Narrator: 2020 had a way of changing what everyone thought was essential. Our carefree consumption pivoted to scrabbling over the most basic of amenities. Toilet paper and loaves of bread took the status of luxury items. Many former workaholics found themselves with a wealth of unstructured time as capitalism grinded to a halt. Schools and daycares closed. In this new COVID-19 world, we reorganized the fundamental aspects of our lives. For many of us, what we needed became more barebones: one more day with a healthy family, food on the table, a warm home. But just when the basics were deemed essential, Joe Balistreri wanted to make a case for something else: beauty. [quartet singing] Narrator: Welcome to Detroit Stories, a podcast on a mission to boldly share the stories of the people and communities in Southeast Michigan. These are the stories that fascinate and inspire us. [music] Narrator: Joe is the Coordinator of Music Ministries for the Archdiocese of Detroit and the Director of Music at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament. He manages five choirs ranging from eight to 50 singers, he coordinates and directs the music for three masses each weekend and 10 concerts each year, and, in his scant free time, he serves as a counselor and coordinator for parish musicians throughout metro-Detroit, with hopes of elevating the quality of music for the entire diocese. Joe is the perfect person for this job. He’s vivacious, yet composed. His directions are emphatic, yet succinct and measured. He’s very expressive. He can talk at length about the nuances of the Renaissance and baroque traditions like we might talk about the weather. Joe: ...small vocal group, specifically like late-Renaissance and early Baroque… Narrator: Joe’s job is to enrich the liturgy, but he approaches this less like a job and more like a vocation. While from time to time his work may have him steeped in the earthly minutiae of emails or church budgets, he has a near-celestial scope. His guiding principle is perhaps best summarized in his favorite quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: “Beauty will save the world.” This is Joe. Joe: So much art has come from our cathedrals over the centuries that it’s important that we continue to carry on that mantle in the 21st century. And beauty is the ultimate path to evangelization in this time when there’s so much hostility to Christian apologetics. Narrator: But in March, as the number of COVID-19 cases grew in Michigan, Governor Whitmer declared a state of emergency. Public gatherings and events were restricted, and on March 13th, public Masses were suspended to mitigate the spread of the virus. The Archdiocese of Detroit would broadcast a livestreamed Mass celebrated by Archbishop Vigneron online. When the razor of essentialism started toward personnel for the livestreamed Mass, Joe and the archdiocesan staff had strong opinions. Joe: Music is essential to the liturgy in all churches. Narrator: Lucky for Joe, the Church has always had an otherworldly sense of priorities. Joe: When the livestream started, the Archbishop and the Priest Secretary, Fr. Grau, and the different leaders really thought it was important for the stream to be of the highest quality, because there was no other stream in the diocese. There was no other liturgy happening in the diocese. So, to make it as beautiful as possible, there were decisions made about what vestments would be used, what is the preaching going to be like, will there be incense for certain liturgies… but it was deemed, by our leadership, very important to have the best quality music that we could, just to give people a sense of familiarity. You know, it would be tough, if we were not having Mass anywhere in the diocese and everyone is encouraged to tune in to one place, for that to be a Mass that isn’t familiar because there’s no music on a Sunday. Especially in the Lent and Easter season. So, when we settled on music being essential, that was a pretty clear message from our leadership, that music is an essential part of the liturgy — an essential part of making it beautiful. So that decision was basically a grace to the faithful, to say, you know, “We’re going to do the best we can, under our constrictions that we have, to try to give you an experience that’s beautiful and normal and fulfilling.” Narrator: Mass would be limited to ten people. A typical Mass at the Cathedral would have a couple priests presiding, several altar servers, a choir, accompaniment, an organist, a cantor, and, of course, the congregation. The livestream version of Mass at the Cathedral was going to be a skeletal version of the real thing. Instead of 26 musicians, Joe would get four. To stick to the numbers without compromising on quality, he would have to get strategic. But, his strategy was unknowingly the answer to an eight-year long struggle to form an elite choir. Joe: For a number of years now — I’d say probably a sound seven or eight years — Archbishop Vigneron has thrown around the idea of the archdiocese having a schola cantorum of sorts. Narrator: It’s okay. I didn’t know what that was either. Joe: “Schola cantorum” is Latin for “school of singing”. So, literally what it is, is it’s either a specialized choir, so professional vocalists, professional singers of the highest level working together as a choir, or it’s a group of singing teachers or composers or musicians who somehow are doing work related to song. “Schola cantorum”, because the term is Latin and Latin is the official language of the Church, tends to be associated with Roman Catholic worship. So these tend to be small choirs, often Roman Catholic, sometimes Protestant, that focus on sacred music at the very highest professional level. Narrator: So for eight years, Joe had been trying to put together this schola cantorum for the archdiocese. Joe: My first idea was maybe having a group of music directors get together on Sunday nights, so we could bring our favorite pieces and kind of do a show-and-tell and conduct each other and talk about spiritual meaning and the musical nuances of each piece. It just never worked out. And I had different ideas of pulling volunteers from the Diocesan Choir, but getting volunteers to come together on a schedule doesn’t work right. It was only when the pandemic hit that the clear path of how this would work came into focus. [man chanting] Joe: At the time, we had six professional singers at the Cathedral who supported Sunday worship and the Archbishop’s liturgies. So I took four of those singers and we started changing the repertoire and doing music that was better for small voices, so a lot of music from the Renaissance, a lot of chant, a lot of music without accompaniment, because the organ would overwhelm the voices, and we started to make music for Sunday Mass, just that little group. Eric: I never would’ve thought that an opportunity like this would have arised. Narrator: This is Eric Taylor, a member of the schola cantorum and Director of the Detroit Children’s Choir. Eric: Never had I thought that my work as a musician would be so important during this pandemic, you know? There are many choir programs, there are many music programs, you know — just by the nature of all of us being together, they’re not able to come together because of this pandemic. So, what we’re doing is, you know, so paramount in our community, because we’re still providing that beautiful choral music making that — we’re providing that sense of, you know, they say that Mass is where Heaven meets Earth, you know? St. John Paul II said that. Narrator: When the first Mass was livestreamed from the Cathedral on March 15th, expectations from Joe and the choir were wary. Could Heaven meet Earth in a digital setting? These were the same devices with which people had been binge watching Tiger King and Tik-Toking. Would people even watch? Or would people opt out of Mass until they could resume in person? Archbishop Vigneron: In order to try to mitigate the advance of the coronavirus, we are not able to have the public celebration of the Sacred Liturgy today. But it is, for us, a blessing at least to be united in prayer through this medium. And so, I assure all of you that I bring your intentions with me to the altar. [organ music and singing] Narrator: But the response was overwhelming. Over 33,000 people tuned in. Families and roommates in Detroit and beyond huddled around desktops. Tiny home altars were made with candles, prayer cards, and flowers. COVID patients fighting for their lives watched on laptops. Worn out first responders watched on cell phones from the hospital. And for once, rather than grave reminders with each news cycle of the trauma happening, what poured into their homes was absolutely beautiful. Donna: It meant a lot to us. Narrator: This is Donna Abdoo. She and her husband are St. Paul on the Lake parishioners in Grosse Pointe. Donna: We were able to put it up on the big-screen TV in our room, you know. It was a quiet place, we were able to make it a holy place, for the purposes of attending this Mass. We were engrossed in both the Mass, the music — everything that was happening, it was just us and the Mass, and we were really appreciative of it. Narrator: For Joe, this fell right into the mission of the group. Joe: The mission of the Schola Cantorum Detroitensis is to advance the excellence in sacred singing at the Cathedral and in the archdiocese. It has to be a model of beauty. It has to be kind of like a shining star that shows people what’s possible. And that really, you know — to use a really colloquial term — kind of blows people’s minds open about what’s possible in terms of beauty. It also — as many cathedrals do — the Cathedral has a civic purpose in addition to religious purposes, which is to be a beacon of beauty and of hope. [singing] Narrator: The reception was so warm, the schola became a permanent fixture in the archdiocese’s livestreamed Masses. Donna: Oftentimes at Communion, they would do a piece that was designed to be a cappella and that maybe came from the Middle Ages or whatever, and it was stunning and inspirational. And it just really enhanced the liturgy. [singing ‘Alleluia’] Donna: When they all got together on the altar to sing the Alleluia, it was just lovely. And “alleluias” should sound like that! They should sound like we’re lifting our voices to heaven. And when they all stood there, the four or five of them and multi-parts… just inspirational. So even though we can’t be together, we can be together in spirit. Joe: Music’s greatest power is its power of unity. When we feel united, we know we can get through things and we know we can do things together. [Eric singing] Narrator: This is Eric singing. Eric: I’ve always found that in times of such great distress and times of great uncertainty, there are those things that we look for that really focus on, you know, the positives in the world and the hopefulness in the world. And this pandemic has really been a very chaotic time — no one has really experienced anything like this in our lifetime, you know, to go from working and going to school and, you know, living that normal life, to being stuck at home waiting for this pandemic to pass, it can be very uncertain. It can be very dark. But music has the power, really, to bring such hope and that light in the darkness. You know, to be able to share our love of music whether it’s singing or conducting or playing the organ or singing in a choir, that experience of being able to share that gift with others really keeps me as a musician, it keeps me grounded, and it really keeps me aware — you know, it gives you things to look forward to in a time of such uncertainty. Narrator: In his 1999 “Letter to Artists”, Pope John Paul II wrote some especially prescient words for this time. “Society needs artists just as it needs scientists, technicians, workers, professional people, witnesses of the faith, teachers, fathers, and mothers...to be custodians of beauty, heralds and witnesses of hope for humanity.” 2020 was a year where we found ourselves needing a lot of things that we had previously taken for granted, and there’s a long list of things we find ourselves longing for. And probably, what is the most profoundly felt is also the most difficult to articulate. 2020 was a year we needed hope for humanity. And I think Joe gets this more than most. [a cappella singing] Joe: I guess my greatest hope is that people watching the livestreams got a sense of the importance of beauty in the liturgy. For decades now, we’ve really been focused as a Church on participation, in getting everyone to participate, which is very, very important, it’s the center of what we do. So as a Church, Mass is beautiful, that Mass lifts hearts and minds outside of the mundane, outside of the everyday in the world, and brings them to a contemplative experience of beauty. Because, you know, God can be found in that. My main goal, to put it in a shorter little summary, I’d say, is that minds were opened and that hearts were cracked. Minds opened to new ways of sharing beauty, and new ways of participation. And then hearts opened to the cracking of stoniness so that the Holy Spirit can break in and inspire them with beauty. [singing continues] [music] Narrator: Detroit Stories is a production of Detroit Catholic and the Communications Department of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Find us on Google, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.