The Times October 18, 2005

Father Alan Rees February 1, 1941 - October 2, 2005 Abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Belmont whose settings of the Mass are played and sung in churches worldwide

A WELSH organist, monk and musician, Father Alan Rees was a gifted composer who enriched tremendously the music of the Roman Catholic Church when its liturgy passed from Latin into the vernacular after Vatican II. Sacred music, said Rees, should be “easy to sing, generally tuneful, easy to learn” and above all prayerful, inducing the singer to focus on the spiritual message of the text rather than worrying about the notes.

Inspired by the Gregorian chant, which he sang daily as a monk at Belmont Abbey, Herefordshire, Rees composed many modern settings for the Mass, including the office of Vespers, for use in the average parish. A magnificent organist, he also had a gift as a wordsmith, setting words to music after meditating deeply on their spiritual meaning.

Rees’s Mass settings are now used in Anglican and Catholic churches worldwide. Particularly popular are his Belmont Psalm tones and responses, chant and organ music. His greatest public accolade was being invited to compose a special Mass for Pope John Paul II’s visit to St David’s Cathedral, Cardiff, in 1982; before entering Belmont Benedictine monastery Rees had been the cathedral’s choirmaster.

Alan Rees was born in Morriston, near Swansea, in 1941, the only son of John and Hilda Rees. His love of religion and music began at an early age with a visit to a Pentecostal Mission tent near his home in Cwmrhydyceirw, Swansea. Subsequent Sundays were divided between accompanying his father to the Tabernacle Welsh Baptist Chapel and his mother to Church in Wales worship. By the age of 6 Rees had set up an altar in his bedroom, and as a child he learned to play the organ in chapel — before his legs were long enough to reach the pedals. This Nonconformist background was the source of his love of melody, while his natural feel for language was rooted in Welsh hymns and the Book of Common Prayer.

In later life as a Catholic monk Rees would claim that his Nonconformist background had given him a particular affinity with the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 7th modes, or medieval system of scales of Gregorian chant, though he felt unequal to capturing the grandeur of the 8th. Each mode represents a complete system of scales, and pre-dates the use of the major and minor scales which came to dominate Western music.

Rees became Anglo-Catholic as a teenager studying at Dynefor Grammar School in Swansea, and during the first year of a degree in music and education diploma at University College Cardiff he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. He began to explore a religious vocation, beginning, after his studies, a novitiate with the monks of Ampleforth Abbey, North Yorkshire. After a nervous breakdown he left to teach music and became an associate of the Royal College of Music and the Royal College of Organists. From 1963 to 1968 he was the organist and choirmaster at St David’s Cathedral, Cardiff, and began to compose liturgical music.

In September 1968 he began his second Benedictine novitiate at Belmont. He was solemnly professed a monk four years later and in 1974, after two years’ study in Rome, was ordained. Returning to Belmont, he became novice master to the community, as well as its choirmaster and organist, a position he maintained throughout his life. He also worked at the monastery’s school as a housemaster until 1986, when the community elected him the ninth Abbot of Belmont.

Rees struggled throughout his life with weight and blood pressure problems. Only weeks before his election as Abbot he told friends that he wished the Abbot would put him on a diet. Though universally popular for his gentle, charismatic leadership, he disliked being Abbot, because of a combination of his acute sense of responsibility and a fear of confrontation. After seven years in office he resigned in the throes of depression, an illness which dogged him in the latter half of his life.

A former chairman of the Society of St Gregory, Rees was a co-founder of the Panel of Monastic Musicians. When the editorial panel of the PMM’s Hymns for Prayer and Praise found that they lacked a tune to fit a particular hymn text, Rees would be sent out to do the job, and would return, recalled one co-editor, “in ten minutes, with a finely crafted composition”.

Rees’s many contributions to Catholic liturgy included a Congress Mass for a conference of priests and laity. At the time of his death he was involved in setting the new English translation of the Roman Missal to music. This was part of Rees’s work with the International Committee for English in the Liturgy, a body mired in controversy as English-speaking clergy clashed with Rome over how the Mass now used in the Anglophone world should be corrected and revised to produce a more accurate translation from Latin.

A popular retreat-giver and confessor, Rees wrote many heartfelt prayers expressing his experience of Benedictine life. He also published a small book, Prayers from the Cloisters, based on the monastic custom of lectio divina, a meditative approach to Scripture. His own music he held to be worth little when set beside the great tradition of Gregorian chant.

In the early 1990s Rees was elected Titular Abbot of Tewkesbury and also became Vicar for Religious in the Archdiocese of Cardiff.

Father Alan Rees, composer, Abbot of Belmont, 1986-93, was born on February 1, 1941. He died after a fall on October 2, 2005, aged 64.