More Random Images from Colloquium XXI
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.
A Sacred Music Revolution
More Images
Too tired to type anything coherent – except perhaps to say that Ember Day Saturday in the Extraordinary Form with full Gregorian propers is like nothing else on this earth – but here are some images:
A few more random images
These are from Charles Cole’s camera
Images from Semiology Class
At the Sacred Music Colloquium, Edward Schaefer taught four classes on semiology in which we went through the Graduale Triplex and other manuscripts to discover subtle shadings that can’t be expressed in staff notation or were otherwise lost on the path from oral transmission of the chant tradition to printed manuscripts.
It was a fascinating class that beautifully demonstrated how having these first millennium manuscripts available to everyone, not just specialists, can enhance both understanding and performance of the chant, as a natural outgrowth of the work began by the Solesmes monastery.
It was particularly gratifying to see this level of exploration because it represents a continuation of a tradition of publishing within the CMAA. Under the editorship of Msgr. Schuler, Sacred Music published fully six large studies in the 1980s on the topic of semiology (including by Fr. Kelly and Dom Cardine). Until very recently, these were the only in-print resources in English on this topic.
Dr. Schaefer also visited other chant groups to help them see some of the shadings behind the chants they would sing at Mass that day.
Here is Kathy Rheinheimer and Ronald Prowse in semiology class.
Charles Cole attended as did Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth of ICEL
Another student was Fr. Jonathan Gaspar, director of the office of worship for the Boston Archdiocese.
And here is Professor Edward Schaefer
Susan Treacy of Ave Maria, and Jennifer Donelson
And one more: Jeffrey Ostrowski of Corpus Christi Watershed
Missal Music Fast Track
This is big news. The USCCB says that the new Missal music might be used in September so that people will be used to the new texts and acclamations going into Advent. This is great and wise.