For our patronal feast day, 15 August 2013

For our patronal feastday, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the choir will be singing Josef Haydn's Missa Brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo, also known as his Kleine Orgelmesse (Little Organ Mass).

To help everyone learn this Mass, there is a playlist on YouTube, with choral renditions of all mass parts, along with practice recordings (with score) for individual vocal parts.

Music for Sunday, 4 August 2013

Because our Communion hymn Sunday is very short, we'll be singing two wonderful, short anthems. The first is Giuseppe Pitoni's Cantate Domino. Find the YouTube playlist here -- a nice choral performance of the piece, as well as practice files, with scores, for each voice.

The second in Ingegneri's O Bone Jesu (often attributed to Palestrina). Here's a playlist for this piece, again including a choral performance of the piece, as well as practice files, with scores, for each voice.

Music for Sunday, 26 July 2013

I don't know about you, but I didn't make it to choir practice this week, because there was an 18-mile back-up on I-30, and I would have arrived about the time everyone else was leaving! So I'll be using this video to help me learn our anthem for Sunday, Franz Liszt's Pater Noster. The video has the score imbedded, to make things even easier.

If you like to practice with a MIDI file (easier to hear individual parts), you'll  find one here (organ synthesizer). You can also download sheet music from ChoralWiki.

Hymns are: Entry - 49; Offertory - 613; Communion - 337; Post Communion - 674. There will be practice on Wednesday, 31 July.

Anthem for Sunday, July 21, 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Since we have dispensed with most Wednesday practices this summer, I thought it would be a good idea for us to become acquainted with the anthem we'll be singing on Sunday, July 21: William H. Harris's "Behold, the Tabernacle of God." Here's a nice rendition of this lovely anthem by the choir of Salisbury Cathedral.

 

If you haven't yet picked up your music, you can download a copy here.

Play helpful practice files for each voice part here.

For Corpus Christi: Byrd's Ave Verum Corpus

Since we did not have choir practice this week, choristers may wish to go over this Sunday's anthem on their own at home before our Sunday morning warm-up at 9:00. Here are some resources to help you learn (or refresh your memory of) your part in Byrd's Ave Verum Corpus.

Find MIDI files of individual vocal parts here. If you need a copy of the score to practice with, click here (may not be the same edition we'll be using on Sunday). Happy practicing!

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!