The ministry of the organ played well - Sister Loretta Penchi's gift to FSPA

 

It’s been said that the strains of pipe organ music are fading from Christian worship in America. What’s more, when liturgical play lists do call for the genre, the organists themselves are becoming few and far between. A growing number of churches are employing full-time pianists and hiring (and paying) organists only part-time. The current pool of musicians is aging, and organ music programs in American colleges, universities and conservatories across the country have reported that enrollment is declining. The situation is something that the FSPA members who consistently enjoy Mass in Mary of the Angels Chapel may not be wholly aware of, for they have paid glorious witness to the ministry of music professed by Sister Loretta Penchi.

“Sister Loretta is a pearl of great treasures,” says Sister Rochelle Potaracke. Although most FSPA are familiar with Sister Loretta’s work in the balcony of the chapel, “many have never stopped to look at the scores of gifts Loretta has to offer,” says Sister Rochelle.

Sister Loretta began cultivating those gifts when, at the young age of 13 years old, she entered the convent and faced a question that would shape the rest of her life; would she go into nursing, or teaching? “Sister tried me out on piano, and I was put into music,” she recalls. She began working with the organ as an FSPA novice and has been playing for Mass ever since.

As Sister Rochelle says, Sister Loretta’s musical talents are many. She was a music teacher for more than 20 years, instructing students both in the classroom and in private lessons at six different schools. She is an accomplished violinist (her major in college), and discovered early on that, without any training, she could name any note or chord by ear—absolute pitch.

Sister Loretta’s musical abilities also include writing and transposing. A collection of songs she composed for children, “really for solo voices,” she says, was published in a book titled Prayers from the Ark. She’s also written other vocal pieces, as well as several postludes for Mass.

Many of the traditional Schola arrangements she enjoys playing on the organ for the choir are written in higher keys, which Sister Loretta says can be difficult to sing. “If I know it well I can transpose it down a key without having to write it out,” she says. “It comes in very handy. We do what we can to sing the ones that mean the most to us.” Her favorites, for the record, are Suscipe, as well as Canticle of the Sun.

Experience is also in her favor when it comes to playing organ pieces written for advanced musicians. “Sister Loretta is one of the last FSPA who can play the difficult organ selections composed by Sister Lucilda Meyer, an excellent musician, organist, teacher and composer who died in 1997,” says FSPA Liturgist Mary Thompson. “She plays many of Sister Lucilda’s published and unpublished works on Sundays, jubilees and special feast days,” says Mary. “She also has accompanied the Schola for the past five years when they have sung for Mass.”

For Sister Loretta, the whole experience has been “a joy to hopefully help raise peoples’ minds and hearts to God.” To be able to praise God, she says, is the role that music should play in one’s faith life. “It evolves your emotions. It’s more than intellectual. It involves your whole person. A lot of the hymns of praise are beautiful and make you actually feel what you are singing, which is different than speaking,” says Sister Loretta. “It’s another step up.”

Three FSPA musicians living at Villa St. Joseph, each with around 65 years of experience that include playing the reed organ and receiving instruction from Sister Lucilda, couldn’t agree more with that sentiment. “The organ is considered ‘king’ of all instruments,” says Sister Louise Marie Guralski, Villa liturgy coordinator. “I really appreciate that music has been an FSPA foundation. We have always been noted for our beautiful, wholehearted, prayerful music.”

Organ music denotes the sound of devotion to Sister Blanche Marie Schlosser. “You get the ‘church tone,’ the sound of worship. Modern sounds take away the solemnity,” she says. “And the reverence,” adds Sister Rita Marie Bechel, who venerates the “gorgeous” sounds of feast days in the chapel.

FSPA affiliate Emily Dykman concurs. “The organ adds an intensity of energy, a level of ritual and formality that is not present in piano music.” Trained by Sisters Beth Saner and Annarose Glum as a Viterbo University music major, Emily is now the college’s religious studies and philosophy assistant professor. She affirms that outside of the FSPA community, the conduit of organ music between those who worship and their God is more often missing. “I have found now that there are very few trained organists working in parish communities,” she says, adding that most of the musicians she interacts with are pianists that take on the role of organist as needed. “Piano and organ music are not the same thing. I wish that more individuals were trained to play the organ,” says Emily, “and played well.”

Thanks to the talents of Sister Loretta along with her fellow organists Sister Malinda Gerke, Sister Ronalda Hophan and Mary Thompson, the FSPA recognize the organ played well and the connection it offers to God. In keeping with the Vatican II document, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (December 1963) that is how it should be. “In the Latin church, the pipe organ is to be held in high esteem, for it is the traditional musical instrument which adds a wonderful splendor to the Church’s ceremonies and powerfully lift up man’s mind to God and to higher things.”