Word: cappella
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Professor French deserves the highest praise for training the chorus in behavior, which was sufficiently indifferent to the action on stage, and for precise cooperation. The hymn-like a cappella sections of the finale were perfectly beautiful. But Malcolm Holmes, the conductor, cannot be given such plaudits. Although the orchestra showed its capabilities, he failed on several attacks and seldom succeeded in subduing the instrumentalists in time to get the soloists' first phrases...
Singing was best during the many duets and quartets. Particularly well done was one a cappella quartet in the second act, which at all times was in perfect pitch, with each voice delicately balanced...
Father Finn's musical specialty (the a cappella* choral music of the 16th Century) occupies the middle ground in the three great divisions of liturgical music. The others are: 1) the Gregorian Chant, pure, unharmonized 6th-Century melody, best heard in recent years from the Benedictine monks of Solesmes, France; 2) the "modern," which in liturgical circles includes all church music written since the beginning of the 18th Century - including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Verdi. Since 1904, when Pope Pius X pronounced on the subject of sacred music in his famed encyclical Motu Proprio, the use of "modern" music...
...Literally "in the church style," a cappella today means choral music unaccompanied by in struments...