|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
UST’s Schola Cantorum Performs at Latin Mass
11/10/2010
 The University of St. Thomas students and member from the Houston community will participate in a Latin Mass at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 30 in the Chapel of St. Basil. Rev. Robert Barringer, CSB, will be the celebrant and Dr. Ann Fairbanks, chair of the UST Music Department, will direct the Schola Cantorum.
The University of St. Thomas Schola Cantorum began in 1981 to acquaint young musicians with beauty of Gregorian chant. It was an outgrowth of the Music Department's course in the history of music. The students who were studying the origins of Western music, including Gregorian chant, were required to sing in the the Schola, which provided the chant for one Latin Mass every fall semester. Part of their learning experience was reading the older notation printed in the Liber Usualis, a book transcribed from medieval manuscripts by the monks of Solesmes in France. Gradually, Catholics from the Houston community have joined the students in singing Latin masses and the number of masses sung by the UST Schola Cantorum has increased to three each semester, about once a month during the school year.
“Gregorian chant has been the backbone of our Western music, from which many sacred and even secular kinds of music have developed through the ages,” Fairbanks said. “Catholic legend attributes the beginnings of Gregorian chant to Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590-604) and while this cannot be proven, his name has been associated with much of the earliest music of the Church.”
The Second Vatican Council of 1963 declared that "…Gregorian chant should be given pride of place in liturgical services" (Sacrosanctum Concilium §116), yet masses in vernacular languages have predominated in Catholic liturgy for the last 40 years. Latin chant is still sung in monasteries, certain churches and occasionally in other settings.
But recently Gregorian chant has become more popular beyond these venues. Because it is sung in unison without harmony or a regular rhythmic pulse, its style promotes a feeling of unity, purity and serenity in its listeners, those who may wish to evade the noise and distraction of our 21st century.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
