Last night's "Introduction to Gregorian Chant" session with the St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral Choir went well, I think.

It was informal. Debbie (director of music & choir director) had invited me to choose a couple of pieces that the choir could sing--Marian, perhaps on Mother's Day (5 Easter), and Pentecost.

I brought Regina Caeli and "Spiritus Domini."

For Regina Caeli, I copied the page from Night Prayer (STTM). I checked in Liber Usualis for the accents of the Latin, and marked them in before I made the copies.

I made a handout for Spiritus Domini, including translation, pronunciation, an english translation verse, verses from Psalm 68:4-7, 10-11, and Gloria Patri. I included St. Gall notation for the antiphon and verses, but deliberately did NOT give them the square notation for the antiphon. My objective was to let them experience oral transmission and the St. Gall notation. I think it worked well.

Debbie rehearses with the women of the choir at 6:30, and the men join them at 7:00. She asked me to come at 7, and take as much time as I wanted. I decided to aim for 45 minutes for a good introduction. (I didn't take my watch, and actually used an hour and a quarter. That was a little long, but the content went well. In the future, I might plan to use that amount of time, just prepare folks ahead of time, and take a quick break in the middle.)

Debbie introduced me. FFR: mention Fr. Sorgie, Chant Institute in Rome, Fr. Columba Fr. Columba Kelly, Morning & Evening Prayer.

I told them that my experience with chant centered on new research, "historically-informed," in which the chant is more closely related to speech patterns and earliest notations than the way I had learned as a child in school. I said that what we learned could still be sung in the way we had sung before, if we wanted. The chant repertoire has been sung in many styles over the millennia, and all of them are beautiful & meaningful.

I asked the choir members to tell me their names and to share their past experience with the chant. Most had some previous experience. If they were my age or older, they had sung in school (pre-Vatican II). The choir had sung a chant hymn a couple years back, "Of the Father's Love Begotten" One man said his son's reaction to the chant had been "are you going to be moaning again this week?" I used that to tell them about my finding a pop song in my 19-year-old daughter's iPod that went into Tibetan Chant (Natalie Merchant's "Effigy"). One woman mentioned that she loved the chant, went often to Gethsemane (Trappist monastery just down the road), but she couldn't sing with the monks. She couldn't blend. I said we would work on that. Also that women CAN sing chant.

I asked them to warm up with "Loo-ie" on sol, fa, mi, re, do (54321-) We worked for clear-flute-like tone & blend. Then, 111-123--12345-1853123454321--. Then basic Kodaly handsigns, following, and with drone on "do." These warmups worked well, and should be continued at every session.

We went to Regina Caeli. I asked them what they noticed about the page. We talked thru square notation, *, accent marks on text, do clef and scale, measures and icthus. We then sang pitches. Talked about how what we had just sung had NOTHING to tell us about rhythm. Went to the text, spoke it, with accents, then sang. I asked the accompanist (Frank) to play a drone (Eb-Bb), as I didn't want the piano sound at this point. After singing, I told them that in the Church's liturgy, this song was sung every night during Easter season at the very last of the prayer, and encouraged them to do the same.

FFR: This would be the place for a break.

I touched on 3 different types of chant melodies. Hymns (more or less syllabic), chant tones, (here we sang "the mass is ended, go in peace" and touched on psalm tones) and melismatic, which we would experience next. Text-based, ancient, prayerful. Closely related to the oral tradition.

FFR: put the latin text on the board or on a chart. maybe. maybe not.

Call and response: Spiritus Domini, first line. Then, gave out handout. We sang thru the antiphon, glossing over second and third lines (just follow, we'll look at these more closely later.). Sang a couple of verses and back to the antiphon, stopping occasionally to clarify.

At this point, we talked about the notation. Most folks had figured out what most of it meant.

Looked at the time:Enough.

We closed by agreeing to meet again next week 10-15 minutes. I told them I wouldn't ask them if they liked the chant, yet. I think it was an enjoyable experience. Haven't had feedback.