The ChantWorks Experience:
What’s it like when we meet face-to-face?
We’ll meet online for the time being, until Covid-19 concerns recede. Soon we’ll start helping you to start new scholas, and to assist existing parish choirs that would like to learn the art of chant.
Active
Schola members commit to consistent rehearsals. They relish the challenge and build their schola from the ground up. When you start or join a local schola, you’ll grow in vocal technique, intellectual understanding, spiritual depth, and friendship with kindred souls.
Focused
Good singing starts with the physical side of vocal technique: posture, breath control, lung capacity, how to use the muscles of the face, mouth, and neck. Better physical condition supports better singing. Since the body and the mind are one, there’s a cognitive side as well: connecting ear to voice, awareness of pitch, tone, and pace.
To sing sacred music well, you’ve got to understand what it means. This takes study. Some of the repertoire is in English, and some in Latin. You’ll engage with Latin pronunciation, and experience how chant melodies undergo subtle alterations depending on which language is used. In chant, the meaning of the words in heightened by the musical flow, to help worshippers feel it in their hearts as well as grasp it with their minds.
Excellent
Eventually, your schola will get to sing the Mass…once you’re good enough to be beautiful.