Sunday I conducted St. Joe choir in Regina Caeli at Preparation of the Gifts.

So, you say, what's to conduct? Well, actually, there's a lot. Even though it's not melismatic like the chant in Graduale Triplex, once you've entered the idea that the speech patterns are the source of rhythm in chant, even the hymns are richer, BUT, it takes real work to keep singers from dropping into the sing-songey "I CAN ac-CENT an-Y syl-LAB-ble, CAUSE I DON'T know WHAT it MEANS" singing that we learned as children.

Did I conduct every syllable? Sometimes. Not always. That makes it difficult because unlike measured music, you can't assume beats (and therefore sub-beats) being in a particular position. Without that, how do you differentiate between conducting each syllable and conducting only the accent? Arsis and thesis don't help any. Pitch indication is part of it, but it's not enough.

The choir sang well. Here's the recording. The only real mistake was mine. I asked the organist to play a C drone as we sang, but I didn't choose a good stop (probably not enough treble), because people (depending where they were standing) couldn't hear it, and we dropped a hair. Only a hair, but without the organ, no one would have known. Aah, maybe they didn't anyway.

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Today I'm working today on two things--cleaning up from my Laura's graduation party, and trying to lay out an education program for chant & liturgical music. I'm focusing on three things:

* The suggestions for forming a Lay Apostolate for chant
* Some sessions where several music directors were invited to the Archdiocese of Louisvlle Office of Worship to help evaluate and re-think the Liturgical Music Certification Progam
* Outcome-Based Education, which builds community and works equally well in formal (taught), informal (mentored), or self-directed education.

It's not as easy as I'd first thought it would be. So many angles, but there ought to be a way to make it simple and somehow obvious that it is advantageous to any Catholic parish. Or maybe to any Catholic musician. That's not the same angle, either.

I had a real shock when I Googled "Novus ordo." I have used that phrase to refer to the Latin text of the current mass. (See Novus Ordo text. ) It is a beautiful liturgy belonging to the universal Church. We sang it in Rome with Fr. Sorgie.

I had no idea of the existence of horrible, angry, ugly groups of people who use the same phrase as a code-word to heap invective on all things post-Vatican II. My stomach is still in knots just from looking at some of the web sites. Really ugly.

It's an ugliness that probably prevents us from using the word. So, where I had formulated the objectives as these:

o To encourage the singing of liturgy
o To promote and maintain the learning and singing of Gregorian chant within Catholic parishes
o To facilitate mastery of the fundamental musical skills required by Catholic liturgy and rites, including the Novus ordo Eucharistic liturgy.
o To develop, nourish, and support a lay apostolate formed by the experience of sung prayer

Maybe that third objective will have to be changed to

o To facilitate mastery of the fundamental musical skills required by Catholic liturgy and rites, including Latin as well as English

I'll keep working on it. I'll have to stop now, though. The Holy Name Band is playing at Christopher East nursing home tonight, and I'm not sure where my flute is, even.