2/25/2010
Cantores in Eccelsia director set to retire
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| Cantores in Eccelsia director set to retire |
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Ed Langlois
The founder of an internationally recognized Portland Catholic liturgical choir will retire after 27 years. Dean Applegate, 63, has made a lifetime ministry of ancient Catholic music. Cantores in Ecclesia, the adult and children's choirs he established, will continue to sing Gregorian chant, sacred Renaissance polyphony and other pieces at Masses under the direction of his son, Blake.
A Mass and reception in the elder Applegate’s honor is set for 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 5 at St. Stephen Church, 1112 SE 41st Ave. in Portland.
Applegate says he has become unable to meet the demands of weekly rehearsals and services.
In 1983, when he started the choirs, there was little enthusiasm for plainsong and polyphony. Now, interest is reviving, with Vatican officials reminding Catholics that the Second Vatican Council intended that ancient sacred music be preserved and used to inspire the faithful.
"The music is spiritual," says the dapper Applegate, an Idaho farmer's son who speaks with an Oxford accent. "It evolved out of a long tradition, starting with the music of the Hebrew temple and synagogue."
While he concedes that the ancient music gives worshipers a sense of the transcendent God, he argues that it's also about the immanence of God — people experiencing the beauty of the divine in their lives.
Chant and polyphony have less meaning outside the context of liturgy, Applegate explains. That's why Cantores in Ecclesia sings during a Saturday evening Latin Mass at St. Stephen’s much as it has at various churches almost every week for decades.
Applegate will continue as president of the board of directors of the choirs and will organize the William Byrd Festival, in its 13th year of bringing speakers and musicians to celebrate the English Catholic Renaissance composer.
After undergraduate studies at Linfield College, Applegate read theology at Oxford. A Baptist, he felt deeply drawn to Catholicism when he met a community of English Dominican friars. He went back to England to study Gregorian chant at Cambridge.
Applegate returned to Oregon after his English studies, his suitcases full of chant hymnals, his spare clothing left behind to make space.
Among other Oregon parishes, he worked at Holy Rosary in Portland, where Dominican Father Gerald Buckley asked him to help create "sumptuous liturgy."
Father Robert Palladino, a retired Portland priest and an artist, recalls Applegate coming to him as early as the 1970s. The young layman was enthralled with chant and he sought the advice of the former Trappist monk and choirmaster.
Father Palladino calls Applegate a "dedicated and persevering choral musician who tried to bring back this discarded treasure."
Father Frank Knusel, who was pastor at St. Patrick Parish in Portland when Applegate began an 18-year association with that church in 1984, considers Cantores in Ecclesia "one of the world's best choirs."
Father Knusel calls Applegate a meticulous and gifted man who could have been a rare music critic. Instead, he dedicated his life to worship.
"Whatever he did, it fit the pastoral need," Father Knusel says.
The late Auxiliary Bishop Paul Waldschmidt was an avid backer of the choir, and Bishop Basil Meeking, retired Bishop of the Diocese of Christchurch, New Zealand, has been a frequent guest presider at the William Byrd Festival Masses. Bishop Meeking calls the festival, which is largely Applegate's work, a "great contribution to the general cultural life in Oregon" as well as a Catholic outreach.
Applegate says his life's project has not earned him a dime. Contributions go to singers or for choir pilgrimages. His son, who will assume direction of Cantores in Ecclesia next month, knows what he's getting into.
The elder Applegate, touched by his son's choice, nevertheless quips: "I'm gratified that Blake would want to carry on in the family non-business."
Cantores in Ecclesia has made three records on the Oregon Catholic Press label, forging a partnership with a publisher known for contemporary liturgical music.
"In 30 years, I've never seen Dean Applegate waiver from one inspired purpose: the best of Catholic (and some Anglican) liturgical music sung during liturgy," says William Schuster, an OCP music editor and pastoral musician at St. John Fisher Parish.
OCP is publisher of the Sentinel.
Father Christopher Deitz, head of the Conventual Franciscans of the California Province, made pilgrimages to Europe with Cantores in Ecclesia and Applegate between 1993 and 2003.
"All that he has been about — and it's right to call it a ministry — is in service of the liturgy and really the fostering of a spiritual life in the best sense of the word," Father Deitz says.
The music that the choir sings "opens us up to the transcendent," says the friar.
"Dean is truly a master in bringing forth the musical tradition and coupling that with us as human beings," he said.
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