Musica Sacra Florida 2015 Chant Conference

Although it is Holy Week, we should remember that May will be here before we know it. And May 15th & 16th are the dates for the Musica Sacra Florida Conference at Ave Maria University.  This is a wonderful small conference that welcomes beginners learning to read square notes, as well as more experienced singers interested in semiology and the propers.

The keynote speaker will be Father James Bradley, a fascinating Ordinariate priest.  There are two liturgies, one Extraordinary Form and one Ordinary Form, as well as an accessible sung Lauds.  Faculty include Drs. Susan Treacy, Mary Jane Ballou, and Ed Schaefer.

New this year – a Saturday workshop on chant for children, led by Michael Olbash and a workshop for cantors (or would-be cantors) on bringing chant to their parishes.

Learn more and register online at Musica Sacra   Housing is available on campus at a very reasonable rate.

Join us!

Stress is Contagious

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal cited a study that showed that a high-stress boss can communicate his own feelings to subordinates.  The person who is always rushing around makes others anxious (and “rush-y”) as well.

What does this have to do with sacred music?  Well, what kind of director are you?  Insecure, easily threatened when someone asks a question you can’t answer, always rooting around in your music, never quite prepared?  Is the result a nervous choir? I hope not!

However, wouldn’t you love to feel secure in your understanding of chant?  Experienced with high-level polyphony?  Up-to-date on what some of the best and brightest have to say about the present and future of sacred music in the Latin Rite?

The Church Music Association of America (CMAA) is here to help.  The Summer Chant Intensive from June 23-26 at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh can make all the difference to a schola director’s life!  You’ll be grounded in the modes, familiar with the style and shape of Gregorian chant, and experienced in chant’s role in the Divine Office and the Mass.

The Summer Colloquium is another saturation experience for church musicians – just about all the chant, polyphony, and liturgy anyone could hope for.  From June 29th to July 4th, beginning to advanced singers will have the opportunity to work with some of the finest musicians in the United States and Europe. Breakout sessions will also be available on topics from children’s programs and chironomy to semiology.  Plenary speakers and a special course for priests, deacons, and seminarians, as well as a full complement of Ordinary and Extraordinary Form Masses make this a one-of-kind time.  And there’s still ample opportunity for networking and just plain old conversing with old friends and new.  Also at Duquesne University this year.

You’ll come away stronger, surer, and heartened!  So head on over to the CMAA website and get onboard! 

Correction on Early Registration Deadlines

I was wrong (yes, it happens) about the early registration deadline for the Colloquium – if you weren’t in as of midnight last night, you missed it.  But you could still save on the Chant Intensive early registration this month.

Soooo, why not register for both now?  You’ll have saved on one and helped us out on the other.

Apologies for any confusion.  It’s late Sunday afternoon.

Time & Tide Wait for No Man (or Woman) – Early Registrations for Summer Events

Tomorrow is the 1st of March.  There is one month left for early registration at the Summer Chant Intensive and/or the Summer Colloquium.  This year both will be at Duquesne University in beautiful  Pittsburgh – the city of 27 bridges, a splendid cathedral, a new organ in the campus chapel – and all the delights of sacred music.  Monophony, polyphony, vocal, organ, chances to sing your heart out, to learn semiology and principles of chironomy, to network with like-minded folks for all over the country (and even other countries).

What are you waiting for?  Hie thee to the CMAA site and get on board the train now.  Early registration saves you $50 (or fifty Washingtons, if that’s the way you talk).

Join us for one or both conferences.  Summer Chant Intensive with the incomparable Wilko Brouwers, June 23-26,2015.  Summer Colloquium XXV with a plethora of talent and brain power, June 29-July 4, 2015.

Take the plunge!

Singing Priests and Deacons at the Winter Chant Intensive

I recently had the pleasure of attending the Winter Chant Intensive’s track on “Singing the Mass” for priests and deacons.  Why me? While I’m obviously neither a priest nor deacon, I was interested in seeing how Matthew Meloche of the Cathedral of Saints Simon and Jude would work with a diverse collection of clerics.

The willingness of the priest/deacon participants to get up one at a time and sing was wonderful. There is nothing more terrifying to most amateurs (and most professionals, if we’ll be honest) than singing before one’s peers.  Some of the singers struggled to find their voices at all; some simply needed tuning up and clarification.  Meloche sensed quickly how to meet each participant where he was at that point.  He also knew when to back off, lest personal attention begin to seem humiliating focus. Everyone was encouraging and positive, even as we moved quickly from dialogues to orations and finally to the dread Exultet.

Each of the participants made progress and seemed ready to take some of the learning home and into actual liturgical practice.  My only concern was the length of this intensive course because the last day seemed to push some over the edge into musical and psychic exhaustion.  What did I get from this 4-day crash course?  A better overall picture of the priestly and diaconal musical requirements of the Ordinary Form of the Mass, strategies for helping priests with whom I presently work or may work in the future, and most importantly a chance to spend a few days with dedicated men who want to do everything within their power to bring the richness of chant into their local churches.

A similar course will be part of the XXV Summer Colloquium at Duquesne University this summer. If you’re a priest or deacon who wants to build his chant on a firm foundation, give that opportunity some thought. It is a chance to experience musical collegiality and growth, to learn the music particular to your liturgical vocation, and to be surrounded by singers who want you to “shine” in the sanctuary as much as they would in the loft.

Tastes Like Mozart, Sounds Like Chicken: The Peril of Easy Comparisons

When I read National Geographic magazine as a child, explorers eating exotic foods, such as alligator, always seemed to characterize the meat as “tastes like chicken.” Actually, only chicken tastes like chicken and gator really tastes like gator.

I previewed a recording of Anselm Viola’s Missa Alma Redepmtoris Mater this morning. Viola was an 18th-century priest composer at Montserrat.  My first thought was “sounds like Mozart.” And then I realized that was a limiting approach. Viola’s music sounds like music composed at that place with those musicians at that time. (Incdentally, this is one of the few works of his that survived the destruction of the library and music archives of the monastery by Napoleon’s troops.) I needed to listen to his music as his music, not calculating how it measured up to another composer.

The easy comparisons to familiar meats and composers have their value.  You’ll try something if you think it’s similar to food or music you already enjoy.  At that same time in terms of music, it makes it all too easy to place composers and styles in neat boxes – and it seems the fewer the boxes, the better.

Try listening “out of the box,” as we say in corporate newspeak. Or try “no boxes” at all.

Adoro Te: Gregorian Chants & Marian Antiphons

I rarely write reviews, but this is the exception that breaks the rule.  When people offer to send me their music (and they do when they realize I can get it on the air), I brace my listening ears when I first play the sample track.  Oh, what a delight it was to hear this!

When most of us think of a chant CD, we think of a “group effort.”  That may be a choir of monks or nuns, perhaps a professional ensemble or even a gifted church choir.  We don’t think soloists, the exception being teaching and enthusiast recordings found on YouTube.  Donna Stewart’s new CD, Adoro Te, is just that – a solo woman’s voice singing a range of chant hymns and antiphons.  And it is quite effective.

Stewart is best known as a singer of Renaissance lute songs, as half of Duo Mignarda. In fact, she met the lutenist while they were singing in a 5-voice schola for a weekly Tridentine Mass.  She has also recorded with the baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire.  So she is both professionally and personally committed to the genre.

Recorded live at the Church of St. Stanislaus in Cleveland, Ohio, Stewart makes full use of the church’s reverberent acoustic.  Each phrase gets a chance to resolve itself into silence. And she doesn’t hesitate to use a judicious amount of rubato in her singing – never schmaltzy – just the right amount of plasticity that beautiful vocal lines demand.  Importantly, Stewart has the beautiful voice equal to those melodies; it is seamless and rich.  Not an imitation boy-choir white tone, but a restrained and attractive adult woman’s voice.

The 15 selections begin with the solemn tone Salve Regina and conclude with the Adoro Te Devote. In between are classic chants from all parts of the liturgical year: Creator Alme Siderum, Jesu Redemptor Omnium, Ave Regina Caelorum, Ubi Caritas, Crux Fidelis and Pange Lingua, Veni Creator Spiritus, and Ut Queant Laxis, among others.

Is this the model for your schola’s singing?  Probably not.  At the same time, this is the album to give to folks who might find it a window into understanding the chant ethos.  And it’s an album worth listening to yourself because its very different style can open an experienced singer to new ways of thinking about both text and melody.  Further, if we insist that chant has to be “my way or the highway,” we may find more on the on-ramp than driving along with us.

The album is available directly from the artist at Mignarda or at the usual download sites.  As a proponent of women’s voices, especially in a genre that is often regarded as exclusively male, I cannot praise Donna Stewart’s Adoro Te, highly enough.