not including his myriad motets, antiphon, Magnificats, Psalms, etc. A colossal output! He is one of the major pillars of sacred music, and his 500th birthday is an opportunity to thank God for his legacy and call to mind the strength, beauty, and glory of our Roman Rite.

CWR: What is the goal of Palestrina500? What format will it take?

Jonathan Bading: Palestrina500 is a year-long celebration of the life, work, and legacy of the supreme maestro as he turns half-a-millennium old. The musicological significance of this anniversary alone merits such a festival. However, as his music is quintessential to the Roman Rite, we as Catholics owe him this particular homage: we aim to restore his music to the context for which it was written: The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The format is as follows: Once a month during the year 2025, we will be hosting a visiting choir who will sing an hour long “choral meditation” followed by a sung Mass featuring prominently the works of Palestrina. We will then have a lovely reception in our parish hall. Each monthly event corresponds to a major liturgical feast day (see our website for the full list of events). And we’re bringing in top-tier international, domestic, and local ensembles to do this music justice.

Most importantly, as this music is foundational to our Rite, we hope to glorify Our Eucharistic Lord in the beauty of holiness. We aim to usher in clergy, the Faithful, Protestants, seculars, academics, or whomever into this Temple free of charge, that they may meet our Lord face to face. In short, it’s a year-long retreat into beauty.

CWR: How does the Sacred Heart parish see Palestrina500 as a unique parochial outreach?

Jonathan Bading: Our parish is buried in the Polish neighborhoods of west Grand Rapids. Though Grand Rapids is often associated with Dutch Calvinism, the west bank of the Grand River has been the home of working-class ethnic Catholics for over a hundred years: the Poles, Lithunians, Germans, Irish, to name a few.

Our parish went through a revival of sorts a little over a decade ago: we revitalized our parochial school by rebuilding it upon a classical model, we prioritized reverence and adherence to Tradition in the celebration and the music of the Mass, and we founded multiple apostolates to serve the needs of our community. Now, we have a weekend Mass attendance close to 1,000, almost 60 baptisms a year, and annual RCIA classes in the double digits. We’re in the middle stages of restoring our sanctuary to its former glory; we’ll be installing a new high altar next month.

Palestrina500 highlights explicitly what has underpinned our parish implicitly for the last 10 years: that the Mass deserves all of our time, attention, and care, and that music, that ephemeral, yet eternal good, saves souls.

CWR: You have a dozen ensembles of the finest quality lined up. What was it like to coordinate with them? What are their thoughts on the project?

Jonathan Bading: It was nothing short of a miracle getting this roster all squared away this past summer. I was able to catch the UK groups, The Gesualdo Six and The Tallis Scholars, while they happened to be touring the States that year, and The London Oratory Schola was already looking to do a US tour again. A great anecdote about The Tallis Scholars: The one feasible date they offered me happened to be the Friday within the Octave of Easter, and I thought that it must be an act of Providence: Easter Friday is a Solemnity, a weekend evening, a stark contrast to Good Friday a week before, and a great opportunity to enter into the Octave of Octaves that we seldom have the resources (or energy) to celebrate in proper fashion.

Regarding the domestic groups: I highlighted some professional early music ensembles in the greater Midwest and Ontario, groups that would have the scheduling flexibility to make it to Grand Rapids with relative ease. Thus, we’re pulling from Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto, and, of course, West Michigan. The one exception is Floriani, from Phoenix, but they’re friends of friends.

A few of my musical colleagues have asked me what strings I had to pull, or arms I had to twis,  to get these “professional” or “academic” ensembles (in contrast to liturgical choirs, i.e. groups that sing regularly for Mass) to sing this music in its proper context. I did nothing at all! I spoke perhaps to the musicological significance of singing this music in its proper liturgical context, but nothing other than that. Some groups have indeed expressed excitement for this unique opportunity.

CWR: Will the concerts only consist of Palestrina’s music, or will other composers feature? Will any modern sacred compositions be included to showcase that his legacy continues?

Jonathan Bading: The “choral meditations,” which serve as a prelude to the Mass, will feature both Palestrina’s and other composers’ works, repertoire significant to the feast being celebrated. I’ve told the ensembles to “have at it” when it comes to programming, as long as it’s sacred, within the Catholic tradition (not necessarily Roman), and appropriate to the day. We had His Majesty’s Men out in August for the Assumption, giving us an opportunity to demo this format. Their repertoire for the choral meditation spanned 600 years, from DuFay (15th c.) to brand new commissions. It served as a wonderful contrast to the Mass, which featured William Byrd (another great Renaissance composer) heavily. We hope for the same effect—a highlighting of Palestrina’s influence and legacy.

The Mass, however, will be purely Palestrina, with an exception of Gregorian chant (those two musical styles make wonderful companions).

CWR: Palestrina500 will also include liturgical celebration. Can you speak about the ecumenical and apologetic quality of beauty? How might it serve as a way to bring non-Catholics into contact with the sacred, even in the context of liturgy?

Jonathan Bading: Yes, as mentioned, the crowning event every evening will be the Mass, featuring one of Palestrina’s ordinaries (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei), two of his motets, and perhaps some of his other works.

I converted to Catholicism after hearing Victoria (a contemporary of Palestrina’s) sung in the Mass. Even though I had heard and studied and performed this very music countless times, I heard it then sacramentally for the first time. The music took on a divine import; it was, in short, an aural icon of the Holy Spirit, finally bearing out what St. Pius X once dared to utter: that sacred music “adds greater efficacy to the text,” that is, the Word of God!

As the Catholic Church is the crucible of civilization, all society has a relationship with Her, direct or indirect, whether they realize it or not. Unfortunately, much of the world has a flawed, distrusting relationship with Her, no thanks to the rampant liturgical utilitarianism, minimalism, and scandal of the last century. But when we celebrate and restore her Sacred Mysteries to this full, proper, and regal manner, we get a praegustatum, a foretaste, of the Church’s eternal, immaculate, and heavenly destiny, and this desire for eternity is written on every human heart. So I look at liturgical beauty as a divine balm to a broken world, a consolation to the demands of the Cross, one that convinces you of Our Lord when he says, “My yoke is easy, my burden, light.”

CWR: How can readers support this project?

Jonathan Bading: We need your support! We’re well on our way in raising our $150,000 goal, but as there are imaginably so many line items for a festival like this, truly “every dollar counts.” Your $15 will buy us a bottle of wine (from Lazio, where Rome and the town of Palestrina are located) for one of the twelve receptions, and your $15,000 can underwrite one of the performances (which come with some perks!).

And please know that as Palestrina500 is an apostolate of our parish, this constitutes tithing to Holy Mother Church—in other words, we’re not an external non-profit. If you feel compelled in the slightest towards charity, please visit our website. And if you are interested in underwriting, there’s an address there to contact me directly.