Colloquium Update #4

My last full day at the Colloquium was jam-packed with activity. Early Mass today, this one Solemn High Mass in the Extraordinary Form in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Only one thing for me to sing today, a polyphonic Ave Maria by John Taverner as a Communion motet.

As, of course, we're winding down after a week of hard but rewarding work, today's rehearsals went fairly quickly. My chant schola finished up the Alleluia for tomorrow, while my polyphony choir, all of our obligations completed, took the time to read a few works we hadn't sung, including the Byrd Ave verum Corpus, a MIDI of which, you'll recall from earlier this month, I used as the prelude for Corpus Christi/First Communion.

I skipped the rehearsal of the final polyphonic piece, Anton Bruckner's Locus iste, in favor of watching the US get eliminated from the World Cup. (Gotta keep the priorities straight... and this is the second WC in a row that we've lost to Ghana in the round of 16. Grrr.) The new music reading featured some very nice pieces, including two by a Duquesne music professor who's been here since the 1960s. I didn't really sing anything, though, since my sight-reading skills, at least with modern notation, are extremely poor, and I have to be able to hear other singers in my section to match pitch. Interestingly, I have little trouble sight-reading Gregorian chant notation, probably because (1) I don't have to worry about time or key signatures, dynamics, etc. and (2) unlike modern music, chant notation is a relative-pitch system, so I can set do or fa (the two clefs in chant) at whatever pitch I want and sing away.

A word on the Masses: The Colloquium features Masses in both the Ordinary (1970 Missal) and Extraordinary (1962 Missal) Forms. Tuesday's Mass is always an Ordinary Form Mass in English, just to show how reverent a vernacular Mass can be without the all-too-prevalent "sacropop." From then on in it's all Latin, alternating between the two forms and ending with an Ordinary Form Mass on Sunday, since we don't want to freak out regular parishioners who may be unfamiliar with the EF.

Time to get packed for tomorrow's epic 15-mile trek to the airport hotel where I'll be spending Sunday and Monday nights, then a 6 AM flight home Tuesday.