A New Twist On 12th Century Music
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Story by Cheryl Sobun · Photograph by John Greco
A pair of local residents recently teamed up and created a compact disc of 12 century Catholic hymns. Your first thought may be, why would that appeal to me?
The songs are beautiful and soothing - great for stress reduction on the ride home from work or plopping down in a mound of soft pillows at the end of the day with a glass of wine.
They're sung in Latin, as is the age-old tradition, by New Berlin resident Eileen Carr. The music was done entirely by the hand of Terry Sweet of Wawautosa at the keyboards. Sweet tried to explain the music's style. "I'd put it in the New Age bag, but I hate to limit it to that. It's eclectic with a touch of classical."
"They gave me complete artistic license on this project. I changed the meter, tempo, harmonic structure. I composed a lot of new material. Parts of these songs Catholics have never heard before. At the same time, I was very respectful of the songs and their meaning. I tried to arrange them in a way we could reintroduce them to young people in the church today. But it's not limited to a religious audience. I think anyone could enjoy them. The music is artistic and has a lot of sensitivity," he said. Sweet, who writes commercial jingles for a living and has his own company, Terry Sweet and Associates Inc., said he's never done anything like this before.
For Carr, doing the vocals for the compact disc was a rare artistic opportunity which the two spent nearly a year working on together. "It is unusual and that's what impressed me about it. For a melody to last since the 12th century, you know it's a solid melody. In addition to that, there's tremendous spirituality attached to all these songs. These songs all have deep meaning, and that's rare. I knew in my soul right away that this was a project that needed to be done, Carr said.
She was the mastermind behind the project and said the songs were a beautiful part of her past that have stayed with her all her life. "They're just part of my memory that was beautiful and peaceful. They are magic," she said. "One day I was kicking around ideas about dreams and I said, "You know, I always wanted to take old, classical Latin songs I loved in my youth and update the style like what Mannheim Steamroller did to Christmas music.'" Three years later her father reminded her of her dream and agreed to back the project financially. That's when Carr teamed up with long-time friend Sweet to make the dream a reality.
Carr has never done anything like this before either. But she's no stranger to the dramatic arts. She attended Marquette University in the early'70s on a drama scholarship. She then hit the road in 1972 performing vaudeville-type acts in lounges across the country for the next ten years. Her true passion is singing, as one can clearly tell when listening to her CD.