I’ve had the pleasure of working with David Harris for over 10 years and during that time we’ve collaborated with hundreds of composers on the premieres of their music. So I wasn’t surprised when he told me he wanted to premiere a new setting of the Catholic mass by Patrick Cassidy. But when he told me he wanted to make a studio album remotely, with each singer recording their part individually at home, I was skeptical it would be of professional quality.

Allow me to describe the process of making a virtual recording. Every week I would receive a musical score filled with notes and a track with a click, guiding vocals, and accompaniment. I’d set up a mini recording studio in my house, waiting for a quiet enough hour where I could record my part, listen to what I’d sung, go back, and re-record any mistakes or unsatisfactory sections. Our editors and engineers would then take each individual recording and stitch them together to create a complete choral sound, and each week we waited to hear the final result, hoping no one would call us in a panic to re-record something we got wrong.

Making music like this is a lonely and tedious chore. You know that experience of hearing yourself on your answering machine and your own voice sounds flat and strange? Recording music in this way is like that x 100. It’s all the most aggravating parts of ensemble singing like fussing over notes, rhythms, and other minutiae, and none of the camaraderie and joy of the miraculous experience at the heart of making music together as a group. That doesn’t account for the emotional toll either: the terrible loneliness of recording alone in my home, or hearing the sound of this fabulous organ and the disembodied voices of my friends through my headphones, which served as a stark reminder of the space in which we were not allowed to gather as a community.

We recorded 3 to 4 songs like this every week for a year and a half making over 200 virtual choir recordings. We also got very good at it, so when it was time to record The Mass, we were pros. I’m proud to say we learned how to make not just coherent recordings, but ones that captured some of the mystery and expressiveness of live performance.

It’s hard for me to honestly say that the end result was worth what we went through to achieve it (even though our first single hit #1 on the Apple Sacred Music charts!). For choral singers, people who have come to rely on this communal art form as a way to connect with their fellow human beings, the last two years were nothing less than traumatic. What I can say is that when we finally gathered together again, after all those long months, and sang The Mass in person, the piece was nearly unrecognizable to me.

Suddenly, the glacial lines that seemed laborious when singing them by myself became meditative, the long phrases were supported and sustained by many singers on a part, the individual lines had context, depth and meaning, and I found myself in the middle of a contradiction common in choral music. On one hand I was a single voice, an independent melodic line riding on top of a sonic wave. On the other hand, I was an invisible mote inside a giant texture; one voice among dozens, one note in a much larger harmony.

I didn’t understand this during the recording process. It was only while being inside the piece itself; the full, complete, acoustic event, that I experienced a core truth embedded in musical performance: that while every sound I make is complete and whole by itself, it is also a very small contribution to something greater than the sum of its parts.

I can’t think of a better metaphor for a beloved community, one like FCCLA, that invites people from different backgrounds, lifestyles, and beliefs who align with a shared mission of interpersonal uplift, justice, and equality to bring their individual voices and contribute to a larger work that is also greater than the sum of its parts. I think this is what the Sufi poet Attar means when he declares “Unity in Diversity, that is oneness”.

And this notion of community, of unity in diversity, ultimately reflects the very heart of what “The Mass” and “the liturgy” are about. You see, the word liturgy itself comes from the Ancient Greek leitourgia which means "work for the people". It is a literal translation of the two words "litos ergos" or "public service".

The etymology of “The Mass” comes from the dismissal at the end of the rite “Ite, missa est" which means "Go, it has been sent." The 9th Century text titled ‘The Divine Office’ explains the word as “a 'sending', that which sends us towards God". May I suggest that this liturgical work is not contained within these walls, that to enact the liturgy is not a secret rite held up by the priesthood for those initiated into a particular belief structure, but rather that such a gathering is preparation for the work we will do when we walk out these doors and back into the world.

Such ‘sending forth’ is possible wherever people gather to realign themselves with each other in mutual uplift, whenever we collectively turn our focus inward with the intent of generating the seeds of external change. This work is a harnessing; a preparation for the sending when we take our newly recalibrated selves as a people, and turn towards the world with the intent of simply making it a better place.

Or, as the Irish proverb says, “It is in the shelter of one another that the people live”.

May the presentation of this work be such a public service, one that sends us into the world towards each other, and the great mystery between us.