It is coming up this weekend. The organizers have said that if you would stay away solely based on price alone, you are free to email them to see about gaining admission. I’m excited about this because it will be the first workshop with a focus on what is surely the biggest selling music book in the Catholic world right now: The Simple English Propers. To understand why, you only need to glance at the Amazon reviews, which are absolutely over the top.
Colloquium of the Gregorian Institute of Canada
The sixth annual colloquium of the Gregorian Institute of Canada began yesterday, and it looks like a wonderful event:
The Gregorian Institute of Canada has focused from its inception on performance, providing a unique opportunity for scholars and performers from Canada and around the world to share and discuss their ideas, research and experience. This year’s theme—Chant: Old and New—is inspired by a particular chant book, which makes Halifax’s Saint Mary’s University its home: the Salzinnes Antiphonal, a 16th-century Cistercian manuscript from what is now the region of Namur in modern-day Belgium. Some of the manuscript’s musical riches will be presented in concert during the conference by five-time Grammy winning composer, conductor and performer, PAUL HALLEY and members of his University of King’s College (Halifax) Chapel Choir. MARGOT FASSLER, recently appointed the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame, will be giving a plenary address and SUSAN HELLAUER, of Anonymous 4 fame, will be leading workshops in chant performance.
Here is a PDF of the entire program.
August 27 Workshop, East Lansing
You know what’s really great? When a parish contacts you about doing a workshop and everyone there is so excited about it that you can sense it in the emails and phonecalls, so much so that they take care of all details from schedule to food to promotion – even developing a website! Here you can also register – and you should.
This is what what happened to me and to Arlene Oost-Zinner. We’ll be conducting a workshop on English chant and reading square notes at a parish that is ready to move forward with its music program, in cooperation with all the parishes in the community. The parish is St Thomas Aquinas in East Lansing, and the date is August 27, 2011.
This is a one-day crash course that will teach all the new Missal chants, plus get the local choirs ready to sing the Mass with the Simple English Propers. One person who has already registered said she couldn’t sleep last night because she was so excited! That’s pretty neat.
The Catholic music world seems very happy these days, doesn’t it?
Anyway, we hope to see you there. Good things are ahead in the future.
The Byrd Festival 2011
The schedule to this amazing event is online and reprinted here.
Friday, August 12, 2011 at 7:30 P.M.
Opening Concert:
St. Stephen’s Church, $20 general admission, $15 seniors & childrenSaturday, August 13, 2011 at 11:00 A.M.
Opening Lecture
St. Stephen’s Church, free-will offeringSunday, August 14, 2011 at 8:00 P.M.
Compline, featuring Byrd’s music for the Divine Office
Directed by Blake Applegate, Cantores in Ecclesia
St. Stephen’s Church, free-will offeringMonday, August 15, 2011 at 7:30 P.M.
Pontifical High Mass (1962 Missal) for the Feast of the Assumption, featuring liturgical music from Byrd’s Gradualia (1605)
Directed by Kerry McCarthy, Duke University
St. Stephen’s Church, free-will offeringSaturday, August 20, 2011 at 11:00 A.M.
Second Lecture
St. Stephen’s Church, free-will offering*Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 7:30 P.M.
Solemn Pontifical Mass (1970 Missal), featuring Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices
Cantores in Ecclesia, directed by Mark Williams, Trinity College, Cambridge
St. Stephen’s Church, free-will offeringSunday, August 21, 2011 at 11:00 A.M.
Solemn Pontifical Mass (1970 Missal) featuring Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices.
Cantores in Ecclesia, directed by Mark Williams
Holy Rosary Church, free-will offeringSunday, August 21, 2011 at 4:15 P.M.
Organ Recital at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral: “Byrd and Bach, an organ recital celebrating the music of two giants of keyboard composition,” performed by Mark Williams, Jesus College, Cambridge
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, free-will offeringSunday, August 21, 2011 at 5:00 P.M.
Choral Evensong featuring Byrd’s music for the Anglican liturgy
Cantores in Ecclesia, directed by David Trendell
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, free-will offeringSaturday, August 27, 2011 at 11:00 A.M.
Third Lecture
St. Stephen’s Church, free-will offering*Saturday, August 27, 2011 at 7:30 P.M.
Solemn Pontifical Mass (1970 Missal), featuring Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices
Cantores in Ecclesia, directed by Mark Williams, Trinity College, Cambridge
St. Stephen’s Church, free-will offeringSunday, August 28, 2011 at 7:00 P.M.
Pre-Concert Lecture by William Mahrt
St. Stephen’s Church,
Sunday, August 28, 2011 at 7:30 P.M.
Final Choral Concert
The Festival Choral Concert given by Cantores in Ecclesia, directed by Mark Williams, Trinity College, Cambridge
St. Stephen’s Church, $20 general admission, $15 seniors & children
More on the Duruflé Requiem in Mobile, Alabama
This story provides a sense of the necessary foundations that need to be in place to put together something like a polyphony Requiem at a Cathedral. For Mobile, this is big event.
Hymns for Feasts and Seasons: Conference at Minster Abbey
Canterbury Gregorian Music Society has organised “Hymns in Summer and Winter”, an afternoon of chant at the historic Minster Abbey in Kent, England. The Abbey is situated a few miles from Ebbsfleet, where St. Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, landed in 597 to begin his mission to the Anglo-Saxon people. A religious house was founded at Minster in 610 by St. Domneva, a princess from the royal house of Kent. Her daughter Mildred became the second Abbess and one of the best loved Anglo-Saxon Saints. The present foundation dates to 1936, when Minster Abbey was resettled as a monastic house by the Benedictine nuns of St Walburga’s Abbey, Eichstatt, Bavaria.
The event will take place on Saturday 23rd July, between 1:30 and 6:30 pm. The focus will be on Gregorian Chant hymns; hymns for feasts and seasons and melodic variation in summer and winter, the Easter season and for different grades of feast. The afternoon will include a talk on the broader background by Mother Nikola, the current Prioress. Following afternoon tea attendees will split into two groups to rehearse for vespers with the Community at 6 p.m. One group will look at some of the more ambitious hymns and the other will prepare some simpler psalms and responsories.
Kalamazoo Poster
Hope to see you on June 4, 2011. Here is the workshop page. You can help enormously by posting this poster in your choir room.
It should be an exciting conference, the only one I know of that will show any choir how to sing the new Missal chants plus propers and Psalms in chant form, without any instruments and in a way that provides music for the full liturgical year. This is third path, a model of solemnity that hasn’t been followed but clearly points the way forward.
