Gavin is correct. And don't schedule any liturgical gigs until you have met for a few months.

Kim:

I just started a new job at the end of Sept. The pastor wanted a complete change of direction from the P&W that had been the staple for many years. I tried to gain some interest in a men's schola but knew that the congregation had absolutely no idea what I was talking about ("why don't you want women?"; "don't you ever want women to sing?" etc. "men ONLY?") So, my idea was to find professionals that knew how to sing chant or at least could learn how to sing quickly without too much instruction. I decided to set the goal at Advent I. What a huge hit! There were 5 men that sang the Introit; Psalm; Communion & a Communion motet (as well as harmonize on the hymns). You could hear a pin drop in the congregation. The congregation had never heard such music. I'm blessed with a fabulous pastor that is behind this movement so that is a real benefit. We are going to continue through Advent and midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. After that, I'll see what happens with the parish congregation. I would love to form a women only schola (a la Anonymous 4) that could combine with the men for various services.

I think the best part of adding sacred chant to the liturgy is you really don't need dozens of singers. These 5 men produced enough sound to fill the church. I can't help but think that is the beauty of gregorian chant. It sounds beautiful sung by a few or many.

At some point, every parish schola must deal with that the musical difficulties of singing chant with with both men and women's voices -- and this introduces the potential for an odd sort of strife rooted in political and social issues. There is no real reason for this. There are ways around these problems that use everyone's voices to their fullest extent. Actually Arlene Oost-Zinner and I are going to work on an article on this topic.

Jeffrey: I'm eager to see your and Arlene's article.

When the members of Harmonia (two men, two women) chant the Communio, we generally sing the refrain together and alternate men and women on verses. Gives the singers a chance to rest, provides a little variety for listeners, and is a good opportunity for each same-sex pair to work on sounding like one voice.

Jeffrey,

I too look forward to your article. I'm happy to ignore Pius X on mixed choirs, but agree that the issue of vocal blend needs special attention when singing monophonic chant.

I'm wary of the "boys only rule" that some reforming choirs exercise, but Ann really makes a good case for it. Women will jump right on the choir bandwagon, the challenge is men. Once you have men active in music, everything else should fall in place.

Charles,

Of course. Please don't read my comments as misogynistic or anything like that. In my case, I started the chant group outside the walls of a parish so that I could have a) access to more people, and b) some say in the membership. I prefer the sound of unison male and female groups, with all singing together on polyphony. If I were in a parish, I don't know if I would do it this way, but I'm not so I get to exercise some preferences. I should say, though, that we do have one alto in the group but she understands that she must negotiate the men's range to sing with us. I do hope the women's group gets off the ground soon, though.

moconnor

Back to the original question, Kimberly,

Attracting a few guys to sing chant wasn't that hard - I find that each person has their own reason. Some love to sing, some hearken back to their childhood, some want to learn something new. So the idea is to welcome each person and bring them together by singing some great stuff. But not too challenging at first! A big part of bringing people together is to have them start to feel COMFORTABLE and become confident. That's taken a couple of years, so you have to be patient.

We probably moved into performing the music too quickly - as Jeffrey said, you want to know what you're doing before going out there trying to lead a mass. We stumbled for awhile on this one. Of course, the schola members also become impatient if they're purely practicing for too many months.

One thing which helps our group is that I do a recording of each song, provide a clean photocopy, and provide translations where appropriate. We do both English and Latin, our parish isn't ready for 100% Latin yet. So each person has the opportunity to practice (using the practice CD, and now, recordings on our website) in between our weekly practices. For the last year we were singing approximately one mass a month. This year we're increasing that to two masses a month, which really means only one detailed practice in between each mass, plus a warmup of about 25 minutes. We have that planned through Easter, and I'm trying to monitor the group to make sure they don't get burned out. This new plan does mean we don't have the time to go after such challenging music, though.

Attend as many workshops as you can - you'll hear lots of divergent points of view, but it will make you better and give you a lot of experience. Read as much as you are able. Follow along with discussions, like on this forum. I've described it as, "My job is to keep 5 minutes ahead of my guys." See if you can find someone who knows Latin (my Achilles' heel).

And keep praying!