Call for singers for YCA retreat, 18-20 October

John Curran, of the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge, seeks help to provide a small group of singers to support the Young Catholics’ Association annual retreat at the Franciscan house at Cold Ash, near Thatcham in Berkshire during the weekend 18-20 October.

Depending on your talents you might consider to serve as an ordinary robust choir member for Compline, Vespers and the Ordinary of Mass in the Extraordinary Form, or also help rehearse the Proper of the Mass. We will be trained by one of the Schola’s professional chant experts.

You can also take part all other events and spiritual conferences of the weekend.

John has arranged an inclusive £100.00 package from Friday evening (18th to lunch Sunday 20th October.)

Contacts: JPCSedate@aol.com; 01509 852259 (up to 8pm!)

Video on the Weekend Chant Course

One Weekend in April, Part Two: The Gregorian Chant Network Weekend Course from LMS on Vimeo.

PIMMS Conference, 10th July

PMMS 125th Anniversary

There’s no place like Rome: Centres of music and liturgy before 1550

PMMS members are warmly invited to the AGM study day on 10 July 2013, held at Bedern in the city of York. The day will celebrate the Society’s 125th anniversary with a wine reception and free evening concert of conductus by candlelight, two public lectures and a series of papers held in medieval venues in York city centre. The theme of the day is the exploration of centres of music and liturgy before 1550, and will have a good balance of talks on plainchant and polyphony. Speakers include Roger Bowers, Emma Hornby, Rebecca Maloy, Andrew Kirkman, Jim Borders, Thomas Schmidt, Matthew Ward and Hannah Vlhova.

Registration will be in the region of £50 (non-members) and £35 (members and students). Delegates will be provided with lunch, refreshments, a free ticked to an evening performance at the Merchant Venturer’s Hall and a discounted ticket to a further concert at York Minster, as part of York Early Music Festival. Further details and registration will appear on the PMMS website in the new year. The day will also include the AGM, which is free to attend.

Delegates may like to stay for a few days to enjoy further events at the York Early Music Festival (Friday 5 - Saturday 13 July) and will focus on Rome, with music created under the patronage of medieval Popes, the renaissance polyphony of Palestrina, and the exuberant baroque of Handel in Italy. Special features will include a celebration of the anniversaries of Corelli (1653-1713) and Dowland (1563-1626). Artists will include countertenor Iestyn Davies, one of the world's foremost viol players Wieland Kuijken, the Italian medieval Ensemble Medusa with singer Patricia Bovi, medievalist Stevie Wishart and her group Sinfonye and Theatre of the Ayre with Elizabeth Kenny and members of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain!

You will find the registration form attached, or alternatively you can download it from the PMMS website at http://www.plainsong.org.uk/anniv125.php

Introducing: Juventutem Bristol Schola

A new affilate of the GCN is Juventutem Bristol Schola. As the name implies, this is part of the Juventutem Federation, and is composed of young people - Bristol, of course, is home to many students. They are financially supported by the Latin Mass Society, and since at celebrations of the Extraordinary Form in the Church of Holy Cross, Bristol.

Check out their blog here.

Floreat!

Blasted blogger

Without deleting the blog or the blogger account, by some gremlin or other Blogger made this blog invisible for several days, and still prevents access from the custom domain name purchased for it. We are still here, however, and life goes on.

Apologies to all for the inconvenience. And may the gremlins be afflicted with halitosis.

Please update your links to http://gregorianchantnetwork.blogspot.co.uk

Chant Training at Ealing Abbey

Gregorian chant workshop

Wednesdays
6.40 to 8 pm

Bulbeck Room
Ealing Abbey

Ealing Abbey Parish Schola

Director: Jennifer Smith
0777 625 7472
je.ma.smith@virginmedia.com

ALL WELCOME

No qualifications required – only to love singing and to do so in tune!

www.ealingabbeyparishschola.simplesite.com

Chant training in Gloucestershire

From an email.

We are holding a day-long Plainchant workshop on 

Saturday 16th February 2013
 

from 10 am to 4.30 pm at the Marist Convent, Nympsfield.

The workshop will be led by former Westminster Cathedral Head Chorister Rupert Bevan. It is aimed at those with some musical knowledge/ability.

There is no charge for tuition: the purpose of the workshop is to form a small Schola to sing at Mass once a month on a Sunday evening at St Dominic’s, Dursley.

To find out more, please contact
Sara Harvey-Craig on tel: 01453 872925
or email: saraharveycraig@hotmail.com

Announcing the Chant Training Weekend 2013

The Gregorian Chant Network's annual big chant course - a three-day intensive course (Friday afternoon/evening to Sunday morning) - will take place 5th to 7th April 2013. That is, Easter Friday to Low Sunday, the weekend after Easter itself, at the Oratory School, near Reading (map).

It will be led by Christopher Hodkinson, one of the Musical Directors of the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge. 

Each of them has an enormous experience of chant, its interpretation and performace, and having two chant teachers will enable participants to be divided for various purposes in the course of the weekend, enabling everyone to be taught in a way appropriate to their experience.


The course has always run alongside the St Catherine's Trust Family Retreat. Apart from seeing the vast number of small children devoted to the Church ancient liturgy, which is always fun, this means that participants in the chant course have the opportunity to sing at a succession of live liturgical events with an appreciative audience. Each of the three days has a Traditional Sung Mass, which have a special interest because it will be the week after Easter. There is also Compline on two days, and Vespers and Benediction on the Saturday. The Retreat this year will be led by Fr John Hunwicke of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

The headline price is £90 all inclusive (tuition, accomodation and meals), and this falls dramatically for groups of singers from the same schola, if the schola is affiliated to the GCN. (And yes, of course you can affiliate right away at no cost, if you want to take advantage of this offer!). There is also a discount for LMS members, thanks to sponsorship from the Latin Mass Society. This means that it can be as cheap at £30 a person!

£90 per person
£50 each for 2 people from the same choir or schola
£40 each for 3 or more people from the same choir or schola
£10 discount for LMS members

The GCN's hope is that the course will be taken by enough members of a given group to make a difference to performance when they get home, and not just by an individual here and there. It is up to Chant Directors to make this happen!

 
Download an application form:
For Choir directors signing up several people;
For individuals, and for the Retreat.

Or email us: info@stcatherinestrust.org

Medieval Music Conference, September 2013

Cantum Pulcriorem Invenire: Music in Western Europe, 1150-1350, Southampton, 9-10 September 2013

Following the first conference on the music of the Ars Antiqua in Princeton in November 2011, the University of Southampton’s Department of Music will host the second conference in this series at its Highfield Campus on 9-10 September 2013. 

The conference seeks to shed light on the issues around the discovery and management of known and newly-discovered source material, the implications of claims of meaning in thirteenth-century music, the use of digital technologies in the study of music of the period, as well as other traditional and innovatory approaches.

The conference invites papers on any aspect of music of Western Europe between 1150 and 1350. If applicable, authors of papers will be able to benefit from the presence of the artists on the recent CD: John Potter, Christopher O’Gorman, Rogers Covey-Crump, ‘Conductus 1: Music and Poetry of Thirteenth-Century France’. Hyperion, CDA67949, 2012. Visit the websitefor more information.

Proposals for papers should make explicit their aims, methods and outcomes, and should not exceed 300 words; they should also explain how the paper would benefit from the participation of the artists given above. Proposals for linked papers or complete sessions are also welcome. Abstracts should be sent in duplicate: one version should be anonymous; the other should include name and full contact details. 

The conference will provide accommodation for the nights of 8, 9, 10 September 2013, all meals, and aims to reimburse travel from both within the UK and abroad.

The conference director, Mark Everist, will be happy to discuss proposals in advance of formal submission (m.everist@southampton.ac.uk). Closing date for submission of proposals for papers is Friday 25 January 2013. Proposals should be sent as email attachments in pdf format to:G.Bevilacqua@soton.ac.uk and this call for papers, together with material relating to the conference will be posted in the ‘Cantum pulcriorem invenire’ website.

PIMS AGM and Conference in York

PMMS 125th Anniversary, York, 10 July 2013

There’s no place like Rome: Centres of music and liturgy before 1550

PMMS members are warmly invited to the AGM study day on 10 July 2013, held at Bedern in the city of York. The day will celebrate the Society’s 125th anniversary with a wine reception and free evening concert of conductus by candlelight, two public lectures and a series of papers held in medieval venues in York city centre. The theme of the day is the exploration of centres of music and liturgy before 1550, and will have a good balance of talks on plainchant and polyphony. Speakers include Roger Bowers, Emma Hornby, Rebecca Maloy, Andrew Kirkman, Jim Borders, Thomas Schmidt, Matthew Ward and Hannah Vlhova.

Registration will be in the region of £50 (non-members) and £35 (members and students). Delegates will be provided with lunch, refreshments and a discounted ticket to a further concert at York Minster, as part of York Early Music Festival. Further details and registration will appear on the PMMS website in the new year. The day will also include the AGM, which is free to attend.

Delegates may like to stay for a few days to enjoy further events at the York Early Music Festival (Friday 5 - Saturday 13 July) and will focus on Rome, with music created under the patronage of medieval Popes, the renaissance polyphony of Palestrina, and the exuberant baroque of Handel in Italy. Special features will include a celebration of the anniversaries of Corelli (1653-1713) and Dowland (1563-1626). Artists will include countertenor Iestyn Davies, one of the world's foremost viol players Wieland Kuijken, the Italian medieval Ensemble Medusa with singer Patricia Bovi, medievalist Stevie Wishart and her group Sinfonye and Theatre of the Ayre with Elizabeth Kenny and members of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain!

Messiaen, birdsong, and chant

The pianist Matthew Schellhorn, who is also very much involved in the Gregorian Chant Network, has given an interview on Messiaen, on whom he is an expert, and birdsong. Messiaen was fascinated by birdsong, and based numerous compositions on it. Matthew remarks:

While Messiaen found birds to be "sovereign" in their creative capacity, he also said they are "the closest to us, and the easiest to reproduce". I should assert that the only man-made music ever, perhaps, to come close to birdsong is Gregorian chant. This music, the music proper to the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, manifests the same flexibility of both melody and rhythm. There is even evidence to suggest that the Gregorian melodies we have written down were the basis, in fact, of improvisation – which of course further reminds us of the sounds of the natural world.

In antiquity and the Middle Ages birdsong was regarded a very significant. The above picture, from a Bestiary, shows a lion bowing to a cockerel; in Hamlet the theory that cockerels sing all night at Christmas time, banishing evil influences, as they do throughout the year at dawn, is recounted. St Francis preached to the birds, encouraging them to praise God for the natural gifts with which God had endowed them, by singing. And so, of course, they did.

It is interesting to compare the ordered spontaneity of birdsong and of Gregorian Chant. Singing Gregorian Chant has to be learnt, by human singers, but in learning to do it we reconnect with something very fundamental in human nature.

Listening to sacred music IS active participation

From the Holy Father's recent address to the Italian St Cecelia Assocation.

'The second aspect that I propose for your reflection is the relationship between sacred song and the new evangelization. The conciliar constitution on the liturgy recalls the importance of sacred music in the mission “ad gentes” and calls for an appreciation of the musical traditions of different peoples (cf. 119). But also precisely in countries, such as Italy, where evangelization occurred centuries ago, sacred music – with its own great tradition, which is our western culture – can and does have a relevant task of assisting in the rediscovery of God, a return to the Christian message and the mysteries of the faith. We think of the celebrated experience of Paul Claudel, the French poet, who converted listening signing of the Magnificat during the Christmas vespers at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris: “At that moment,” he writes, “there occurred the event that dominated my entire life. In twinkling my heart was touched and I believed. I believed with such a powerful adherence, with such an elevation of my whole being, with such a strong conviction, in a certainty that did not leave space for any sort of doubt that, after that moment, no reasoning, no circumstance of my troubled life, was able to shake or touch my faith.”

But we need not have recourse to illustrious persons to think of how many people have been touched in their depths of their soul listening to sacred music; and of how many more have felt themselves newly drawn to God by the beauty of liturgical music like Claudel. And, here dear friends, you have an important role: work to improve the quality of liturgical song with being afraid to recover and value the great musical tradition of the Church, which has in Gregorian Chant and polyphony 2 of its highest expressions, as Vatican II itself states (cf. “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” 116). And I would like to stress that the active participation of the whole people of God in the liturgy does not consist only in speaking, but in listening, in welcoming the Word with the senses and the spirit, and this holds also for sacred music. You, who have the gift of song can make the heart of many people sing in liturgical celebrations.'

Contrast this with the following, from an Instruction of the Congregation of Divine Worship in 1987:

 'Any performance of sacred music which takes place during a celebration, should be fully in harmony with that celebration. This often means that musical compositions which date from a period when the active participation of the faithful was not emphasized as the source of the authentic Christian spirit are no longer to be considered suitable for inclusion within liturgical celebrations.' (Concerts in Churches, 1987).

The clear implication of the latter document is that Chant and Sacred Polyphony did not promote 'active participation'. It's not often I'd say this about an official document of the Church, even one with the limited authority of an 'Instruction' from a congregation, but this is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

Viva Papa!

Academy of Sacred Music founded in Glasgow

A LEADING Scots lay Catholic has claimed the music sung in churches is 'lousy' and is the reason why young people have stopped going to Mass.

Joan Dillon, a Masters graduate of RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), also claimed music at Mass was 'more rooted in pop music than in sacred traditions' and was often 'so bad it distracted people from the true purpose of worship'.

She said 25 pupils from state schools currently learning Latin through the study of sacred music were the future lifeblood of the Catholic Church in Scotland.

Speaking prior to the launch of Scotland's first Academy of Sacred Music (AOSM) in Glasgow, Ms Dillon, its founder, told The Herald: 'There has been some pretty lousy music sung in Catholic churches and that is where things have gone wrong, why congregations are shrinking.

'It need not be so. As a parent myself it seems to me young people are being brought up immersed in the negative messages of modern music via MTV, a lot of which is demeaning.

'They need the transformative power of sacred music to balance that, but instead they are getting banal, happy-clappy stuff at Mass. Sacred music can lift young people up and help them embrace more noble ideas, yet it is not sung in many Catholic churches in Scotland.'

Ms Dillon said the poor standard of church music stemmed from Vatican II, the Second Vatican Council convened in 1962 by Pope John XXIII which led to Mass being said in English rather than Latin. Her support for sacred music echoes that of leading Scots composer James MacMillan, who Ms Dillon has invited to be patron of the new academy.

Mr MacMillan was commissioned to write new sacred music for masses in Glasgow and Birmingham during Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britian in 2010 and caused controversy within the Catholic church when he claimed, in a letter to The Herald, the trend for 'touchy-feely-smiley-dancey folk' worship had 'repulsed' young people and 'put them off going to church in their droves'.

In his address tonight at St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow, Mr MacMillan will repeat Pope Benedict's message that 'the world needs beauty in order not to sink into despair' and that music is the most spiritual of the arts.

Asked by The Herald if he hoped the AOSM would improve the standard of sung music at Mass, Mr MacMillan said: 'I have no doubt the initiative will have a practical impact. The AOSM is a wonderful development in liturgical music in Glasgow.'

The AOSM, which is open to all religions and none, is based at Renfield St Stephen's Centre in Bath Street and runs choral classes for young people from the age of five to 18. It already has 25 students from state schools, including Glasgow's Holyrood Secondary and Uddingston Grammar.

Holyrood pupil Rosie Lavery, 14, said she would like her own church in King's Park to start a choir so she and her friends could influence what was sung. She added: 'At the moment the music is sung by the congregation and it's pretty dull.'



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Resources for congregations at Sung EF Masses

Printable copies of the music and propers for various Masses have been made available here; they were originally developed for John Fisher House, the Cambridge Chaplaincy. They include some interesting features, such as the Offertory Verses. These verses, to which the Offertory Antiphon (or part of it) acts as a refrain, are theologically rich and musically and poetically very interesting. The Schola Abelis in Oxford frequently sings them; they are sung by a cantor, and at the end of verses the full schola repeats all or part of the antiphon. They are not for the faint-hearted, however, as they are difficult. They are optional in the Extraordinary Form, under the Instruction Musica Sacra of 1958, 27 (b) (and de facto earlier too I would assume, hence a 1935 edition of the verses, which are clearly intended for liturgical use). They are not in the Missal, so there is no obligation to sing them, but as it is permissible (and there is usually time) to sing extra things at the Offertory, nothing more appropriate can be imagined than the original verses which go with the Offertory Antiphon in the medieval manuscripts. An edition of the music for these verses, the one produced originally in 1935, is available on the Catholic Music Association of America site here (big pdf). You can also buy a 'Offertoriale Triplex' with the neumes from the oldest available manuscripts included; a putative restoration of the chants with a modern interpretation of the neumes is available for some of them here.

Offertory Confirma hoc, for Pentecost, with the ancient verses, sung by the Schola Abelis.
 
Those choirs which sing these Offertory verses may well want to provide the congregation with the text, and a translation, which is provided in these sheets.

Ecclesiological Society Conference 2012

I am very happy to draw attention to this interesting event. The continuing scholarship on the Middle Ages sheds ever more light on the nature of Gregorian Chant, and is not a matter of merely academic interest to singers.

ECCLESIOLOGICAL SOCIETY
SUCCESSOR OF THE CAMBRIDGE CAMDEN SOCIETY OF 1839

The Medieval Experience of Worship
Saturday 6th October
St Alban's Centre, Baldwins Gardens, London, EC1N 7AB
10.15 am to 5.15 pm
 
This conference will explore the experience of late medieval worship for clergy, musicians and people. It is based on a major three-year research project (www.experienceofworship.org.uk) with a strong focus on the relationship of building and ritual. The project has included the editing of key texts, the enactment and audio-visual recording of medieval liturgies in St Teilo’s parish church (near Cardiff) and at Salisbury Cathedral, the construction of a medieval-style organ, and the reconstruction of ritual objects, including flagons, bowls, pyxes, pax board, and vestments. Video materials and some artefacts will be on display.

All are welcome. People find that our conferences combine serious intent with an enthusiastic and friendly atmosphere, and are enjoyable both for experts and those new to the topic being considered. A hot lunch is included. There will be a second-hand bookstall. Everyone is invited to finish the day with a glass of wine.

SPEAKERS
Paul Barnwell: The nature of medieval worship
Gerallt Nash: Recreating St Teilo’s c.1520: structure and decoration
Sally Harper & Dominic Gwynn: Clothing the space: books, artefacts, vestments, and organ
Magnus Williamson: Sound, movement, and space: the view from the nave
Jeremy Davies Clergy, ritual and space: the view from the chancel
John Harper: The sensory experiences of worship

Small choir: Chant and polyphony in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Holy Name of Jesus

COST: (incl. refreshments, hot lunch, glass of wine) £42.50 for members & guests;
£48 for non-members; £35 for under- & post-graduate students. Tickets are non-refundable.
Society’s website: www.ecclsoc.org General conference enquiries: conference@ecclsoc.org

BOOKING FORM FOR THE 2012 CONFERENCE – PLEASE PRINT CLEARLY
Please book …… places @ £42.50 [member(s) and guest(s)]
…… places @ £48 [non-member(s)]
…… places @ £35 [under- and post-graduate student(s)]
(Once tickets have been booked we regret they are non-refundable)
I enclose a cheque, payable to the Ecclesiological Society for £ ……………