2010 ColloquiumI’ve been stressing over the chant workshop that I put together for our parish, and unfortunately it also fell on a day when I had two job interviews. Let’s just say that there was no shortage of adrenaline coursing through my veins yesterday.
But the workshop was great, it worked out better than I could have expected. Sixteen people attended, which was an ideal size. I even had a few more women than men, which was a little bit of a surprise in our parish – there seems to be the perception that Gregorian Chant is a male-only thing.
We started by singing a very common Alleluia, which of course everyone could immediately mimic. After pointing out that they’ve already done chant in the Mass, I showed them what that looks like in chant notation. Then we walked through the various neums, all the while making comparisons to modern music notation and pointing out how the notation is uniquely suited to the simplicity and beauty of Chant.
This became more apparent when I compared the two notations for the St Thomas Pange Lingua, where we could see how attempting to squeeze the chant into a 4/4 time signature really doesn’t do it justice.
The hardest part came next, which was going through the Latin pronunciations. That’s always a bit of a slog, because it’s way too much to remember. But at least we talked about how vowels are used to convey the music, and consonants are used to define each word and syllable. And we spent a bit of time working on the Latin R, my pet peeve of all pronunciations.
The second hour of the program was then spent on singing:
- Sanctus XVIII
- Resonet in Laudibus
- Jesu Dulcis Memoria
- Magnificat (solemn tone)
- Ave Maria
I picked these songs because many people have at least heard them. I set the order generally from simplest to hardest, except for wanting to make sure we ended with the Ave Maria – probably my favorite chant of all time. With each song I was able to introduce some new concepts such as the custos, the hollow note (what’s the Latin name for that thing, anyway?), and even having men and women alternate singing the call/response of the Magnificat.
All of it worked extremely well, and I was very encouraged. I’m praying that the Holy Spirit will move some to join our schola. If we get some women, we’ll be able to move into some beautiful things!
On another note (har!) we also made some progress this week toward three city scholas getting together to chant a Mass. We have it now scheduled for the 5:15pm Mass on November 15th, at the John XXIII parish. Now we’re working to enlist members to see how balanced the choir will be, which will impact what music we’re able to pick.
A quick news update: This weekend was our annual stewardship signup. After two of four Masses, I had three women and one man sign up for the chant schola!
No question, this is the Holy Spirit at work.
[...] week I talked about the chant workshop I put on in our parish. The primary point of that workshop was just to grow familiarity with chant. But [...]