Wednesday, August 08, 2007

FSSP in France team up with Ensemble Organum Founder to Study Roman Chant

[The following is an unofficial translation, and I hope to provide you with a better, more fluent translation later. Watch for updates. This event is likely too far for North American readers, but it wouldn't be for our Irish, English and European readership.]

The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and the Association of the Friends of St-Cecile have jointly organized with Marcel Pérès (founder of the internationally reknowned Ensemble Organum) a training course in Gregorian chant.

Objectives: To profit from the teaching of a specialist of international fame within a traditional liturgical framework.

Participants: Clergy and laity

Liturgy: the daily offices will follow the traditional Roman rite, known as extraordinary. Many priests will be present.

Dates and place: Padre Pio House of the FSSP, in Francheville, near Lyon. Arrival of the participants on Monday September 3 in the morning. End of the session Saturday September 8, Nativity of the BVM.

Costs: Teaching expenses 100€, meal on the spot 30€ per day, lodging (for men only) at the Padre Pio House, a voluntary offering.

For more information e-mail with amis.ste.cecile@free.fr or call 06 84 75 34 50.

Detailed description of the session: The objective of this session will be to illumine the bases of Latin ecclesiastical chant for a better comprehension of its history, and beyond historiography of its use for one and a half millenia in the Roman Catholic church. From the old Roman chant, the principles of bases of the Latin chant will be studied concretely: chant as well as the art of the reading and the proclamation of the liturgical texts.

Until the 13th century the repertory, now called “old Roman”, accompanied the pontifical liturgies in Rome. Then it was forgotten. Rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century, it still did not find its deserved place in the imagination of Western man and beyond that, of all civilizations which rise from the same Semitic and Greek origins. It delivers to us the key of filiation between the chant of the Temple of Jerusalem and the heritage of the Greek music. It also enables us to follow and include/understand the treasures of the Koranic cantillation. Apart from certain very restricted musicological circles, this repertory is unknown today to musicians, ecclesiastics and the public. However it delivers to us the oldest version of the graeco-latin music of late antiquity and represents the missing link between the Byzantine chant, Coptic chant, Syriac Chant, Arabic music and Western music. (Ensemble Organum)

More recent articles:

For more articles, see the NLM archives: