ABOUT THIS PODCAST 🔗
Welcome to Beyond the Spire, a podcast of the Save Our Sacred Songs project at the Catholic Shrine of St Walburge in Preston, supported by the National Lottery.
In each episode, we go beyond what you see from the street, we explore the story and the sound of Gregorian chant, the Church's sacred song, so that this treasure of faith and culture is not just preserved, but lived and loved again.
Hosts:
Update frequency:
every 19 hours
Average audio length:
15 minutes
Guest interviews
Has sponsors
English
United Kingdom
20 episodes
since Feb. 21, 2026
episodic
IN THIS PODCAST 🔗
LATEST EPISODE 🔗
This episode examines singing Gregorian chant today, noting how contemporary habits, technology, and expectations differ dramatically from the past. It reflects on hearing with modern ears, the realities of current liturgical settings, and the task of introducing an ancient sacred language to commu…
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PREVIOUS EPISODES 🔗
This instalment examines the proper place of the organ in a liturgical world centred on Gregorian chant. The very title expresses the principle: the greatest instrument appears most noble when it knows how not to dominate. The episode considers accompaniment, alternatim practice, the maintenance of…
After tracing chant from its roots to the present, “Beyond the Spire” closes by asking whether this ancient music still has a future. The answer is an emphatic yes: Gregorian chant slows modern haste, unites voices in common prayer, forms memory, and keeps doctrine sounding in the life of the Churc…
In this episode, the Church’s liturgy is heard turning in a single movement from triumph to sorrow. Palm Sunday begins with the king entering Jerusalem, but the introit for Mass already opens onto the mystery of rejection and suffering, leading the listener inward, toward supplication and the comin…
This Good Friday episode unfolds in two linked stages: first the presentation of the Cross, then the grave voice of Christ in the Reproaches. There is a shift from mode 6 to mode 1, a change that keeps the same general range yet alters the inner light of the music. That shift helps listeners hear t…
This is one of the most beautiful conceptual episodes in the series, because it treats the Easter liturgy like several cameras turned toward one mystery. Resurrexi (mode 4) gives the interior face of Easter, Vesperi autem sabbati (mode 8) its public proclamation, and Victimæ Paschali Laudes (mode 1…
From early organum to Palestrina and the Counter-Reformation, the discussion traces the gradual separation between chant as prayerful utterance and music as increasingly complex art. The Council of Trent established rules for chant, not as an enemy of beauty, but as a defender of intelligibility an…
This episode studies the gradual eclipse of Gregorian chant in the later history of Western church music. As musical culture changed, and as Renaissance and later styles introduced different ideals of beauty, authorship, and expression, chant no longer occupied the same central place in practice. T…
This episode leaves the direct analysis of melodies and turns to the nineteenth-century recovery of Gregorian chant. At its centre stands Dom Prosper Guéranger and Solesmes Abbey, presented as decisive in restoring both Roman liturgy and Roman chant after a long period of decline, which drives furt…
Here the series turns from explanation to direct experience by placing the listener inside the Christmas Midnight Mass. The introit Dominus Dixit Ad Me is presented as a real sung prayer: rather than chasing polish, the programme embraces the concrete reality of liturgical prayer and lets the chant…
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Canon Antoine Bunnens - St Walburge’s Catholic Shrine, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
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