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Just as gold foil and vivid colors illuminate icons and manuscripts, music has a way of illuminating prayers and the liturgy in a way that recitation simply cannot capture. Now, there’s a new musical adaptation of the Holy Rosary that is making the traditional prayers have all the more impact, and it’s been made freely accessible to all those who wish to pray it.
Grammy-nominated musician and recording artist Laura Huval has taken the prayers of the Holy Rosary and set them to a full-scale album of sacred music, titled Sing the Rosary.
The work is a 45-minute masterpiece that all aspiring Catholic musicians should study. Huval has a particular talent at perfectly fitting the often oblong word patterns of prayers into a carefully metered song.
Listening to Sing the Rosary is like having an exceptionally competent cantor right in the room with you. Huval’s earnest yet tender vocals are sublimely suited to the content, with a lovely melisma used tastefully and an attention to dynamics that beautifully expresses the emotions evoked by each prayer of the Rosary.
In a press release, Huval explained that the work is an answer to a calling to increase the devotion to the Holy Rosary:
“Our Lady has asked us to pray the Rosary in so many of her apparitions,” said Huval. “I felt called by the Holy Spirit to use my gift of music to help people experience the Rosary in a new way, while meditating on the life of Christ, and renewing zeal for this ancient devotion.”
Musical accents
One of our favorite aspects of Sing the Rosary is how it keeps the listener engaged in the prayer by changing up the music each decade. There is a lot of repetition in praying the Holy Rosary, but each time the prayers come around they are marked with subtle differences in background vocals and instrumentation. This offers a slightly different musical flavor to accent one’s prayers.
Huval expressed that she hopes this style will offer a unique experience:
“We created several iterations of the Hail Mary to carry you through the Rosary in a way that builds to the final prayers. I hope people will find that my artistic contribution to this powerful devotion will renew their experience of the prayer and ultimately bring them closer to Jesus through his mother Mary,” Huval said.
Driven by her own devotion to the Blessed Mother and the Holy Rosary, Huval has put her grand undertaking all at the service of the Church, offering it to download and stream for free. In this way, it has quickly become a valuable prayer resource for all those who wish to pray the Holy Rosary.
Laura Huval’s Sing the Rosary can be freely downloaded on her official website, but it can also be streamed on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or just about any of your favorite streaming services. It is an enormous effort of charity on Huval’s part, so be sure to reciprocate by following her and giving her recordings a like.
And today we celebrate...