Ft. Worth Schola Gregoriana?

Well, no doubt my few readers will be wondering just how auspicious a beginning our new schola has made... I am happy to say the first meeting was a great success. Now, I must tell you that we didn't have the full contingent of six of us that I was hoping for. In fact, four either had second thoughts about the amount of time commitment (good to have that out of the way) and two others had conflicts. So... you can tell by simple arithmetic that we started out last night with two! We had a wonderful and very productive evening, with excellent progress on singing the Kyrie Orbis Factor and going through the entire list of things I had planned. We joked about being the "anonymous two".

I must say that, although there were only the two of us, the sound was really quite nice... my first new schola member has a lovely voice with a very large range. She has a great deal of enthusiasm and many contacts for the area. She is already planning our first sung Mass and has a particular local priest in mind (he is dubbed the singing priest, apparently due to the fact that he often sings portions of the Mass already!).

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I can't help thinking of the difference in the beginning here versus our startup in Shreveport. When we began in Shreveport, I had none of the knowledge about chant notation, propers, ordinaries, Solesmes, modes, chironomy, solfege... This startup is going to go so much more quickly and effectively (I hope). Because of my newness to the area, I don't know as many people, so the numbers we are starting with here are smaller. There will be so much less stumbling around trying to figure things out this time around that I think we'll be ready to sing in a relatively short period of time.

I have been ruminating about names for our schola and have thought that the name Fort Worth Schola Gregoriana has a very dignified and substantial sound to it... any comments?

I am still continuing to work on recruiting more... it would be a great blessing to have more voices like my first new recruit... Our family also going to Mass at a smaller parish west of our home this weekend. Perhaps more victims (er, make that potential chant singers) are waiting there!