September 12, 2004
Youthful composer’s passion for liturgical music

Tony Alonso came to Chicago unsure of the path his life would take. As the Minnesota native began his studies at Northwestern University, he knew he had a passion for pastoral music. Though he attempted to follow more traditional fields of study, that passion never went away.

In Alonso’s junior year at NU, while cramming for exams and writing papers, he gave in to his passion, filling a vacancy as music director of St. Raymond de Penafort Parish in Mt. Prospect. He didn’t stop there. In 2001 he came out with “Fresh As The Morning,” a collection of personal compositions including psalms, hymns, communion and gathering songs. Since then, he has released a collection of bilingual psalms for Holy Week as well as “As Morning Breaks and Evening Sets.” That effort, a collaboration with friends Laurie Delgatto and Robert Feduccia, offers music to guide prayer services for adolescents.

Today, his passion fed, Alonso, 24, is music director at St. Nicholas Church, Evanston. He sat down with Catholic New World contributor Kerry Lester at a coffee shop near St. Nick’s to discuss the past and the future.

 

The Catholic New World: What made you decide to go into pastoral music?

Tony Alonso: Originally, I wanted to be a lawyer or a journalist. During my (high school) graduation, my grandfather came to sit next to me and said in his Cuban accent, “Tonito, what are you going to do for the life?”

I told him, “I think I’m going to go into music—I’m not exactly sure what, but I really want to follow this passion I have.” He said, “Tonito, music is a very nice hobby—what about the law?”

I had been involved in church music since I was in third grade. Coming from a small town, the idea that you can get paid to direct music at a church is just not something you can conceive. But in some ways, though, it was a logical step for me. And then being at St. Raymond’s and feeling really supported by people, composing church music, I thought I should do this. Maybe I’m not so bad at it. It felt like a natural progression, but never one that I planned.

 

TCNW: How do you approach the task of composing?

TA: I try to find needs in my parish that have to be filled in some way. To do this, I almost always start with the ritual. Take Advent. You want a song that people don’t need books for so they can be involved in the whole candle-lighting thing. So, you must draw on familiar associations with people.

When you’re trying to write for people to sing, it is much different than writing for yourself. Writing liturgical music is subject to a whole different set of criteria, in terms of how you evaluate it. You want to do things that are going to feel natural to people, things that are going to make them feel like they are going to be able to handle participating.

If you listen to music on the radio, even a Christian contemporary song, you can say I like this or I don’t like that. You don’t have to have a reason for how you feel. But with church music, you have to ask whether it is supporting the ritual—if it’s supporting it well. Then the question is not whether it’s exciting or boring, but those other criteria.

After 40 years of the renewal of the church, there’s a lot of music out there. However, there’s not a lot of music fitted to specific ritual. The (goal of) liturgical ministry is to craft music for what the assembly is trying to do.

 

TCNW: Where do the themes of your songs come from?

TA: Lately, it’s been much more functional music—the second collection (of music) I did were bilingual songs for Holy Week. My dad’s Cuban, so I know Spanish somewhat, and I direct the Spanish choir at St. Nicholas. Here I was in the (Holy Week) situation at St. Nicholas where we do everything bilingually. There were no songs that were done in both languages. So I either had to find them, which I did in some cases, or write them.

 

TCNW: What are you working on?

TA: I was in the process of doing two recordings this past spring. My friends and I put together a book to show youth ministers how Catholics pray. They can use this when they’re working with young people.

We came up with the idea and wrote “As Morning Breaks and Evening Sets.” (It’s being) published by St. Mary’s Press and details how you would go about planning a liturgical prayer service. It also includes 18 actual prayer-service opportunities in the lives of young people, such as prayer in time of loss, joy, when peace is needed and more. We realized that good prayer needs music. I recruited two friends and we wrote 17 songs that were a foundation of this prayer book.

The other project, the one I’m still in the midst of recording, is probably the one I feel best about. In the three years I’ve been at St. Nicholas another liturgist, Gabe Huck, and I have collaborated. He’s been writing the text; I’ve been writing the music.

A lot of it is adaptation of existing music such as “Come, Emmanuel.” We took the Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter seasons and wrote an entrance piece, an intercession response and a communion piece. That’s a ton of work, but it’s really good. Over three years, we’ve had a chance to kind of test it on our community.

 

 

TCNW: What’s been the response?

TA: Well, great. The best thing is, they’re singing well. [Gabe] and I also assembled them—and went about it in a somewhat intentional way, by getting together different age groups, a mixture of (ethnicities), etc., to ask their reactions to the work.

From those reactions, some positive and negative, we’ve been able to continually revise and craft everything. It’s one of those things … the best liturgical ministry, I feel, is tested a lot before it’s even published, and then revised and revised and revised.

 

TCNW: Do you find it difficult to be both young and accomplished at the same time?

TA: I think it’s a trade-off. In some ways it’s a benefit. You get asked to do things just because you’re young. But at the same time, sometimes you don’t get asked to do things because you are young. It doesn’t matter to me either way. I just feel like that if I’m a young person with a passion for something a lot of young people don’t seem to care too much about, I should be able to use this platform to promote certain things.

I’m glad to have the opportunity, and I try to do as much of it as I can.

 

TCNW: Is it stressful to introduce something you’ve written for the first time?

TA: With liturgical music, you need to not take yourself too seriously. Secondly, you need to somewhat separate yourself from what you’re trying to do, because if you’re really trying to give something to a community they can pray with, you need to be open to criticism.

If you want to be good, you have to be open to opinions. Nevertheless you have to constantly remind and to humble yourself enough to realize it’s not all about you.

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