Profile of a Chant Jock
  • RobertRobert
    Posts: 343
    The Catholic Register, Canada's national Catholic publication, did a brief article focusing on the youngest member of my "garage schola." Thought it may be of interest to some here:

    http://www.catholicregister.org/content/view/3783/854/
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    One must own a bow tie.
  • matthewjmatthewj
    Posts: 2,694
    Forgive my ignorance - how does one define a "chant jock"?
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    A male person who really, really, really likes chant and works hard at it.

    The analogy is to young men who participate avidly in amateur student athletics ("the jocks", "basketball jocks", etc.), so being named Jock or Jacques is not necessary. :)
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,934
    I define it as someone addicted to chant. I am not one of them, I know that much. I like and use chant, but can tire of it when it is done to the exclusion of everything else. I have also heard the term, "chant geek." How does that differ?
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    "Hi, I'm Noel, I'm a chantaholic."

    "Hi, Noel!" they answer.

    It's just a first step, but...
  • AOZ
    Posts: 369
    How about just chant geek? Chant jock leaves women out. And the term never occurred in the Bible, in the text of the liturgy, or in the text of a beautiful old hymn, so I would argue that this is a legitimate case for inclusive language. :)
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    From the 16th Century:

    "Hi, I'd like to become a monk to serve the Lord....but, I wouldn't have to do all that chanting, would I?"

    Until one accepts chant as the music that IS the church, then one has not yet achieved full enlightenment, grasshopper.

    St. Augustine was a Chant Geek.

    You can be one too.

    There is, I believe, nothing "wrong" with the current music sung in almost all Catholic churches...except for poor music and texts...but not having chant Masses available, Masses with the propers and ordinar in chant that strive to be what the Church has always envisioned as the ideal, enhancing them with singing the texts at times in polyphony....that's wrong.

    I realize that this is not what many feel "the people in the pews" want, but doing music that they like....it's like saying it's ok to eat meat on Friday even though you are not supposed to. It's a slippery slope which the US church has slid down.

    As I said in another post, I contacted a church in Spain to see what hymnal they use and the answer was the Roman Missal.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    Pope Gregory was a Chant Geek and is also appears responsible for people saying "God Bless You" when you sneeze.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    What's funny is that chant jocks are typically very geeky.

    One must carry a TRIPLEX
  • miacoyne
    Posts: 1,805
    Thank you Robert for sharing the article. So good to see young people understand the beauty of Gregorian chant. I hope he can come to the Colloquium?
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    Re: chant geek/chant jock/chantaholic

    Well, obviously there are plenty of chant geeks of both senses. Fine.

    But what's unusual is to see big hulking guys in choirs in huge numbers. I mean, it's not as if you have the Red Army Choir as people's basic image of choral music. We currently have five guys in our parish choir, total, and most of them are older than middle-aged. Even if you add in the other two choirs, it's still fewer than the total number of sopranos... maybe even of altos.

    Plus, that glarey concentrated look was classic "chant jock". :)
  • Mark M.Mark M.
    Posts: 632
    Fantastic article about your friend there in Halifax!

    FYI, the term "chant jock" has been around on this forum, off and on, for about two years. There's also a wonderful article in this issue of Sacred Music about this "archetype" (written by Arlene and Jeff); I'm also attaching it here.
    newyouthmass.pdf
    84K
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