Members of the St. Cecilia Schola Cantorum will be conducting a workshop in Bluffton, South Carolina this Labor Day weekend. In honor of its patron's feast day on Sunday, September 3rd, St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church in Bluffton, South Carolina will be hosting the three-day workshop intended to introduce parishioners and visitors to Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony in accordance with the directives of the GIRM and centuries of Papal legislation. The workshop will begin on Friday, September 1st at 5:30 pm, and will run all day Saturday. It will culminate in a Novus Ordo Mass at 9:00 am on Sunday morning, September 3rd. The workshop schola will be singing the Latin propers and ordinary from the Graduale Romanum and works of renaissance polyphony by Thomas Tallis and Josquin Des Pres. The workshop is open to all.

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The St. Cecilia Schola is very pleased to announce that the Communion Antiphons of the Roman Rite, along with their complete Psalm verses with notation, are now available for free download at Musicasacra.com.

These will be extremely helpful to all Catholic musicians around the world. It is the first time that such as been available in many decades, and the editions themselves, notated with Meinrad fonts by Richard Rice of Washington, D.C., have been prepared with exacting detail.

Thus for the first time in this generation, the full communion music as recommended by the General Instruction and all rubrics dating back through the history of this portion of the Roman Rite, are easily accessible to singers.

By way of background, the Gregorian Missal includes the Communion Antiphons but not the Psalm verses. The usual solution has been to sing the Antiphon but nothing else. That solution is imperfect because these are, after, antiphons, meaning that they are meant to be repeated in the liturgy so that they can become familiar to the ear.

The Graduale Romanum includes the references to the Psalms but they are incomplete; moreover, the Graduale includes no music for these Psalms. One has to go to older books that are long out of print to find the complete Psalms in clear settings of the appropriate tones. This task has proven so difficult as to make it nearly unviable to sing the Communion rite as it is intended to be sung.

Moreover, for the new schola, the Communion antiphons are the best settings to begin in singing the Propers. They are less difficult than other parts of the Mass Propers. And for a parish transitioning toward chant and sacred music, they occur at a time in the Mass when people are prepared for the introduction of chant. They are supremely prayerful and reflect the themes suitable for the day.

The Schola itself has been singing the Communions for nearly three years. But this is the first time that we've had the opportunity to sing the full rite precisely according to the ideal as presented in the rubrics. This very morning we used the De Fructu according to these new editions, and the result was spectacular.

We encourage all scholas to begin downloading these week by week. The editions will be added to as they become available, with a completion date set for January 2007. But you can begin using them right away, since they are being posted in the order following by the liturgical calendar, starting with today's liturgy.

Please consider joining the CMAA, which is sponsoring these editions, and making a contribution to the effort.

Deo Gratias!

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Here are some beautiful prayers the choir can say before and after Mass.

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On the suggestion of David Hughes of St. Catharine's in Pelham, NY, the Schola will read through what looks like a wonderful and elegant piece of polyphony: Lord For Thy Tender Mercy's Sake, by John Hilton (16th Century English composer) or, more probably, by Richard Farrant (1530-1580).

But the piece is of more general interest for parish choirs because it looks to be rather easy. Rhythms are simple, ranges are not extreme, and the lines are intuitive. Might this be an excellent piece for any polyphonic choir that is just starting out? Perhaps so.

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Here is an email we received today. It demonstrates how much progress is being made in the work for sacred music:

A newly ordained priest celebrated his first Mass here and he requested all Latin Mass parts. This was a very interesting experience for me. I couldn't wait to see how the large adult choir would react, and they couldn't get mad at me since the request did not come from the "new director" (yours truly). I explained to the choir that these pieces were very meaningful to the new priest and they represent a piece of what the church describes as a "treasure of inestimable worth." Interestingly, the older folks grumbled a bit but the younger ones (teens and 20's) thought the idea was marvelous and eagerly set out to learn them.

I taught all of the chants (Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) in a single rehearsal and the choir sang them very well. A few grumbled "The congregation won't know them or sing along." Wrong. They did sing them, and rather loudly. Something in the collective Roman Catholic memory was stirred, and I watched with amazement as the young and old read the chants out of the worship aid and sang along almost as well as our dearly beloved "Mass of Creation." Many people complimented me after Mass and said they had never heard such beautiful music ever in that church. The soil here is very fertile....

My plan for the Fall rehearsals is to incorporate motets into their existing repertoire of anthems. I used a ton of these pieces as a high school director and my students loved them once they got over the momentary shock of language and style. Latin diction is easy to teach, and the pure vowels teach choirs how to sing beautifully in tune. Long polyphonic lines teach legato singing and lyric phrasing.
The "Palestrina Arch" is one of the most effective tools for teaching singers about the poetic rise and fall of musical lines. Plus, Altos and Tenors get great parts in this genre where all parts are equally important.

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