Wednesday, January 28, 2009

New Gregorian Chant Schola in Edinburgh

Continuing the slight Scottish tinge to this blog, I have been sent this exciting piece of news about Edinburgh.

Plans have been made for a schola to sing and promote Gregorian chant within the Archdiocese of St Andrews & Edinburgh. This will be a male choir which will meet on a Thursday evening in St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, for sung Latin Vespers and rehearsal with half a dozen chanted Masses spread among the deaneries each year. Anyone who is interested in joining the schola or supporting this increasingly popular music of the Church should visit edinburghschola.blogspot.com or telephone 07786 146 456 for more details.
Apparently the weekly Vespers in the Cathedral will be according to the 1962 Breviarium Romanum. This is great news. I wonder if any such thing could ever happen in Hexham and Newcastle?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Further north still, last week I started teaching a course in Gregorian chant in Orkney. I have 20 students who are now learning Compline from the Liber Usualis.

Anonymous said...

Not a comment on this post, but what a strange photo! Is this one meant to be an improvement on the last one??!!

Fr Michael Brown said...

Which photo?

Anonymous said...

I think this great news shows how far the centre of gravity of the church has swung in the traditional direction. When I lived in Edinburgh in the 90s, it would have been unthinkable to have weekly Latin Vespers in the Cathedral. Those were the days, when there were 4 indult masses a year in St Anne's Oratory (a small chapel behind a shop in the West End of the city).On Sundays, there was a choice between a decent Latin/English sung mass in the Cathedral or the SSPX mass centre. The SSPX were then, of course, were very much under a cloud so I never felt entirely at ease going there.

Thanks, must go to Mgr. Michael Regan, the Cathedral administrator. I knew the then Fr Regan when I took part in a RCIA programme about 15 years ago. I remember one potential convert, a Scottish Episcopalian, asking about the Latin Mass. A priest, not Fr Regan, told him there was no demand for the Latin Mass and a female religious told him that Jesus never spoke Latin. The chap never stayed the course. At the time, I never would have thought of Fr Regan as a closet Tridentinist, but last year he celebrated his first EF requiem Mass in the Cathedral.

Anonymous said...

The photo of yourself, Father. But I see a new one has appeared in the intervening days,in which you appear to be drowning your sorrows.