Professional musicians join Catholic Chorale for heavenly Sunday Masses at St. Paul church

It’s like a “Messiah” every Sunday.

Classical music lovers gather each December for an annual ritual of music writ large, when an orchestra, choir and four vocal soloists fill a church or concert hall with a grand, spiritually inspired sound, the massive oratorio that is George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah.”

But something similarly epic and heavenly can be found on Sunday mornings beneath the Church of St. Agnes’ green onion spire in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood. For 50 years, four vocal soloists and an orchestra full of professional musicians — many frequently found onstage with the Minnesota Orchestra or St. Paul Chamber Orchestra — have been joining the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale to fill the beautiful Austrian-style church with the music of such Austrian masters as Mozart, Joseph Haydn and Franz Schubert.

Those composers wrote multiple Masses, and the chorale and company present them at the 10:30 a.m. Mass each Sunday morning from October to June, except during Lent and Advent. That’s when a smaller group of singers goes considerably farther back in the time machine and sings Gregorian chant, which predates any modern musical instrument.

And you don’t have to be Catholic — or even particularly religious — to enjoy them. All you need is an appreciation of beauty as the music pours forth from the choir loft behind you.

“Release the spiritual energy within you.”

Conductor Marc Jaros offered that advice to the chorale at a recent Tuesday night rehearsal of Anton Bruckner’s “Missa Solemnis.” He also reminded them of the proper pronunciation of “Kyrie,” likened the undulating phrases sweeping through the choir to “the wave” at a sporting event and spoke of the adrenaline rush a powerful entrance on a fugue can inspire.

Jaros is in his sixth year as director of the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale and his 28th as a music professor at Normandale Community College. This task of preparing a choir, vocal soloists and an orchestra for a new Mass each week is a daunting one, but he loves the repertoire, as do the Jacobs sisters.

They are three sopranos in their teens and 20s who have found a home as some of the youngest members of this multigenerational amateur choir. The oldest of the three, Joanna, says this choir inspired her to take up piano and singing in childhood. After graduating from college in 2019, she returned to St. Paul and successfully auditioned for it. Soon, she was joined by sisters Veronica and Susanna.

“I remember, when I was little, we would always come to midnight Mass on Christmas,” Veronica said. “And I’d always fall asleep before the end of Mass, but I loved the singing. It had never crossed my mind that I could do something that cool, ever.”

The Rev. Richard Schuler founded the Catholic Chorale in 1956, moving its home base to St. Agnes in 1974. Some singers in the chorale have been there since shortly thereafter, among them the Rev. James McConville, who’s been singing off and on in the bass section since 1983.

“This repertoire doesn’t get performed very often anymore, even in concert settings,” McConville said. “These are the masters. Mozart, Haydn, they paid as much attention to this as any other commission for a symphony or something else.”

While the Roman Catholic Church signed off on Masses being spoken and sung in a country’s native tongue in 1965, it emphasized that pride of place should be given to the Latin Mass that had been celebrated for almost 400 years. That’s the language of the liturgy and lyrics at St. Agnes, except for the celebrant’s homily.

The next three Sundays amount to a mini-Mozart festival. There will be Mozart Masses on Jan. 26 and Feb. 2 and 9, followed by Masses by Schubert, Haydn and Josef Rheinberger before the solemnity of Lent arrives.

What: Masses by Mozart, Franz Schubert, Joseph Haydn and Josef Rheinberger. When: 10:30 a.m. Sundays through March 2. Where: Church of St. Agnes, 548 Lafond Av., St. Paul. Tickets: Free, information at catholicchorale.org.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.