The Guild was visited at our February 2 practice by a reporter and photographer from the Chapmaign-Urbana News-Gazette, and a little piece about us appeared in the February 13 issue.
Via Amy Welborn, a catechetical discourse on St. Romanos the Melodist from Pope Benedict’s May 21 General Audience.
My colleagues over at Cantate Deo have posted an excerpt from Pope Benedict’s address after a concert of local choirs he attended while on vacation in the Valle d’Aosta, which I reproduce in part here:
“Training in singing, in singing in choir, is not only an exercise of the external hearing and voice; it is also an education of interior hearing, the hearing of the heart, an exercise and a education in life and peace,” the Holy Father said in his improvised remarks.
“Singing together in choir and with other choirs together, demands attention to the other, attention to the composer, attention to the conductor, attention to this totality that we call music and culture. And,” he added, “in this way singing in choir is a training in life, a training in peace, a walking together.”
Like my colleagues, I love the Pope. :)
Given the amount of blog-spam comments I’ve had to clean out recently, I have denied the ability to comment to everyone except commenters with a valid TypeKey ID. But since no one comments here anyway, that’s not much of a hassle…. (Yes, I really should be posting something more comment-worthy, and I hope I will soon.)
Amy Welborn recently went out to California and heard the San Franscisco Schola Cantorum sing for Mass. Having heard them, she began to think that one should support one’s local schola. I weigh in twice in the comments, and others also provide links/other information about other chant choirs around the nation.
We’re definitely not alone, and it’s good to see that interest in chant is far more widespread that we might fear at times.
As was mentioned in an earlier post, the Guild recorded the music from September 3, and used the recording as a promotional item at the St. Matthew’s Ministry Fair. I am pleased to announce that the recording is now also available online, in two compressed audio formats:
In preparation for our October 2 chant notation workshop, some printable resources may be of use:
Others will be added to this list in the next week or so.
It appears that our September 3 appearances went well; at least we have received good comments from the churches at which we sang.
In the coming weeks, our calendar looks like this:
Copies of and/or links to the material for our September 25 and October 2 events will be posted here shortly.
After a hectic August, the Guild will be taking two weeks off at the beginning of September, and will not be rehearsing on September 4 or September 11. We will resume our normal rehearsal schedule the week of September 17.
A couple posts back I referred to a shadowy “summer project” which the Guild is working on, and in fact has been working on since June. Inter nos, and for comedic effect, I tend to refer to it as our Master Plan For Taking Over The World.
In essence, one could think of our Master Plan as a sustained advertising campaign over the course of the month of September. It has the following salient points:
The goal is twofold:
Exact dates for the later stages of our project are not firmly set yet, but when they become available they will be posted in this space.
Pray for us.