Back in Houston, amidst towering buildings of glass and steel, streets lined with neon and gaudy signs (and no zoning!), one is recollecting a week having been spent in Santa Fe amidst an architecture rarely over four stories high, which conformed with great and charming imagination to an adobe aesthetic expressed in a variety of lighter or darker shades of reddish brown, and with hardly any neon or trashy billboards and such to be seen. Over it all towered great and mighty mountains, snow-capped they were, and no less imposing e'en though they were perhaps twenty miles away. Finally, to really 'make my day', there were patches of left-over snow all over the place. I even brought a small jar-full home with me! Not for nothing is this called the 'Land of Enchantment'. (Houston isn't all bad, though. We have a plethora of admirable art, music, and theatre institutions, universities, early music societies, and many very fine organs and choirs - and, of course, Walsingham is here!)

This was the locale of the Sixth Winter Liturgical Chant Conference of St Basil's School of Gregorian Chant, the first time that Lowell Davis and I have held it outside Houston. Fr Columba Kelly was the visiting scholar and prime teacher for our entire class of about 33 persons from all over the US and Canada. Ray Henderson, from New York, and I gave a variety of lectures to smaller groups. The response was overwhelmingly positive and joyful.

The week began with an organ recital by me, given on the C.B. Fisk organ at the First Presbyterian Church. This was a recital of renaissance and baroque alternatim hymns and canticles, and modern chant-based literature, and was very well received. Assisting with chant were members of St Basil's Schola Cantorum, Lowell Davis and Eloy DeLuna. (See program below.)

We also had solemn vespers at the Cathedral-Basilica of St Francis of Assisi with Archbishop Sheehan officiating. Following immediately upon the conclusion of vespers was sung the archbishop's motto, 'Love One Another Constantly', which Fr Columba had set to chant, and then by an anthem based on that chant, composed by Mary Frances Reza. The conference ended with mass in the beautiful chapel at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Retreat Centre, where we stayed all week and held our conference, and enjoyed amazingly good meals.

Already have we decided to have next year's conference in Santa Fe. Our winter conference is traditionally before Ash Wednesday, so it will take place sometime in January or very early February in 2016. If any would be interested in attending yet another encounter with the master, Fr Columba, and learning the riches of semiology, do visit our website.

Here is the recital program -

1. J.S. Bach (J.L. Krebs) - - - - Fuga sopra il Magnificat (preceded by a verse of the German Magnificat [Tonus peregrinus].)

2. Antonio de Cabezon - - - - Magnificat septimi toni (organ versets and chant verses in alternation.)

3. Jehan Titelouze - - - - Veni Creator, from Hymnes de l'Eglise (organ versets and chant stanzas in alternation.)

4. Girolamo Frescobaldi - - - - Kyrie delli apostoli, from Fiori Musicali (organ and chant in alternation.)

5. Gregory Hamilton - - - - Implente munus debitum: Hymnus Improvisation (chant preceding the extended organ work on the office hymn for IInd vespers of the Baptism of the Lord.)

6. Ronald Arnatt - - - - Mulieres sedentes, from Three Plainsong Preludes (chant preceding the organ work based on the antiphon to Benedictus at Good Friday tenebrae.)

7. Jean Langlais - - - - Rhapsodie Gregorienne (preceded by the three chants for Corpus Christi [Sacris solemniis, Verbum supernum...nec patris, & Lauda Sion] on which this piece is based.)

At the risk of being pilloried as an unrepentant purist, though I am only among those who like to hear as near as possible what given composers experienced and thought, I relate that the chant for the renaissance and baroque pieces was sung rather slowly and with noticeable national accents (as informed by McGee's Singing Early Music). Chant for the more modern pieces was sung rather more spiritedly and in a manner informed by modern semiological research and scholarship. The experience of chant in its more decadent stages evolving to its more modern and scholarly restoration was much appreciated.