Chant Café

I’ve written here a number of times about the advantages of teaching excellent singing, particularly in the chant, to little ones. I thought I’d outline a few specific tips about how to do that. Most of these are taken in one way or another from the Ward Method.

1. Insist on excellent singing from the very beginning, even with kindergarteners. This can be a little challenging if students are used to singing in a loud, shouting way. One remedy is simply to have students repeat back notes, sung on “oo,” and listening for beautiful singing. Another is to ask students to repeat the call of the mourning dove, singing on the syllable “oo.” Listen carefully for vocal production. Gently correct the students who are making more playful sounds and challenge them to “sing beautifully.”
2. Another way to correct shouting is to ask students to sing–not shout–a note as loudly as they can. Correct shouting until it is loud singing. Then ask them to sing the same note as quietly as they can, not whispering, but quiet singing. Lastly, ask them to sing the same note as “mediumly” as they can.
3. Teach the students to sing the Do Re Mi scale with hand motions that walk the notes up the body. This is an outstanding video explanation. The entire series is wonderful.
4. To explain the half steps in the scale, I tell a story about being on vacation in an old house on vacation, and tell the students that since their family is in the beautiful basement of this wonderful house, and the kitchen is on the first floor, that it is very important to know how to walk up the stairs at night to get some delicious hot chocolate. The problem with this old house is that some of the steps are only half as tall, and you have to be careful in order to walk up in the dark. I draw a platform horizontally low on the board, and that is Do. Then a stair, up to Re, then a stair up to Mi, and then a half-tall stair up to Fa. This continues up to Do, with a half-tall stair between Mi and Do.
   Little children are very interested in the height and size of things, and will have fairly recently conquered the processes involved in walking up stairs, so this image is very memorable to them.

Some of our readers who are celebrating the Memorial of Pope St. John Paul with special solemnity may like to sing this Hymn Tune Introit during the entrance procession.

The Lord chose him to be high priest.
And made His gifts in him increase.

He opened up His treasure store,

And made him rich forevermore.

The Hymn Tune Introits are a way of introducing the proper texts in a parish or other worshipping community in an agreeable and easy way. This text may be sung to the tune of any familiar Long Meter tune.

Enjoy!

I teach Gregorian chant and renaissance polyphony at a wonderful independent Catholic K-12 school near San Diego, with a classical curriculum and prolife values. I thought our readers might be interested to know about our biggest fundraiser of the year, which is a raffle with a $10,000 grand prize.

 Only 1,000 tickets will be sold, so the odds are good, and the school is certainly worthy of support.

 California is something of a mission field, and our students are being taught how to keep and stand up for their faith.

For my part, I teach Religion, Latin, and how to sing beautifully at our Masses and to read music, in both chant and modern notation systems.  

Please consider helping us to form the next generation of faithful (and musically literate!) Catholics. The details of the raffle may be found here. 

Thank you!

Yesterday, the Boston-based network Catholic TV welcomed guests from Gloriae Dei Cantores, the renowned ecumenical choir on Cape Cod, to talk about their performance and recordings of choral music and Gregorian chant in particular:

On the eve of St Francis’ feast day, an interesting interview in the National Catholic Register with a professor of sacred music at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. He touches on music at the University, and music in the Franciscan tradition. (I don’t think I knew that Jacopone da Todi was Franciscan.)

Franciscan University has a vibrant musical life. There are two university choirs: the Schola Cantorum Franciscana and University Chorale. A small army of volunteer students leads and participates in bands and choirs, which provide musical leadership for multiple daily and Sunday Masses in the chapel. We have at least two student-led a capella, groups in addition to a string quartet; and, of course, it’s never hard to find a student playing a guitar outside on a sunny day. There are many forms of music here, for various times and places. “Diverse and healthy” is how I would describe it.
For liturgical music specifically, there are few places I’m aware of that have a similar program. If you walk into Christ the King Chapel here, you’re likely to hear one of two different types of song — chant-polyphony and classic English hymnody or guitar-led “praise and worship,” music with compositions that are both more recent and more Catholic. What’s conspicuously lacking is music from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, which is so common in American Catholic parishes.

 Not certain I get this – “praise and worship” music that is “more Catholic” than what? than the “chant-polyphony”? or than the stuff of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s that he mentions in the next sentence?

Anyone familiar with and care to comment on the musical praxis at Steubenville?

In case you didn’t know, we are going to Mars.

In our lifetime.

When humanity flings itself into the inky blackness of the nearby heavens, will the silly songs of contemporary worshiptainment be an adequate musical expression of this endeavor?

When the first priest arrives on Mars, and says the first Mass on another world, what sort of music could possibly match the profound human accomplishment, and the divine inspiration, that got him there?