The Schola Abelis at the GCN Chant Course

Six members of the Schola attended the Gregorian Chant Network's Weekend Chant Course directed by Colin Mawby, which took place last weekend (Friday to Sunday) at the Oratory School near Reading. Five of us provided a schola for the opening Mass.

The course was extremely successful, and we all learnt a huge amount from Colin Mawby's experience of singing and directing chant, which goes back to the 1940s, and his great sensitivity to it. He demonstrated in a quite remarkable way how small changes to tempo and emphasis can make a piece of chant sound quite different, and how groups of singers can respond to interpretative suggestions.

Colin Mawby is well known as a composer, and was Director of Music at Westminster Cathedral in the 1960s. For more on the course, see the Gregorian Chant Network.

Term Card for Trinity 2011

This is a very exciting Term Card for the schola, including more events than we have ever had in one term before. We will be singing in Greyfriars in Oxford for the first time, and returning to the Oratory. We will be singing in the historic Catholic house of Stonor at the first Traditional Mass to take place there since 1970. We will be supporting two new walking pilgrimages organised by the Latin Mass Society and Juventutem Oxford, to Littlemore and to Our Lady of Oxford. Among the chants we will be singing the great sequences of Pentecost and Corpus Christi. And for the first time, we will be marking the Feast of St George, which does not usually fall in term time but has been displaced by the late Easter to 3rd May.

Practices as customary in Queen's College, at 8.15 on Wednesdays, unless otherwise arranged.

First Week

Tues 3rd May 6pm: St George
Ss Gregory & Augustine

Sat 7th May Pilgrimage to Littlemore
in honour of Bl J.H. Newman
2.30pm Sung Mass Greyfriars (Ss Edmund & Frideswide)
Followed by walk to Littlemore and Vespers

2nd Week

Sat 14th May Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Oxford, Oxford Oratory
Walk from Abingdon Abbey, Abingdon, departing 11am
Sung Mass, Oxford Oratory, 3.30pm

4th Week

Thurs 26th May 6pm: St Augustine of Canterbury
Ss Gregory & Augustine's

6th Week

Sun 5th June 11am: Sunday in the Octave of the Ascension
St William of York, Reading

Tuesday 7th June, 4pm: Newman Society Mass, Oxford Oratory

7th Week

Thurs 16th June, 11am: Whit Thursday
followed by blessing of lilies and veneration of a relic
of St Anthony of Padua
Church of St Anthony of Padua, Headington

8th Week

Sun 19th June 6.30pm Trinity Sunday
Stonor Chapel, near Henley-on-Thames

Thurs 23rd Corpus Christi
Sung Mass 6pm Ss Gregory & Augustine

9th Week

Wed 29th June 6pm: Ss Peter & Paul
Ss Gregory & Augustine

Friday 1st July 6pm: Sacred Heart
Ss Gregory & Augustine