A joyful sound

Brendan Paeplow is 3 years old. Way back when he was 2, he made a trip to his pediatrician. When the doctor asked what the boy’s favorite song was, he did not reply “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” or “The Wheels on the Bus.”

He said, “Gloria.”

As in “Gloria in excelsis Deo.”

He knows all the words. The music to which he sings those words of praise was written by his father, Scott Paeplow, associate director of campus ministry for liturgy and music at the University of Dayton.

Part of the inspiration for writing a Mass setting came to Paeplow on vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. “There was little light pollution,” he said. The many stars visible in the sky made him think of Luke 2, of the “multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest.’”

His writing music to be sung at Masses predated his writing a Gloria and the other parts of what is now his Mass of Blessed William Joseph Chaminade. Before he wrote music for the fixed portions of the Mass, he was writing musical settings for the Entrance and Communion Antiphons, known as the propers.

That activity was occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. Everybody in the chapel was masked then to lessen the spread of the virus. Vatican II calls for the full, active participation of the faithful. But a congregation singing during the pandemic would hasten contagion. And “if songs are familiar,” Paeplow said, “people habitually sing.”

So he began to write propers, music that would not be familiar to the congregation. “When mandatory masking ended,” he said, “I was going to put the propers on the shelf.”

But students (“the best part of my job,” he said) in UD’s undergraduate music ministry program wanted him to continue writing. He expects to finish the project in about a year.

The UGMM (“we need a better name,” he said) students number 18 and come from a variety of majors. Paeplow (besides directing choirs, composing and playing piano and organ) forms these students in music ministry.

“I work with them two, three, four years,” he said. “They take a course from me and are each assigned to a weekly Mass. It’s experiential learning. They learn and examine their calling.”

After graduation, most participate in some kind of music ministry, some part time, some as full-time music directors.

Paeplow’s first full-time job was not as a church music director. With an undergraduate degree in music and a master’s in education from colleges in New York, he taught high school for five years. “I loved it.”

On weekends, he served as a music minister at Canisius College. “I caught the bug,” he said. “I felt called to campus ministry on a college campus.” He sees the liturgical experience — Mass, the Rosary, other prayers — as being all encompassing, connected to our whole life.

His calling led him to UD where he served as a graduate assistant in Marycrest, met his wife, Mary Kate, and, in 2015, earned a master’s in pastoral ministry and started in his current position.

Although he had liked teaching high school, he wanted to work with people who could go deeper into critical thinking and vocational discernment. So now he leads UD students to questions such as, he said, “Who am I? Where am I? What do I believe? Why? What does it all mean for me as a student?”