I've been meaning to get back to blogging and realized just how long it has been since I posted anything new. Life continues in its busy way. In the past few months, since I last made an update, our schola has continued to sing at Mass every week, expanding our repertoire, and hopefully also our skills.
We had the great privilege to sing at a priestly ordination here in the diocese in September. Fr. Alfredo Barba was ordained by Bishop Kevin Vann at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Ft. Worth on September 8th. We sang the Litany of Saints (in Latin) and also Veni Creator Spiritus. It was a sort of tri-lingual Mass. While the liturgy and readings were about half in Spanish and half in English, our little Latin contribution contributed the third language.
Chant is still not commonly heard in Ft. Worth, but while the people in the pews (for the most part) were unfamiliar with the Latin, we had great participation from the priests of the diocese. As we were singing the Litany, they sang forth the responses very solidly. The Veni Creator Spiritus was really carried by them... it sounded somewhat like what one might hear at a monastery, with the predominance of the deep sound of men singing together.
We are losing two of our schola members this month... one of them has been visiting from India and singing along with us for nearly 5 months now. She will be returning home soon. Another member has been with us since the schola's beginning and will be moving to New York state soon. We wish them both well and hope they will be able to plant "chant" seeds in both locations after leaving here.
We have also gained a key new schola member... who will be taking a bigger and bigger leadership role as time goes on. She is a trained singer, a voice major in college... a much better director than I.
My family has learned that it is very likely that we will be moving (again) in the spring of 2010. It looks as if we will be Florida residents then. A big focus for me will be to plan for the schola to continue here after we are gone.
