We had a great time- though I wish there had been more people.
5 women. The only men in the room were myself and my accompanist.
We have one male (baritonish) who is a regular, but he was out sick last night.
We have another one (nice "irish" tenor) who would come, but he is chronically ill.

Ah well.

We started work on Schubert/Proulx Deutsche Messe, which we will be using for Christmas. I also introduced Ut Queant Laxis, which we're going to sing semi-regularly as a teaching piece. We worked on this Sunday's anthem- something we've done before: "In The Cross of Christ I Glory" set to BEACHSPRING.

We also had ice cream.

So it was a pretty good night.

Rehearsals resume Sept. 18, weekly rehearsals, that is. We practice once a month during summer.

Exhilarating! On Tuesday, I held practice with the women only, since they will be doing the Sept. 15 Mass (Seven Sorrows of Our Lady). In preparation for that Mass, they got blitzed with new music: 3 chants, 2 motets, and 2 English hymns. The only one that we will be doing in 3-parts, is Kevin Allen's "Desidero, Mi Jesu." The "Salve Regina" Mass they are already familiar with. The choir has become accustomed to being tossed off the pier, and they really do rise to the surface quite nicely. It took about a year for them to buy into that system. As an aside, I would highly suggest the 3 chant pieces, just on the merits of the text itself: O Quot Undis Lacrimarum; Jam Toto Subitus; Summae Deus.

On Saturday, the children will resume practices, and on Monday night I will meet with the men's choir. The entire choir meets together on September 16.

rogue63, what did your choir retreat entail? I like that idea.

Ralph Bednarz, thanks for the warm-up exercises link you posted!

Ours was great! We had a choir picnic 2 weeks ago, so some good fellowship and got them talking about what we would sing this year. We do a big ecumenical concert with 7 other churches in town, so we started (after warmups, housekeeping, etc) to learn the Beethoven Hallelujah from the Mount of Olives, to jump right into it all. Also rehearsed SEP and hymns for Sunday. They know Rutter's For the Beauty of the Earth, so we ended with that - sounded really good. The plan is to introduce a few more chant hymns this year, and to use SCG as prelude-introits, so we will begin that next week. Great turnout and commitment, though I wish I had more men to balance - only 3 tenors and 3 basses, but 21 S/A.

Our children's choir starts at the end of the month with a Saturday mini-camp, with a guest clinician, scavenger hunt, pizza and ice cream.

I wish I had brought ice cream last night though. Great idea.

Despite light attendance (now a tradition) it went great. All four parts present for quorum.
This Sunday is our Patroness Sunday (Nativity of BVM) so Mariana's are a natural. So, as a shakedown cruise we rehearsed the Fogliano and Arcadelt "Ave Maria's." Both of those are in the first Choral Anthology (Frogman Press, God bless you and your wife, Noel) and settled on performing the Arcadelt. One thing about the edition (from CPDL) in that book, most of the setting avoids the rest on the first beat of phrases, and the text is therefore set quite uniquely. So, if you're used to, say, the version in the St. Gregory, some of your choristers may be stymied upon the first read of this version. But the effect of the change is charming. We also rehearsed the Victoria just for fun. But the two pieces we loved were Dufay's "Ave Regina Coelorum atb (also in Choirbook) from the Ars Nova period, Landini cadences. We did this for one of the feasts last year and the pastor was thrilled to hear early polyphony, the double sharp leading tones and all.
And lastly, rehearsal gives us the time to prepare Richard Rice's more demanding "Choral Communio's" (we sight read the SCG during summers). I can't say enough praise for these little gems. They are not just utilitarian settings, they're stand alone worthy as motets, IMO. Bravo, again, Richard.

I wish I had brought ice cream last night though. Great idea.

Ally, now that I'm on Weight Watchers (down 32, .5 BWeight, yeay!) that's not a good idea. Besides, we used to close with Cabernet Sauvignon. (Yes, Richard, I know!) That's how I got my Chesterton on in the first place.!

What a lot of interesting things going on in your choirs.

My first rehearsal is typically more of an Informational Session. Began last night with 2S-1A-2T (one tenor is new and plans on singing every other week because of transportation issues... not sure of his ability yet. The other tenor is older and usually sings melody.)

In addition, expecting a few more folks throughout the year to bring the total to:
4S-3A-2T (occasionally 3T) and, when I'm not playing organ, 1B. :)

Introduced Adoramus Te, Jesu Dulcis, Jesu Rex, and O Bone Jesu which the choir LOVED (and I could even hear my alto sight-humming her part with the recordings), and sang through our Mass Ordinary. Boy do they need lots of vocal practice after sitting out all summer!

I arranged a SAB version of Ave verum corpus (original composer's name escapes me right now) and had one bass walk out in the middle of it, complaining that he doesn't know how to speak Italian... Off to a rousing start. Ugh. Leave it to him to leave me with a bad taste in my mouth and stress tonight until I can address the problem (whatever it may be).

Referencing Kathy's post on the Cafe from a while back, how much longer do we have to wait until these great young pastors come around with RotR congregations and we can make real music? I guess I just thought I was past the cheer leading and cajoling stage with this group. Color me a little bit frustrated.

Last year's choir promo

We had a "meet the new pastor" choir pot-luck-supper party last Wednesday, which (judging by the number of people I pocket-dialed whilst mixing cocktails) was a great success. First rehearsal is this week: I have a feeling the Vaughan Williams "Mass in G" and Bach motet might be on the back burner until the spring. I want to focus on recruiting men to the choir: will need to back up the bus a bit to let them on and make sure they are secure before we move forward as a larger group. But that's what small groups are for.

Melofluent,

"Exceptional Sight-Readers" aren't oxymoronic, just rare.

@Jani, antiphon–verse–antiphon, etc. is the way to go, until the end of the procession; if the procession ends before you finish a verse, finish the verse and repeat the refrain one last time.

At the churches where I sing, the antiphon alone covers most daily Mass processions; Ant.—v.1—ant. covers most Sunday entrance processions; and when the altar is incensed, ant.—v.1—ant.—v.2—ant. suffices. We rarely need a third verse or a Glory Be (though in the latter case we could sing the Glory Be instead of v.2).

You can sing the antiphon once and omit the verses. Or maybe he could use the time of the antiphon-verse-antiphon to do an incensation.

"sight-readers" and "exceptional" are almost oxymoronic in CatholicLand, yes?

There is more than one direction in which to be exceptional.

RE: Exceptional sight readers: I firmly believe in "be careful what you pray for." My hope was that the Looney Tunes characters invited members with a sense of humor. As it turns out, I recently hired a pro-tenor who is a marvelous sight reader; we're going to work on expanding his choral colour palette. Here's the promo I've been using for this fall.