As has become custom, the Colloquium in Pittsburgh will feature a new music reading session on Saturday, June 26, 2010. If you have a piece of music you would like to submit for possible performance by the group at large at the session, please send it to newmusic@musicasacra.com in PDF format (limited to 15 pages) by May 15, 2010. Your submission will be published in the New Music Session 2010 packet. You must be a registered participant of the Colloquium in order to have your work included. There is a $20 submission fee, payable via paypal or by check to our programs office: CMAA Programs, 166 North Gay St., #19, Auburn, AL 36830.

Q: I’m a Catholic musician and I should know chant. I know that. I’m embarrassed to say that I can’t even read the notation!

A: That’s one of the reasons we hold the colloquium. Most participants don’t have prior experience in chant notation. We have classes that start at the very beginning. You will not feel intimidated at all. Quite the reverse: people here love to teach and inspire.

Q: The Colloquium sounds dreamy to me but there is one touchy issue: I’m not Catholic. Is that okay?

A: The Colloquium is attended by participants from many faith traditions — they feel right at home. The music and the intensity of the task at hand works to create a unity and camaraderie among us all.

Q: I don’t know how any of this music even goes. I’ve heard bits and pieces but I will know far less than everyone else.

A: This is a journey for all of us. There is way too much music for people to get to know in their lifetimes. In some way, all of our knowledge is spotty, and we all have to start somewhere. The experts at the Colloquium love nothing more than to teach.

Q: I’m looking at the musical lineup and I can’t fathom how I can sing this after just a few rehearsals. Forget it!

A: You won’t be asked to sing it all. There are 5 polyphony choirs and 5 chant choirs. We’ll divide up the work. Some people will more quickly master this material than others. But there is strength in numbers here. You will be surprised how quickly you will catch on. In any case, one reason for the Colloquium is to stretch what all of us can do.

Q: I know no Latin. I mean none, not even how to pronounce it. Surely this Colloquium isn’t for me.

A: Not so! To come and sing requires no prior experience in Latin. The classes work on pronunciation, and you will be surprised at how intuitive it is.

Q: I’ve been singing sacred music for 40 years, including chant and polyphony. There’s nothing for me to learn here.

A: You know how great the music is, so imagine being with hundreds of others who are like-minded, studying under great conductors, singing in fun rehearsals and solemn liturgies for a full week. This is the conference you always wanted to attend but could never find.

Q: At my parish, we sing what is often called praise music, and I really like it! I don’t want to be around anyone who will put down contemporary song.

A: That’s not the idea of the colloquium at all. We have a focus and that is the music specifically named in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. The goal is broaden our musical horizons to include music that is actually attached to the Catholic liturgy, and show that it is doable, beautiful, and central.

Q: I love chant. I love polyphony. I love sacred music. But I’m the only one I know. I’m all alone.

A: You are not alone. There are multitudes that share your view, maybe not in your parish but you can learn enough to actually start something wonderful right where you are. It only takes a few singers to make the difference in a parish. You are being called!

Q: But I don’t know anyone else who is going.

A: That’s okay. Most people arrive not knowing anyone else. Everyone makes an effort to befriend people who come alone. You will not be eating or singing or walking by yourself. Sacred music people are some of the friendliest people you will ever meet.

Q: The music sounds pretty but I’m repelled by serious, frown-faced sophisticates who don’t know how to have fun. Isn’t Gregorian chant all about being solemn all the time?

A: The liturgy is solemn but the conference itself is fabulous fun, as anyone who has ever attended can tell you. The rehearsals are a blast while being very educational. There are prayerful times and times of hilarity. Through it all, you will make friends for life.

Q: Listen, I would love to come but this conference is outside my budget.

A: Because the CMAA is an all-volunteer organization. There are no high salaries to pay and a no big infrastructure to keep up. This allows us to keep down the price to the lowest possible level. (Consider that the price includes tuition, materials, housing, all meals, and the best instruction in the world. For an entire week. It’s a bargain.)

Feel free to ask more questions. Programs@musicasacra.com

An unprecedented number of diocesan seminarians from around the country have applied for assistance to participate in the Winter Chant Intensive in Charleston, South Carolina. These are our future pastors – those who will be making decisions about liturgy in our local churches over the next ten, twenty, or forty years. There couldn’t be a more encouraging sign of the times.

Donations from you are necessary to make it possible for the majority of the applicants to attend. We’d like to get as many seminarians there as we can – with either full or partial scholarships. No amount is too small, but please consider a donation of $20, $50, $100, or the full tuition amount of $245.

In the best possible way. This year’s Winter Chant Intensive will be held in beautiful and historic Charleston, SC. The dates are January 4-8, 2010. The host venue for the classes and the closing Mass is the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. As always, the course is limited to fifty participants and it sure to fill up quickly.

Please remember to start saying the Novena in Honor of the Immaculate Conception this Friday, September 18th. We will conclude the Novena in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in the Upper Church of the Shrine on Friday and Saturday, September 25 and 26th.

Also, please be advised that the EF Mass on Saturday, September 26 is a Votive Mass for the Blessed Virgin Mary and is not intended to fulfill your Sunday obligation. Please take this into consideration when making your plans for the weekend. We will have a list of Mass times at the Shrine and neighboring churches available at the Pilgrimage for those of you coming from afar.

CMAA member and seasoned director Mary Ann Carr Wilson will be offering 10 FREE Gregorian chant classes Wednesdays Sept. 9- Nov. 11, 7:30-9pm. Classes will be held in the choir room at St. Anne’s parish in Logan Heights (621 Sicard St., San Diego, CA, 92113)

Course time will be spent reviewing basics of style and notation, working together on at least one Mass setting (Ordinary), and several beloved chant hymns. The class is open to anyone interested in learning this form of sung prayer, and has been announced in the Southern Cross and various bulletins. Though classes will be taught sequentially, people can come and drop in at any time.

Feel free to include this notice in your parish bulletin or pass this along to anyone you think might be interested. Please write if you have further questions.

It’s all part of Sacred Music Colloquium XIX, coming up in a few weeks at Loyola University. Aside from daily chant (five scholas!) and polyphony (five choirs!) rehearsals, this year we’re featuring breakout sessions that go into more depth in the areas you’ve asked for. The difficulty for most of us will be deciding which to attend. More details can be found here.

We have been receiving requests for scholarship assistance for the Summer Chant Intensive and Sacred Music Colloquium since last November. Thus far the the donations that have come in have enabled us to assist 85% percent of the people who have sought help. But we still have a waiting list of humble and patient souls – most of whom have asked for just enough to help them make one of these programs part of their summer – and their musical formation. All are worthy candidates.

Our goal every year is to help everyone get to the Colloquium who has the desire to attend. This isn’t always going to happen, and maybe its not realistic, but it remains our goal – that will not change.

If you are coming yourself and think you could help someone else with a gift of $20, $50, or even $150 or more, please make a donation today. If you are not going to be attending, but you value the work the CMAA is doing in changing the landscape of liturgical music in our country, one parish at a time, please consider making a donation - in time for someone to benefit from your gift this coming June. It will help make that individual’s dream come true – but more importantly, it is an investment in the restoration of beauty and solemnity in the heavenly liturgy.

The May 1st registration deadline for the Chant Intensive has passed. We can squeeze a few more in, but you need to register this week. As for the Sacred Music Colloquium the registration and payment deadlines are May 15th. Register now to reserve your spot.

For those still considering attending the 2009 Sacred Music Colloquium: there are only ten single rooms remaining at the lower price of $420. Once these are filled, single rooms will be available at the rate of $522 for the week. There are plenty of doubles left as of today’s date. Deadline for registration and payment is May 15, 2009.

The Chant Intensive is filling up as well. There are 17 spots left. Deadline for registration is May 1, 2009.

The CMAA’s nineteenth annual Sacred Music Colloquium is filling up in record numbers. The registration deadline is still two months away, but rooms are going quickly. In fact, if you were planning on attending and staying in a single room, be advised that as of today there are only 25 rooms remaining at the lower price. Register today.

Still haven’t decided? One look at this year’s playlist is sure to sway you. Buchholz conducting Haydn with orchestra? Brouwers conducting a polyphonic Requiem? Turkington conducting the Byrd for Five? Countless treasures await us, including lectures by Dr. William Mahrt and Fr. Frank Phillips, an organ recital by Brother Jonathan Ryan of St. John Cantius, a new motet by Chicago’s own Kevin Allen, not to mention fellowship with old friends and new.

Don’t forget that the week before the Colloquium Scott Turkington will be teaching the second annual Summer Chant Intensive. Graduates of his week long courses are changing the shape of music in parishes all over the country. The deadline for registration is May 1st.

If there is someone you know who isn’t quite convinced he should be attending, consider giving him (or her!) Jeffrey Tucker’s book, Sing Like a Catholic. Proceeds from all sales go directly into the Colloquium scholarship fund. Purchase the book here.

Here is Ave Maria by Anton Bruckner, sung as the recessional to the final Mass of the Sacred Music Colloquium XVIII, with 240 singers conducted by Horst Buchholz, sung at Madonna della Strada Chapel, Loyola University, June 22, 2008, recorded by Corpus Christi Watershed.

Here are more sound files.

If you have ever run a workshop, you know that one of the largest expenses of time and money involves just getting the word out.

The CMAA faces this problem too with its Sacred Music Colloquium, June 16-22, Loyola University, Chicago. A national mailing would be prohibitively expensive. Just like last year, we need your help.

If you would like to distribute brochures for the colloquium, can you write us and say how many you will need? We’ll get them right to you.

And, truly, forwarding the link brochure, and talking it up among friends and colleagues, is a great help too.

Thank you so much!

Dear Supporter of Sacred Music,

We would like to tell you of a wonderful emergency that we are facing. From all over this country, we have been flooded with registrations for two programs: the annual Sacred Music Colloquium and the Chant Intensive. Both are held at Loyola University in Chicago in June 2008.

I am an instructor at both, and I can’t wait!

We are facing unprecedented demand, and the reason is clear. Gregorian chant in our Catholic parishes is making a huge comeback. People all across this country—and around the world—are working hard to learn to sing it and make it part of our Catholic lives again.

This is a moment that many of us have waited for and work for, for decades. The Church has given us such beautiful music to go with the Mass. It is an answer to prayer that there is now intense interest in hearing this music not just on CDs but in our own parishes, as an essential part of our liturgy.

What is the emergency?

We have received many messages from young music students, young music directors, young priests, and seminarians that they cannot afford the full cost of the program. Now, as a non-profit organization on a shoe-string budget, we have made the price as low as we possibly can. Many of these people will have to decline to attend if they cannot find the money.

Why does this matter? Because this is the future of music in your parish at stake.

The people who train at these programs come back and immediately start using what they have learned. They train others in their parishes. The movement catches fire. People’s spiritual lives are renewed. Most important, the music that is uniquely appropriate for Mass (it should have “pride of place,” said the Second Vatican Council) is again heard at Mass where it belongs.

Have you heard Gregorian chant at Mass? If so, you know what it can mean. It is the sound of the faith, even old and ever new. It is sung prayer. It has a quality that meets the very definition of sacred music. Popes from all ages have taught this. Benedict XVI has reinforced this many times in his sermons and writing. But it doesn’t require an encyclical to make the point. It is there in the hearing.

Think about what chant would mean in your parish. It can make a huge difference in the way the faith is presented. Instead of tunes drawn from popular culture, chant is rooted in our history like not other music. When we sing it, we are singing the music of the saints and martyrs.

Given the state of Catholic music today, many people think there is little hope. The truth is otherwise. What is missing are people with the training necessary to take the step. They need to know how to chant the music, pronounce the Latin, handle the phrasing, and integrate it with the liturgy so that we don’t just sing at Mass; we sing the Mass itself.

Some of those waiting for scholarships are young priests and seminarians. Others are young music students who are considering vocations. They will return to parishes and schools with a burning passion for chant. They will be an essential part of a bright future.

And not just chant: the training we provide encompasses its successor music, polyphony of the Renaissance, which the Second Vatican Council also named as uniquely suitable. That means the music of Palestrina, Byrd, Victoria, and all the great composers of that period.

The causes of the problems in Catholic music are many, but the answer of education has the highest prospect for success. It’s been proven for several years. Most of the new scholas starting out in today’s parishes have formed as a direct result of the programs of the CMAA.

I personally have a strong interest in seeing our scholarship budget grow. I have received messages from these young people, and I so badly want to see them attend. We are on the verge of something truly wonderful. There is opportunity for you to help.

If we don’t receive support, we will have to tell these people (and there are more of them every day) that there are no funds for them. They need to know soon so that they can make their summer plans. I would like to be the bearer of great news!

Would you please consider it? A gift of $1000 would make an enormous difference. Gifts of $250 or even $100 can make a difference. It will permit us to begin to have the means to bring some of these people to our programs and train them to play a special role in the future of Catholic music.

Your help can make the difference. Go to musicasacra.com/donate to make a contribution. Please know of our deep appreciation for your support of this important work.

Sincerely,

Scott Turkington
Stamford Schola Gregoriana
Church Music Association of America

New in Events: Chant Intensive, with Scott Turkington, June 9-13, 2008, Chicago.