1940 Hymnal now available online!

The hymnal that Jeffrey Tucker over at the Chant Cafe blog calls "the best hymnal ever to appear in the English-speaking world" (known to us as the 1940 Hymnal) is now available online (at least the parts that are out of copyright, which is A LOT) at Hymnary.org. Lots of other old hymnals are also preserved there.

Here's an example (Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!)

Practice recordings for upcoming works: Banquet Fugue, Cantique and Ave Maria

To help  us all (re)familiarize ourselves with works that we'll be performing in the coming weeks, here are some resources available on the web. If you haven't tried practicing with MIDI files, you should! I find it very helpful just to follow the MIDI along with the score while listening to the file a few times, and I use YouTube recordings of good performances to get a sense of the "musicality" of the work as a whole.

First, here's a fun performance of the Banquet Fugue from John Rutter's "The Reluctant Dragon," which we will perform this Saturday, 15 Sept., at the variety show benefit for the Divine Face Organization.

A beautiful performance by the Cambridge Singers of Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine, with the CPDL score to make it easy to follow along. We will sing this as the anthem at Mass on Sept. 23. You will find English translations of the lyrics, as well as a link to a MIDI file for practice here on CPDL. To practice individual parts, here are individual MIDI files that emphasize the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass parts.
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Here's a nice, clear rendition of Biebl's Angelus (Ave Maria) with score, which we will sing with the choir of St Mary of the Assumption Church  at the dedication of their new altar on Monday, Sept. 24. (Our usual midweek practice will be held at St Mary of the Assumption on Wednesday, 19 Sept., carpooling from SMV parking lot.) Here's a link to a MIDI file of this work. Here is where you can find MIDI files of individual parts (we're singing the Choir 2 parts). You can also listen to the gorgeous Chanticleer rendition here.


Happy practicing!

Notes From the Director - Sun 17 June 2012

Let's meet this Sun. at 9:00 in choir room. Ordination choir, please remain in choir loft after mass for 15 min. and rehearse the mass parts for the ordination.

 

We had a great time at Chris's and Ellen's baby shower Friday evening. Thank you, Gaye for hosting it. Great drink, great cake, great venue and great fun.

Welcome!

Welcome to Notes, the Saint Mary the Virgin Choir Blog. Its purpose is to foster communication between the members and staff of the parish choir here at good old SMV.