Videos of St Agatha Mass

On 5th Feb we were in the Chapel of Milton Manor House, a historic Catholic house near Abingdon, where Fr Anthony Conlon sang Mass which we accompanied. The feast was St Agatha, who has special propers of particular interest: the Communion antiphon is highly unusual in not being from scripture, but instead refers to her legend, and in particular the miraculous restoration of her breasts which had been cut off during the course of her mistreatment before her martyrdom: 'mamilam meam meo pectori restituere'. The picture above shows St Peter curing her.


Our polyphonists sang Joseph Obrecht's Missa de tous biens pleyne.

Introit


Gradual & Alleluia


Offertory with Offertory verses


Obrecht's Sanctus & Benedictus


A polyphonic Ave Regina Caelorum, by Leonel Power.



For a report on this Mass see here.

Term Card for Hillary 2011

Practices will be at 8.15 in Queen's College,
except for 3rd Week and 8th Week, when it will be on Thursday


First Week

Sat 22nd Jan 11.30am Sung Mass, SS Vincent & Anastasis
St Anthony of Padua, Headington

Third Week

Wed 2nd Feb 6pm, Sung Mass with Blessing of Candles:
Candlemas (Purification of Our Lady)
SS Gregory & Augustine

Sat 5th Feb 11.30am, Sung Mass: St Agatha
Milton Manor, near Abingdon

Fifth Week

Sun 13th Feb 12 noon, Sung Mass: 6th After Epiphany
SS Gregory & Augustine, tbc

Sixth Week

Sunday 20th Feb, Septuagesima
St William of York, Reading

Sat 26th Feb 11.30am Sung Mass: Votive Mass of Our Lady,
Shrine of Our Lady of Caversham, Caversham near Reading

Eighth Week

Wed 9th March, 6pm Ash Wednesday
Sung Mass with Ashes, SS Gregory & Augustine

Ninth Week

Sun 13th March 12 noon, Sung: 1st Sunday of Lent
SS Gregory & Augustine

Videos of First Sunday of Advent

Here they are. The camcorder gave up after the Offertory for some reason, but we have here the Introit (and Kyrie: since we were unable to get the polyphonists together for this occasion we sang Mass XVII)


The Alleluia


The Offertory, with the Offertory verses. This is an interesting one because the verses in the Offertoriale do something rather odd - when the antiphon is repeated it is pitched higer. The Triplex suggests this is a mistake, but we sang it as printed.

The Schola Abelis at Bel and the Dragon

We have sung our last Mass of the Trrm and the calendar year - and the fist Mass of the litugical year, complete with a Solemn Alma Refemptoris Mater, with the FSSP at St William of York, Reading.

We have repaired to a local restaurant named after one of the more colourful episodes of the Old Testament.

Videos (of the Mass!) to follow.
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St Didacus at St Anthony of Padua

Today is the feast of St Didacus, a great miracle worker of the 15th Century, a member of the Franciscan Friars Minor. Fr Aldo Tapparo sang a Mass in his church, St Anthony of Padua, in Headington, and we accompanied the Mass.

St Didacus is given the Common of Confessors, Justus ut palma. The ordinary our polyphonists sang was by Johannes Brassart (c.1400-c.1455), who was from the south Netherlands.

Here is the Introit Justus ut palma, followed by Brassart's Kyrie.


Here are the Gradual Os justi and the Alleluia Beatus vir.


Here is Brassart's Sanctus and Benedictus.


Here is the Offertory with its verses.




More about this Mass here.

First Masses of Term

We have now sung in Blackfriars, for the LMS Oxford Pilgrimage, in St Birinus in Dorchester, for a parish requiem, and in SS Gregory & Augustine's, Woodstock Road, for All Souls
.


The Pilgrimage Mass was in honour of Blessed George Napier, and before the Archbishop of Birmingham, who blessed a plaque in honour of the martyr whose fourth centenary it was. As well as singing at Mass, we sang the Te Deum, the Litany of the Saints and the Litany of Loreto on the procession, and at Benediction afterwards. Our polyphonists sang an unusual Ordinary, Nicholas Ludford's 'Missa inclina cor meum', and a motet by William Byrd, 'Miserere mei'.

At Dorchester we had a training day with Nick Gale, the Director of Music at St George's Cathedral in Southwark (ie the Catholic one!). We had a session with him before and one after lunch, and then sang a Requiem, again with polyphony. Nick Gale has his own approach to chant which will take time for us to absord and make our own fully, but was a fascinating day which had instant results. Nick's approach, based on the Graduale Triplex, is very much focused on the text (paying attention to the length of syllables in the text, as well as stressed syllables), attention to the dominant note (usually the 'reciting note'), and certain features of the neumes brought out in the Triplex. This all involves stressing and slightly lengthening certain notes, in ways which overlaps with, but is quite distinct from, the editorial suggestions found in the standard editions of the chant. Above all it rejects the rythmical system of 'twos and threes' created in the early 20th Century by some scholars, which attempts to bring the chant more into line with modern music.



We were lucky in our timetabling because we sang the Requiem again a few days later at SS Gregory & Augustine, allowing us to consolidate what Nick Gale had taught us. The next challenge is for us to apply his principles to a new set of propers.

At Dorchester and SS Gregory & Augustine's the polyphonists sang the Requiem of Antoine Brumel (c1460-?1512/3): Kyrie, Sequence, Sanctus, and Agnus.

Freshers Fair!

We are Freshers' Fair, Exam Schools Room 11.


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