By Patrick Downes
Special to the Herald
If you have attended a major liturgical celebration in Hawaii over the past four decades, you have sung Robert Mondoy’s music.
Whether they were for solemn feast days, ordinations, funerals or special commemorations, the compositions and arrangements of the Molokai-born musician have permanently enriched island worship.
For Rob, as he liked to be called, sacred music was more than a craft or talent. It was worship, pure and simple, a labor of love, the lifting up of one’s heart to the Lord.
For Robert, good liturgical music emerges from the voice of the people. So, while he could easily have stuck to performing pieces from the rich treasury of traditional church music, he instead sought to incorporate the musical heritage of the islands.
Borrowing from Hawaiian chant and mele, combined with his own melodic inventory and inspiration, he introduced a unique sound to Hawaii’s liturgies
Consider his Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” a psalm every serious liturgical composer strives to master. His chorus repeats three times a singable “My Shepherd is the Lord,” while the verses depend on the vocal skills of an experienced cantor singing Hawaiian-style to the beat of an ipu, a gourd instrument.
Robert could have taken a different musical path performing Mozart piano concertos and original pieces like “Nostalgia of a Young Person from Molokai,” featuring minuets on the tilapia and the mynah, or arranging and performing on a Na Hoku Hanohano Award-winning song, all things that he has done.
Liturgical music, of course, is prayer, not performance. That does not mean you can skip doing your best to hit all the right notes. But for Robert, participation was more important than perfection.
“Sing joyfully to God our strength,” the psalmist writes, “shout in triumph to the God of Jacob. Take up a melody, sound the timbrel, the sweet-sounding harp and lyre. Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our solemn feast.”
Sounds like Robert’s St. John Vianney Church choir.
Is there a more fulfilling calling than the one Robert embraced — praising God by making a joyful noise?
Music pleases the ear, delights the heart and elevates the soul. When God is your audience, what more can you ask for?
We know that music is the language of angels. What a thrill Rob must be experiencing now, adding Hawaiian harmonies to the heavenly chorus.
Patrick Downes retired in 2024 as the editor of the Hawaii Catholic Herald. Himself a composer of both liturgical and secular music, he has been friends with Robert Mondoy since their high school days.