Compline online

If you click on this link, and then click on the words 'Here's an mp3 of a complete service of Compline', you should here a recording of Compline sung by an American choir. It differs only in minor details from what we are learning on the beginners' course, so you might find it very useful to listen to this.

Have you booked your place yet?

There are still some places available for the beginners' course in Gregorian chant which starts on Thursday week (5 November) - see right for details. Give Pam Farmer a call on 841562 to reserve a place.

Sacred music in Bolivia

Thanks to the charity work of Barbara Ann McVean, Orkney folk are well aware of Bolivia. But I had no idea about the current revival of sacred music in the country, or the benefits - spiritual, artistic and social - that it is bringing to Bolivia's young people, until I heard this BBC World Service report.

Winter Courses

Following the success of the introducory chant course at Appies Tea Rooms last winter, I will be running courses there again: Chant for Beginners in November/December, and Intermediate Chant in January/February. The dates and times are in the sidebar to the right of the screen. Each course will consist of six, 2-hour sessions, and will cost £36, plus a small surcharge to cover the cost of the music. Please come! Please bring your friends!

Our regular Saturday morning rehearsals have also begun again now that I am back from South. The only place I heard any chant on the four-week odyssey, was at St Andrew's, Ravelston in Edinburgh, where I was at Mass last Sunday. A small schola (four men and an organist) sang the chant very beautifully, despite the dullness of the acoustic, and it was nice to meet some of them over the traditional gin & tonic afterwards.

Strange sights in foreign missals

Fascinating picture in 'The Catholic', the quarterly newspaper published by the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, of St Jean-Marie Vianney's altar missal. Fascinating not least because it's open to the Embolism, which is noted for chanting. Was it a neo-Gallican peculiarity to sing the Embolism? It's not, incidentally, the same tone that one finds in the Missal of Paul VI. Any experts in nineteenth century French liturgy out there? What's the story here?

Men wanted!

My course in Gregorian chant for beginners was a great success last winter: eighteen students - but only one of them male! For all sorts of reasons it would be really, really good to have more men singing chant in Orkney, so what I am proposing now is that I run a course in November/December that is GREGORIAN CHANT FOR MEN. It's only worth doing this if some men are going to come though, so PLEASE, if you are a man, or if you know a man, who would be interested in a six-week course of Gregorian chant this winter, LET ME KNOW. I need to decide in the next week whether this is a viable project, and any feedback I can get from this post will be hugely appreciated.

The Winchester Troper

There was an interesting programme on Radio 4 about the Winchester Troper, a book containing chant and polyphony from the eleventh century. It's well worth a listen. My only gripe is that they didn't mention Dr Mary Berry's work with this manuscript.

Scottish Sacred Music Conference

A free (yes, free) conference on sacred music in Scotland will be held at Pluscarden Abbey on 1-3 September, with a very impressive list of speakers and performers (there are concerts each evening). Day one deals with pre-Reformation music, including the presentation of some important sources for medieval chant in Scotland.

It's going to be amazing. Click here for details.

Links

I've added a link, below right, to the diocese of Aberdeen, since they have finally got rid of that wretched website that didn't load properly in Explorer and was so out of date it was totally misleading. The new site is a huge improvement.

At the same time, I've deleted the link to the parish website, as this seems to have evaporated.

A plea to all parish and diocesan webmasters: what we want is (a) times of Mass and confessions; (b) contact details; (c) an up-to-date list of forthcoming events; (d) the liturgical calendar - it doesn't need to be a full ordo, I just want to know what to expect on Sunday; and (e) what no Scottish Church website gives, a list of the holydays of obligation. The bishop's homilies, and picture galleries of Sister Betty's jubilee are all very nice, but nine times out of ten, people visit church websites for information, and far too often they fail to find it.

End of rant.

Asperges me, Ave Maria, and more

Here's a youtube recording of the Asperges me, which we learnt last week. Tomorrow I hope to add something new to our repertoire: the Ave Maria (n.b. music starts at 33 seconds into the video).

On Wednesday morning (at 6 a.m.!) I had the enormous privilege of singing at a Requiem Mass, alongside two young religious who interpret the chant with consummate skill as well as devotion. I intend to blog about this on a later occasion, so I'll say no more for now. But it also made me reflect on just how far the Orkney Schola has come since the beginners' course started in January. Last Saturday, we were making a really lovely sound, even in the rather bland acoustic of our sitoutery.