Compline at Birsay

The historic church of St Magnus, Birsay, provided a fitting venue on Monday (14 December) for Compline, sung by the students on the beginners’ Gregorian Chant course. The course ran at Appies Tea Rooms, Sandwick, during November and December. It followed a successful beginners’ course, also at Appies, last winter.
The students on the course were really enthusiastic and the quality of the singing at Birsay Kirk indicates just how much work they put in. Gregorian Chant is rightly famous for its serenity, but it requires a lot from the singers: accuracy, stamina, good pronunciation of Latin – and all this unaccompanied. I’m proud of how much this class has achieved.

Serious chant boffins might be interested to learn that we sang the hymn Te lucis to the melody that is assigned to it in the Noted Breviary of York (a Lambeth Palace Library MS.) This is a variant of the York tone given in the old Stanbrook Hymnale, but it is not identical, so I stand by my rash claim, made on the night, that this particular tune has probably not been heard in a church since the Reformation.

An intermediate course will run at Appies in the New Year, beginning on Thursday 21 January 2010. To book, please call Pam Farmer on 841562. The course will suit anyone who has completed one of the beginners’ courses at Appies, or who has some experience of choral singing.

What's going on?

I recently sent out an email to all the known supporters of the Orkney Schola just to let folk know what we're up to. Mark Miles from the Edinburgh Schola sensibly pointed out that not all our supporters are necessarily known to me, so let me share the same information with all of you in blogland.

Currently, there is a beginners' course running at Appies Tea Room in Sandwick, which will culminate with a performance of Compline in mid-December. In the New Year, an intermediate course will run at the same venue and the same time and day (Thursday, 9.45 am - 11.45 am). The intermediate course, which begins on 21 January, will be suitable for any one who has completed the beginners' course, or who has some experience of chant or choral singing. Please call Pam Farmer (841562) if you wish to enrol on that course.

A core group of regular singers is meeting on Saturday mornings at my house - somewhat sporadically while the courses are running, but at least three Saturdays a month thereafter. I hope we will be able to sing at several Masses and other services during the course of 2010, and full details of any public performances will be posted on this blog.

If you wish to be on the Schola's emailing list, please send me your details by leaving a comment (don't worry, I won't publish comments that include contact details!).

Download recordings of Compline

Click here for the link to the recordings I have made of Compline. I have split Compline into seven sections rather than producing one vast file. The sections are numbered as follows:

Compline 1: introductory rites
Compline 2: antiphon & Psalms
Compline 3: hymn
Compline 4: reading & short responsory
Compline 5: Nunc dimittis
Compline 6: prayer & blessing
Compline 7: Alma Redemptoris mater

You can download these files. They are in .wav format, and can be played by Windows Media Player, &c. I have made these recordings for those on the beginners' course, and other Schola members who may be able to join us on the 14th. I make no claim for the quality of the recording - much less of the singing!

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.