Here is a great video celebrating the 50th anniversary of St. Paul’s Choir School, Harvard Square. Enjoy!
The Madeleine Choir School
Today I would like to write about the Madeleine Choir School in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was privileged to spend 6 weeks there in the fall of 2012. Several events took place that I will never forget and I would like to share them with you. The first one happened on the Sunday after I arrived. I stood in the choir loft before Mass as the organist sounded a chord on the organ. The choir of 25 boys plus men, standing beneath the loft, intoned the introit and the sound rang through the cathedral in a way I cannot describe. As the choir returned to the antiphon following the Gloria Patri, the boys and men processed up the aisle to the apse, from where they sing. Watching 25 boys singing the introit without a conductor while they walked in procession was more than I could comprehend. Even more important than that was the way in which the introit set the tone for the entire Mass.
The second event I remember was sitting in a rehearsal with the junior high girls. The cathedral’s organist at the time, Dr. Douglas O’Neil, passed out copies Palestrina’s 5 part Offertory motet, Superflumina Babylonis, which many of the girls (it was a young choir that year) had not sung before. O’Neil asked for a translation and for the most part the girls gave gave him one (all students at the school take Latin). Then he asked them for the historical background of the psalm, and without any prodding a couple of students explained how the Jews were sad because the Babylonians had carried them off into exile (they even gave dates!). Afterward, the students began to sing it fairly well at sight. As a music director, I was more than slightly jealous.
The third event I remember was a rehearsal before a daily Mass when the boys weren’t as focused as they should have been. Greg Glenn, the founder of the choir school, stopped and very seriously explained to the boys that most people in the world looked to politicians or political systems, money or power to save them. Instead, as Catholics, he told them, they knew that the most powerful thing in all of the world was the Holy Mass, and that was why they were there to sing. He told them to give it their absolute best. I sincerely wished every Catholic could have heard him.
I bring up these three stories because they pull together for me what a choir school is really about, the wedding together of love of God, worship of God and giving Him the absolute best we have to offer, and the Madeleine Choir School does that.
The Madeleine Choir School was founded as an official school in 1996 by Greg Glenn in cooperation with the Cathedral of the Madeleine and Msgr. Francis Mannion, then the cathedral’s rector. Glenn spent three months at Westminster Cathedral (London) immersing himself in that program, which served as a model for the Madeleine Choir School (the Madeleine, however, educates both boy and girl choristers). I will be forever grateful to Mr. Glen and Ms. Melanie Malinka, the school’s music teacher, for allowing me to visit the school, which became the model for my parish’s choir program. The Madeleine Choir School is one of the crown jewels of sacred music in the United States and I wish it were more widely imitated. This institution is truly forming Catholic musicians for the future.
Marian Antiphon for the Easter Season
During the Season of Easter the Church changes her Marian antiphon to Regina Caeli (Queen of Heave, Rejoice) in honor of the Resurrection. Enjoy this incredible recording of Mozart’s Regina Caeli, KV 108, sung by the Men and Boys of Westminster Cathedral with the Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Christopher Hogwood.
St. Mary’s Cathedral Choir and School, Edinburgh
The Scottish Episcopal Cathedral of St. Mary, Edinburgh, is the only Anglican church in Scotland to sing daily services using choristers drawn from its own choir school. The cathedral’s choir, now open to both boys and girls, maintains a very high place in Anglican choral music. The choir was founded in 1880 (one year after the cathedral) and continued as a choir school until 1972 when it became St. Mary’s Music School, a specialized Music and Dance School.
Please visit the school’s website and see what a little vision could do to your parish’s music program. The choir school is not just for cathedrals, it could work in YOUR PARISH!
Enjoy this great recording of Gibbon’s O, Clap Your Hands by the Cathedral Choir of St. Mary’s.
Choral Evensong Live From Temple Church, London
The BBC broadcast of Choral Evensong comes live during the Octave of Easter from Temple Church, London. If my memory serves me rightly, St. Thomas More worshiped here during his time as a London barrister (before the English Reformation). Temple Church also played a role in the Anglican Choral revival in the 19th century, since which time it has been well known for its music program.
Singing One Note in Action
Yesterday I posted about Bertalot’s Sing One Note. Click here for Bertalot’s article on how he gets a group of children in South Africa to do just this. It is an easy, but great read!
Bertalot’s 12 Steps to Sight-Singing, Step 1
We have finally come to the first of Bertalot’s 12 Steps to Sight-Singing—to Sing One Note. This sounds ridiculous in its simplicity, so let’s find out what he means.
When most singers receive a new motet, they focus on the words rather than the music. Bertalot once demonstrated this to a group of adults by giving some children the words (minus musical notes) of a hymn and then asked them to sing it. He played a melody on the piano that he made up on the fly, yet the children seemed to sing it like they had heard it before. Bertalot made the point that children are great imitators and what looks like sight-singing is often just imitating what they have heard on the piano only a millisecond previously. If you work with children, try this some time—it is all too true. How does one get around it? The answer is to get them to read the music notation as well as the text.
In the first rehearsal you have with your new singers, you will need to teach them a couple of basics of music notation before they can sing one note, namely that music is written on the staff (five lines AND four spaces) and the staff has a clef (if you are working with children, this will be the treble clef). Once you draw the staff and the treble clef, point out that the belly of the treble clef wraps around the line we call G. Play G above middle C on the piano and ask them to hum what they hear. Then draw a quarter note on the same line. Explain that the quarter note tells each singer to sing G for one FULL beat, meaning that if you as the director begin counting at number one, the children must sing the G from the moment you say 1 until you say two. Then point to the note and have the children sing what they see. You have just taught them how to first see, and then sing one note (both pitch and rhythm) correctly. It always amazes me how excited children get when they have learned to sight-sing their first note.
As an aside, if you have your choristers sing a G at the beginning of each rehearsal, most of them will memorize it within the first few rehearsals and will thus have a reference point for pitching other other notes without the help of a piano.
Choral Evensong Live From St. Edmundsbury Cathedral
Choral Evensong comes live today from St. Edmundsbury Cathedral. Many of the choirs we have heard during Choral Evensong are comprised of choristers from the cathedral school alongside professional lay gentlemen who sing the lower parts. St. Edmundsbury Cathedral is different because it has no cathedral school, so the choristers come from many schools around the area, while the lay clerks are volunteers, which goes to show that one can achieve great sacred music on a volunteer basis.
John Bertalot’s Website
I have spent several weeks already going through John Bertalot’s 5 Wheels to Successful Sight-Singing and there will be a number more. I would also like to direct readers to his webpage containing 35 articles on various aspects of leading a choir. Every one is an absolute gem. Please, please read them! You will not be disappointed.
St. Paul’s Choir School, Harvard Square, Boston
Today I would like to turn away from European choir schools and move closer to home, focusing on several in the United States, the first of which is St. Paul’s Choir School, Harvard Square, in Boston.
Dr. Theodore Marier, the well known chant scholar, founded St. Paul’s Choir School in the autumn of 1963, creating the first and only Catholic choir school for boys in the United States. Today the school educates boys in grades 4 through 8. In 2010, the choir school hired Mr. John Robinson, formerly Assistant Organist at Canterbury Cathedral, to lead the choir. From various articles I have read, he is doing great work, such as implementing the ABRSM music theory curriculum in the school, hiring professional male singers for the choir and increasing the number of liturgies for which the choir sings on a weekly basis. Last fall, the choir released its first international CD entitled “Christmas in Harvard Square.” The parish’s pastor sums up the music at the choir school as (quoting Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) “Music capable of opening minds and hearts to the dimension of the spirit and of leading persons to raise their gaze on High, to open to absolute Goodness and Beauty, which have their ultimate source in God.” Would that all parish music programs could say the same.
One “take away” item I would like to share is that (if Wikipedia can be trusted!) Dr. Marier and the then pastor of St. Paul’s began the choir school in response to De music sacra, the 1958 document from the Sacred Congregation of Rites, which encouraged boys choirs and special schools for the teaching of sacred music. All it took was the vision of one parish priest (St. Paul’s is not a cathedral) and one music director to create such an incredible institution. Are you a priest, are you a music director? Perhaps God is calling YOU!