More on that Chant Workshop

A couple of weeks ago I remote-blogged from Auburn, Alabama, the site of the St. Cecilia Schola Cantorum Chant and Polyphony Workshop. The experience was a beautiful one, and I hope to repeat it next year, possibly including some of my choir members or the members of my new Schola. Unfortunately I had to leave early in order to be home at a decent hour, since I had to be up at 6:00 AM on Sunday. It was raining buckets all the way home, and I really didn't want to be driving in the rain and the dark.

Of course, I can’t disclose the location, etc. etc. of my church, but suffice it to say that we’ll be having some chant at the Saturday Mass before too long. Intriguingly, a number of people who have expressed interest in joining are not even Catholic – some are even non-Catholic clergy. So the Saturday Mass might be the best time to do that in order to avoid conflict with their professional obligations.

If anyone objects to the addition of chant to that liturgy, I’ll just have to point out how much shorter Mass is when you don’t sing a bunch of [non-Catholic] hymns. Hymns are a lot longer than your average Introit, Communion or Offertory chant, and they may or may not have anything to do with the readings. All these years we’ve been using the last option (hymns) as the default, when it ought to be the chant first and the hymns as a last resort. I’m ready to put on my Don Quichotte bedpan helmet and tilt at the hymn-mill, one liturgy at a time.

One of the most intriguing things about the workshop was the early Saturday daily Mass. The assembled singers assisted at that Mass, and I expected we would significantly outnumber the congregation. I was wrong about that.

On a frigid Saturday morning in the middle of the winter, a good-sized crowd of people showed up for that daily Mass. They were in for a treat, because there were nearly a hundred of us in the chant workshop, and the singing was beautiful. We sang the old hymn-tune version of Panis Angelicus as a Communion hymn and sang all the Mass parts in Latin (except for the Gloria and Credo, which were omitted).

Assembled in that cupcake-shaped church, in the last place I would have expected to hear chant, and singing the song of the Church together with all those other singers -- that was priceless and beautiful. And I hope to be back next year, assuming things go okay for Mrs. Yurodivi.

Thanks to Jeffrey Tucker and Arlene Oost-Zinner for doing such a brilliant job assembling this workshop.