The Career You'll Love » chant

Oh, how amazing!

Carl — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:39:52 +0000

The Colloquium came to a magnificent and emotional close today with a Mass of almost two hours. Everybody sang, and it was truly wonderful.

If you’re interested, follow along in the music packet distributed online starting on PDF page 181 (ignore the page numbers printed on the page itself) or in the paper copy starting on page 195. This was a Mass in the Ordinary Form, in Latin. Father Scott Haynes of St John Cantius parish in Chicago was the presider – he did a number of Masses during the week.

We started with the Introit of the thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Omnes Gentes Plaudite. The Kyrie and Gloria were polyphony pieces from William Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices, along with the rest of the Ordinary. After the Old Testament Reading was the day’s Gradual, Exaltabo te, Domine. The Alleluia chant was the same text as the Introit, Omnes gentes plaudite, meaning “All nations, clap your hands; shout unto God with a voice of joy.”

The Offertory chant was Sicut in holocausto from Daniel: “As a holocaust … let our sacrifice be in your sight on this day.” Then came a lively two-choir SATB piece, Duo Seraphim, which had a challenging Bass 1 part because only two of us were singing it – trying to balance with about 35 other singers.

The Communion chant came from Psalm 30, Inclina aurem tuam: “Bow down thy ear, make haste to deliver us.” Also at communion was a beautiful Byrd Ave Verum Corpus, followed by a Victoria Laetatus Sum. Before the final Benediction the entire Colloquium – some 240 people – sang that wonderful Ave Maris Stella, and it was as stunning as I expected. I’ll be working this afternoon on processing all these recordings and getting them posted on the website.

After Mass we had a brunch, and I handed out the remainder of the CDs I made of the Thursday Holy Hour service. It was great to surprise people with copies fresh off my computer. And of course it was sad to say goodbye to everyone, especially Jeffrey, the directors I worked with this year, and the other singers I was with. And my roommate as well.

I finally made it to Arizona and had a nice dinner with my wife and daughter, it’s wonderful to kick back and relax. 110 degrees, but air conditioning fixes all.

Tomorrow after sleeping in, I hope to spend time getting the recordings processed and posted on the server. But no energy for that tonight, my brain’s fried.

Way too much to think about. I had some real interesting thoughts about my future career in combining coaching with sacred music … more to come later, I hope!

What an unexpected and delightful turn!

Carl — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:04:13 +0000

The Colloquium is drawing to a close – tomorrow we have the final Mass and a concluding brunch. We’re getting to the bottom of our inch-thick music packet, and people are giving their heartfelt thanks for such a wonderful and spiritually filling experience.

I had a number of great discussions with people today. One with a fellow schola director in town, about how we can get our groups together in collaboration to do some neat things. Singing music at Mass in the various parishes, putting on a broader chant workshop, and so on.

I had an interview with the group, Corpus Christi Watershed, who is doing all the incredible video work for this Colloquium. If you haven’t seen the first video they published, make sure to check this out:

I don’t know if they’ll use any of my interview, but it was great to have a chance to talk about what I’ve gotten out of this week.

I also had a discussion with my roommate here, with a very interesting twist: The combination of sacred music with my interest in coaching. It turns out that the spiritual journey isn’t so different from the life journeys that I hope to help people with through coaching.

What an unexpected and delightful turn!

This is going to be unbelievable

Carl — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:25:10 +0000

Oh man, this going to be a treat.

Apparently the Colloquiums now have a tradition of pulling together everybody – all choirs, over 200 people – to sing one last final hymn after the end of Sunday’s Mass. Last year’s piece, Bruckner’s Ave Maria (that’s the recording), just blew me away.

This year, we’re practicing an Ave Maris Stella by Liszt Ferenc, and it’s just beautiful. It needs a little more practice, but it’ll be amazing. I’ll post the recording next week.

I can’t wait.

Quote of the day: “It’s not about showing off talent, it’s about returning to God what He has given us.” — Father Keyes

The angels rejoice

Carl — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:24:33 +0000

Not to leave you in suspense about what happened to our polyphony choir which sang the music for the Holy Hour Service this afternoon. If you remember, I talked about it yesterday.

After just three practices this week, we pulled it off. Not absolute perfection, to be sure, but it’s not really about perfection. It’s about putting in your best mind, soul and energy, learning an incredible amount, and working together as a group. Which happened, excellently. I made sure that Jenny knew how much I appreciated the work she put into this, and how much I learned from her dedicated leadership.

I captured the recording, but won’t have time to process it until tomorrow or Saturday. I’ll post the direct link here when I get that done, but feel free to check out all the recordings on this website.

I got some requests for audio CDs, so I ran over to Radio Shack and got a stack of CD-Rs to burn. I’ll make an announcement tonight. Blasting any of the files I have to a CD is straightforward using iTunes, it’s just that the whole collection will probably end up being about 15 hours of content. I’m capturing the lectures and morning/evening prayers this year as well.

A very good and wonderful day all around.

UPDATE: Here’s the direct link to the recording.

Time in Purgatory

Carl — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:05:08 +0000

Today was a most challenging practice. Here’s the setup:

The polyphony choir that I’m in, led by Jenny Donelson, is leading the Holy Hour service tomorrow afternoon at 5:00. We had a decent practice yesterday, but another group needed our practice room so we got swapped over to the vestibule of the Mundelein hall. Not so bad, but for one fatal flaw: no piano.

We started practicing a Tantum Ergo written by Kevin Allen, a new piece just published in 2007. So it has lots of modern harmonies. Which means that none of us had a clue what the thing should sound like. Well, Jenny did, but it’s hard to sing four parts at once.

After a total flameout after four measures on the first try, we started splitting it into sections. It started feeling like we were in trouble when it took the tenors about half an hour to get through the first page and a half of four pages. The basses didn’t do much better. And the poor ladies were feeling totally left out, so they tried doing sectionals in other parts of Mundelein hall. Time for a deep breath and a break.

While Jenny worked with the ladies, the tenors and basses went off into corners to remind ourselves of the Domine Non Sum Dignus (Tomas Luis de Victoria) that we practiced yesterday. It’s feeling like that’s getting under control. But when we come together, what’s the Tantum Ergo going to sound like?

Well, it was surprisingly good. Not perfect by any means, but we certainly earned lots of indulgences for the sweat and tears put into this afternoon. One of the hardest practices I’ve ever had.

But after we sleep on it, what about tomorrow? That’s anybody’s guess. We have one more practice after lunch and then a little warmup before the service starts, so hopefully these old brain cells will retain a bit of what we worked so hard on. If not, well, I guess we count it as time of purification in Purgatory.

Quote of the day: “Putting church music under copyright is rather like using the state to attempt to control something which should be divine.” — Jeffrey Tucker

Sing. Pray. Repeat.

Carl — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:02:29 +0000

The music. Ah, the wonderful music.

Here’s how the Colloquium runs: Prayer. Eat. Music. Mass. Eat. Music. Music. Eat. Learning. Music. Prayer. Fall into a heap and do it all again tomorrow.

But for me, it’s the music and the wonderful people which give me energy. So I’ve used a lot of physical energy, but gained so much more back mentally and spiritually.

After breakfast, we had morning chant practice. I screwed up my courage to be in the Advanced Men’s Schola. It’s very challenging, but I love getting into stuff that forces me to think and concentrate that way. We practiced a couple of pieces that we’re going to use at Mass tomorrow morning: Priusquam te formarem (the Gradual) and Justus ut palma florebit (the Offertory). Wilko Brouwers is leading this particular group, and has an amazing teaching style which I grew to appreciate last year. He has a great sense of humor and a light approach, but misses nothing.

Check this out: At this morning’s Mass, everyone sang a couple of motets together: Let Thy Merciful Ears, O Lord, and Oh How Amiable Are Thy Dwellings. The latter we had practice a little bit last night, without accompaniment, and nobody was really sure what the song sounded like as a whole. But this morning, the Spirit graced the group, as well as wonderful acoustics, and we helped each other through it.

Absolutely amazing. I’ll get the recordings posted after I have a chance to process them all in Audacity.

This afternoon’s practice was with the Polyphony Choir I mentioned yesterday. We’re going to sing a bunch of songs for the Holy Hour service on Thursday afternoon, and worked on Domine Non Sum Dignus (Tomas Luis de Victoria) and O Salutaris Hostia (Pierre de La Rue). This is wonderful, wonderful stuff.

Speaking of wonderful stuff, so are the meals. It’s not easy exercising self control and just grabbing everything that looks good. This University is a fantastic venue for an experience like this.

Oh, and a shout out to my niece – fantastic talking with you today, Nate! You’d better come to Colorado in August, because now it’s committed to a blog!

I’m going to have to head off to the evening lectures pretty soon, but for now – I’m enjoying every minute of it!

A day of beginnings and endings

Carl — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:16:24 +0000

It’s a day of great movement in my life, many things are in flux.

First, I found out that the job opening which seemed possible at some point has now slipped from my grasp. So the probability is now vanishingly small that I’m going to get an HP job in the next three weeks.

On the plus side, my son returned safely from a wonderful trip to California, where he engaged with leading minds in the homebrew community and learned a great deal. Can’t wait to hear the scoop from him.

On the downside, I’ve heard lots of bad news – relatives of friends dying, more people losing their jobs, and on and on. There’s a great number of people we need to pray for this week.

But the big positive: We just began the 19th Sacred Music Colloquium tonight. We started right off with a bang, singing Veni Creator Spiritus. There’s absolutely nothing like hundreds of people coming together to sing a beautiful hymn like that – and doing it successfully! My heart leaps with joy.

We practiced some other music for tomorrow’s Mass, with varying levels of confidence. Ah well, more work to do.

I signed up for the polyphony choir being led by Jenny Donelson, and we had the first practice for that group tonight. The hymn O Salutaris Hostia (Pierre de La Rue) actually came out in 4-part harmony pretty well after a few run-throughs. An attempt at solfege was a bit rockier, that exercises parts of my brain that aren’t turned on very well.

But it’s only the first day. We wouldn’t want to get it perfect right from the beginning.

Corpus Christi brings chant year to a close

Carl — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:54:07 +0000

What an absolutely great bunch of guys to work with. Since September we’ve been chanting for one Mass a month, and yesterday’s Mass was the last before heading off to a well-deserved summer break. And more important, to the Sacred Music Colloquium in Chicago next week.

Here’s what we’re struggling with right now. This Schola has been in existence since 2005, yet we struggle to maintain a loyal membership of half a dozen. We’ve tried approaching people in a number of ways, mostly using 1-on-1 contact, but the total seems to be flat or slowly declining. I’m a little worried that we may dip below critical mass (har har) on any particular Sunday.

I’d like to get your thoughts on another couple of matters, things I’m working on over the summer. First, we’ve never been able to attract any women to our little Schola – they appear to be intimidated by the thought of being the first woman in a bunch of men. And I don’t think many women have ever heard the glorious polyphony that we could do with a wider range of voices.

I was thinking of just putting together a single “special occasion” – where we could invite men and women from various places to just have a few practices to sing at a Mass next fall. No permanent obligation, just a chance to try something new. New to them, I mean.

Your thoughts? How do you think I can make this more attractive?

The other thing I’d like to put together is a cross-parish activity, where we can chant with the other two scholas in town. Maybe we could do one Mass at each of the three parishes? It could be challenging because two would be Ordinary Form and the other Extraordinary Form, but probably quite rewarding if we could pull it off.

Your thoughts and observations? I’m including those of you who don’t profess to be Chant Geeks also, because maybe some other points of view might help us to explore new avenues.

Gregorian Chant rocks!

Carl — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:01:13 +0000

So far I’ve focused on blog posts relating to my book and to my career coaching. Today’s a great day for launching into a totally different area of my life, sacred music.

For the last 3+ years, I’ve been leading the Gregorian Chant Schola (choir) at St Elizabeth Ann Seton parish. I have to admit that this is a tremendous journey of discovery and learning.

Realize that I have minimal qualifications for this job. I had lots of musical training up through high school, but didn’t really do much with that until I joined our church choir in about 1998. But in 2005 there was a need for someone to jump in and act as leader for the Gregorian Chant, so I volunteered.

It seemed like it might be fun.

Well, fun, yes, and incredibly challenging. Here’s this music which has been around for nearly 2000 years, and indeed has roots back into ancient civilizations. The body of knowledge, both what we know about and what’s been lost, is truly astounding. And these are people who are MUCH smarter than I, and MUCH more spiritual. It’s truly humbling.

And I know nothing of Latin, upon which Gregorian Chant is based. So that’s another journey of exploration in addition to the music itself.

I thought it might be nice to have a little clue about this – after all, I was supposed to be the leader – so I attended a workshop at the local Abbey of St Walburga back in 2006. In 2007 I went to a wonderful workshop at St Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana – an absolutely wonderful experience which helped me appreciate how little I knew.

Last year, I attended the Sacred Music Colloquium in Chicago. It was such an astounding experience – at many levels – that I made it my top priority to go again this year. So I’ll be returning to Chicago again on June 22nd, looking forward to meeting many friends and jumping into the musical journey with both feet.

All this is context, because I plan to blog while at the Colloquium. I figure that I should be able to capture a few thoughts each day before I fall into a heap of elated exhaustion.

I hope to meet some of you there, some of the friends I’ve made in the rapidly growing Sacred Music community. And hey, it will be a wonderful distraction from the career change I’m in the midst of.