Choir and Hymns

We were late to church today -- or early depending on how you look at it. I had heard nothing about the practice time for the Schola Cantorum and so I assumed there was no practice today. I was overridden, however, so we headed out immediately and arrived about 9:15 (practice would have been at 9:00). No practice, but Fr. Daniel was conducting a discussion/class about the Order of Holy Communion with a couple of folks who weren't in last year's Advent Class, so we sat in.

I'm not sure what's going to happen with the Schola Cantorum right now, with at least a couple members looking at upcoming absences -- myself included, with the last trip of the year starting next Sunday (Atlanta).

Today's service was notable for all the hymns new to us -- the days of rotating through a dozen or three familiar hymns are now long gone. For today we managed the difficult 292 Riley, we struggled mightily through 357 In Babilone, but we threw in the towel with 290 High Road. Perhaps with a practiced choir, we'd do better.

An extremely astute student of the 1940 Hymnal will note a Dutch element to the selections. This was not accidental; it was in honor of one of the more senior members of our congregation who is not well -- please pray for recovery for Adrian.

Oops

Not sure how the previous posting wound up posted three times. Blogspot keeps reporting "There were errors" when I try to delete the duplicates...

Prayer, Pastries and (work) Party

As had been announced, today led off with Morning Prayer/Holy Communion, followed by a breakfast and then a work party. More than simply "pastries" we had quiche, bagels and other items (which yours truly had to beg off on due to intestinal upsets -- not likely related to recent travel), followed by work parties.

The first thing I noted was that some of the flowers on the walkway had been replaced sometime in the past couple of weeks, by our mysterious "flower person." Instead of the really bright flowers we'd had before, now there were flowers with more autumn-like colors.

Finally, we made progress on our presentation from the road (Avondale Rd.) by cutting down the blackberries and other weeds in preparation for improvements in the appearance of our property. We have a lot of work ahead, but right now we're ahead of plan.

Be it ever so humble...

...there's no place like home, and for all the sights we saw or didn't get to see (if only there had been more time), it's nice to be back. One could perhaps wish for an building as grand as Notre Dame...



...but I bet the upkeep is horrible. Think I'll stick with our cozy little church.



Besides, we don't have the problem of conducting services while tourists are circulating noisily inside the building!

729 Kyrie eleison, nine-fold

Just a brief post before I descend into the maelstrom of (mostly business) activity that's going to characterize the rest of my week here in Paris, France...

Sunday morning the Schola Cantorum met for the first time. Fr. Daniel introduced us to some exercises, posture (seated!), and singing in parts.

We started off with #729 in the 1940 Hymnal, Kyrie eleison, ninefold, followed by 730 Gloria, 735 Sanctus, and something I forgot to note for Advent -- generally in preparation for Advent and Christmas. (We have some ground to cover in relatively little time, it seems, but we have an experienced teacher!)

And interesting side-item was our introduction to the metrical index in the Hymnal. I'd seen this before but never paid much attention to it (nor effort to learn it). In the process I began noticing all the indicies in the Hymnal:
Index of service music, acknowledgements and permissions
Subject index
Topical index
Authors, translators and sources
Composers, sources and arrangers
Metxrical index
Tunes
Hymns suitable for anthems
Index of first lines

Quite a lot!

Be back next week...

The Church Fathers now in the library

Last week Fr. Daniel noted a new addition to the parish library; a 38 volume set of the Church Fathers, organized into three groups: the Ante-Nicene Fathers, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series I and II.

I had not realized there was so much material, that what we heard from them in our 9-month study of Ephesians probably barely scratched the surface! Suddenly I feel so ignorant, when I can at best name only a very few of them.

Standing for the Schola Cantorum

But for Kathy I would have missed the first session of the Schola Cantorum tomorrow!

I had a BUSY week in Mexico City; the last time I got online before returning home Friday night was on Tuesday when I previously posted here. And I've been overwhelmed since the return with unpacking from the last trip, packing for the next (Monday), catching up on work e-mail and the like... I didn't even think to check my personal e-mail until Kathy happened to mention this afternoon that Fr. Daniel had e-mailed a reminder that our first session is tomorrow at 9 AM. Oops.

Tomorrow, as Fr. Daniel said in his reminder (reminder? Ay, caramba!! I have forgotten it completely!), "For around 45 minutes, we will undertake some basic vocal/technical instruction and begin to study some repertoire for our Service and for the upcoming seasons of Advent & Christmas!"

This will be work, but fun too, I think. I sang for a short time in a choir many years ago; the choirmaster said I had a bit of a greater range than usual and some work would extend it further, but I'm sure that's gone away with time. I guess I'll know soon enough.

But for right now I just dread standing for 45 whole minutes. I hurt my leg Thursday descending the dangerously steep stairs of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan -- an enormously impressive structure that you simply just have to see to believe; pictures simply do not do it, or any of Teotihuacan, justice. (And believe it or not, this outing was on business!)

That white spot on the stairs? That's someone climbing. Good luck coming back down...

Cuisine of India Demonstration, Nov 11th

An event to definitely put on the calendar is Meyya and Ranjit's Indian Cooking Demonstration, Saturday, Nov 11th. (I'll be home from my travels in time for this -- hooray!)

Acolytes and Girls' Choir

Sunday the Girls' Choir sang again; this time much of the service. Beautiful!

They'll be continuing this one Sunday a month. Much as we'd love to have them every Sunday, they do need to be in Sunday School!

And you'll note in this picture from Sunday (thanks, Rhonda!) that some of the boys are in training as acolytes.