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!

You might also find this interesting:

• What an unexpected and delightful turn!
• A day of beginnings and endings
• This is going to be unbelievable
• Corpus Christi brings chant year to a close
• Oh, how amazing!