Friday 23 November 2012

Me making a pigs-ear of it on our own

Alan couldn’t make the meeting on the 29th November due to work commitments. We went ahead anyway using recordings.
After a short prayer, we went back to the Kyrie. I tried to compensate for our lack of a teacher by playing a recording from the choir from Saint-Benoît-du-Lac. We learned about pitch the hard way. The monks were singing in Mode 8, we had practiced in Mode 5. We tried singing along but it was more like squeaking along.
Fr Joe arrived to say hello (Thursday is his one day off). After some chat, he left but complimented us on the recording, ‘was that you from last week?’
Aye right.

We kept trying but without guidance, we just couldn’t get the final Kyrie passage to fit the notes.

Because the Latin Mass is in Stirling this Sunday, I wanted to let everyone try the Credo and Agnus Dei. Again, my recordings (from the Benedictines of Silos this time) were in a different mode from our songbooks (mode 3 vs mode 5). But this time we were able sing with the recording. We noticed how the slidey notes worked and how the double lines meant a longer pause. I said that I kept making a pigs-ear out of the slidey notes.

We looked in the Gregorian Highway Code and found that the note is called a Porrectus.

Jack told us that porrectus is the Latin for pigs-ear.

We tried these two prayers a few times. Patrick noticed that we were all pausing to ‘take a breath’ at the same time because we didn’t know where the music was going next!

We closed with Salve Regina. I made a recording which will stay private. It shows that the Schola started the hymn in one key and ended in another one, through tiny steps after each line.

Any men who come to Mass in the Holy Spirit at 5.00pm will come as members of the congregation, rather than as a Schola Cantorum. It will be a while before we sound good enough to lead prayers.


The next meeting will be our last before Christmas.





Thursday 22 November 2012

Meeting in the Church

Alan went back over the three tunes from last week quiz. He had us emphasising sounds and singing double-notes in staccato style, loud/soft. The New Zealand anthem is harder to get right because we couldn't bluff our way through the melody, unlike Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. My copy of the music is scrunched up where I was gripping it so tightly.

Peter asked about the use of the Fah clef and Alan took us over to the organ to show us how the scales worked. Without the use of the Fah clef the scale sounded harsh in the middle but apart from that I hadn't a clue what he was on about. Perhaps by lesson seven I might have caught up.

Alan explained that we would focus on the Missa de Angelis setting and he had prepared booklets for us containing the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei as well as the seasonal hymns to Our Lady.

We started with the Kyrie. We learned that the emphasis is on the first SYlable of KYrie and of CHRIste,the last one is difficult because there is only one dot over the first part 'Chri' but five over the 'ste'.
He had us spitting out sounds and extending notes. The acoustics inside the church made us sound quite good. Not as expert as these guys though:


We sang Salve Regina to close our class.

Here we are at the end of the session:
Click to see in gruesome detail



First Meeting

Our parish bulletin read:
"LEARN GREGORIAN CHANT
We are starting a male-voice choir to sing Gregorian chant, the traditional music of the Catholic Church.
There will be a taster session in St Margarets on Thursday November 15th at 7.30pm.
Chant expert, Alan Henderson, has offered to come to Stirling to give lessons free-of-charge."

Nine men came to the meeting in the church hall. Some could read music. I couldn't so I'm going to include my first impressions.

Alan began with a recording of Julie Andrews singing Do-Re-Mi from the Sound of Music,
'Doh a deer, a female deer...'
We learned that the 'doh, ray, me' scale is at the root of chant.

He gave us a copy of The Gregorian Chant Highway Code (copyright The Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge).

Click photo to enlarge

The Doh clef shows where the scale starts, the square dots show the note to be sung, building up or down from the Doh clef. The Fah clef works the same way, but starting with Fah. How hard can that be?

 Alan had made a handout with three quizzes for us. It featured familiar tunes written in chant notation:

 Answers at the bottom

We learned that the names of the notes in the scale arose from an 8th century hymn from first vespers of St John the Baptist on June 24th, Ut queant laxis. In this hymn, the first syllable of each word falls on the correct note in the scale, so the notes were given the names of that syllable (ut, re, mi, fa, so, la).

Ut queant laxis
resonāre fibris
Mira gestorum
famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti
labii reatum,
Sancte Iohannes

Wikipedia translates this as: So that these your servants can, with all their voice, sing your wonderful feats, clean the blemish of our spotted lips, O Saint John


Click for full screen to see the notes highlighted

Malky tells us that Ut is still used in some languages for Doh.

At the end of the session we sang Salve Regina together.


Answers to quiz:
1. Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy'
2. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
3. NZ National Anthem: God Defend New Zealand

Wednesday 21 November 2012

Torphichen singing and planning

A couple of weeks later, I was invited to join the Schola at the Mass in the Preceptory of the Knights of Malta. There were two Knights and a couple of Dames.
It was daunting because I couldn't read the music and knew only a few of the melodies. It didn't help that I had the only photocopy with blank pages. We sang from the middle of the old church, the acoustics were wonderful.

Click photos to enlarge

A strange story: I decided to take a crucifix from home because I felt that the one at Cambuskenneth was too small. Then I changed my mind. Just before I left the house I went back in and put the cross in my bag anyway. It was used in the Mass.
My dad made the Corpus when he worked in a foundry

At the end of Mass, it turned out that each organiser thought that the other one was bringing the Crucifix, neither had. So my old cross was the only one to be had.

I spotted an old acquaintance from university, Gerry Warner, now working as a journalist. He has been recognised by the Lord Lyon as 'Gerald Warner of Craigenmaddie'. This is now his legal name.


He is on the left.



Afterwards Alan and I did some planning in the Torphichen Inn.

Cambuskenneth beginnings

The Schola was first discussed in October, at the Latin Mass in Cambuskenneth when I asked Alan how we might begin Gregorian chant in Stirling. Alan may have a tale to tell about this...

The Stirling Observer published two photographs and a short paragraph:

Click to enlarge

"The annual Latin Mass at Cambuskenneth Abbey was held on Saturday 13th when Fr John Emerson said the traditional Mass dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus, "Salve Sancta Parens" (Hail, Holy Mother).
Mass was said in the tower of the Abbey, once known as the Abbey of St Mary of Cambuskenneth. The men of the Edinburgh Schola sang Gregorian chant and the congregation sang with them. The tower was crowded and cold but the singing was joyful."