Going on the advice from some friends over at the CMAA forum, I had the opportunity to attend Mass at St Etheldreda’s Church in Ely, London. This was a Latin Mass, complete with chant, polyphony, accompanied by a small chamber orchestra. When I get a chance, I’ll try to upload all the photos.
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Last time I talked about the upcoming big chant gathering we have next Sunday. Well, we had our practice yesterday, and finally got a chance to meet and find out what we’ve learned, and whether it was the same thing. We now have less than two weeks to go until we have the scholas from 3 Fort Collins parishes join together to sing a single Mass on November 15th. Actually, I found out that we can claim four parishes, because a gentleman has joined us from Greeley who is the “one person schola” for his parish. I’ve felt quite guilty about my inexperience as regarding Sacred Music:
I love to hear supportive comments, and am challenged to accept criticism, but the hardest thing can sometimes be getting no feedback at all. If my priest, schola members, or director of music don’t say much, what does that mean? Why do organizations of volunteers even exist? Think about it: Your time is tremendously valuable; you want to make sure that you get fairly paid for ALL the work you do; you’re worried when it looks like work is unfairly taking over your personal life. Yet, here you are, just giving away all this valuable time, with no hope of ever being paid for it. I was listening to a wonderful podcast this afternoon, where Katherine Barron and Jennifer Willits were talking about the book, “Choosing Beauty.” But I don’t want to talk about the book. Instead, they brought up an important concept: When you bad-mouth or gossip about someone, what you’re doing is stealing. Stealing their reputation. A compatriot here in town, who happens to be both a chant schola director and a professor of Organ Studies at the local university, put together an organ recital for tomorrow night. Not your ordinary organ concert, though! It’s a mixture of Compline in Gregorian Chant, and … organ pieces by Phillip Glass, Arvo Pärt, and Olivier Messiaen. Not simultaneously, the pieces are interspersed. I’m helping with the chant, not the organ. If nobody has a heart attack, it should be quite interesting! As a result of the wonderful discussions at the CMAA Colloquium and encouragement of my colleagues, I am offering a new service today: Sacred Music Group Coaching. The details are here. |
