Resources for choral directors
  • Good morning/evening

    I am a choral conductor from the state of Victoria in Australia. I am teaching my choir the Tallis motet O Nata Lux - we have a Novus Ordo mass. There are many resources out there for choral conductors, however at times it is challenging to “see the wood from the trees”!!

    I was wondering if anyone was aware of some teaching resources that I could use to teach my choir the proper way to sing this motet??

    Thank you in advance, Vincent Sully.
  • Vincent,

    Welcome to the Forum, from the opposite site of the Pacific Ocean.

    What sort of teaching resources you need will partly depend on what you're trying to do.

    If you're aiming to sing the motet in the most Tallis-like authentic way, you need one of the specialists in that area, for example.

    If you need to know if the cross relations near the end of the piece are accidentals not removed by an editor who should have been paying more attention, I can answer that: they're not mistakes.

    If you have a choir which doesn't learn fast, and only mostly by rote, you need resources on basic musicianship. Those are plentiful.


    CPDL.org has a link:

    Free choir training aids for this work are available at Choralia.


    I'm curious: for what feast are you learning O Nata Lux, to sing this beautiful piece at an Ordinary Form Mass?
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen LauraKaz
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,092
    In a choir of which I was formerly a longtime member, it was invariably sung on the Second Sunday of Lent.