From the Organist & Choirmaster

Traditionally, throughout the summertime, our Parish Choir takes a well deserved break. Many of our choristers take this time to rest, vacation, and serve in other capacities around the parish and wider community. Last week we brought back our lay clerks and they will be with us at the 10:30 Mass throughout the rest of the summer until Rally Day on September 8th when the full Parish Choir resumes.

With the addition of our lay clerks, I thought that we could being singing the Psalms again. Rather than it just being the lay clerks, I want to include the congregation entirely in the chanting of the Psalms. It may seem a bit daunting to look at Anglican Chant but they are not difficult at all once you understand on a base level the ways they work.

First, there is the tune. I have selected a very easy, simple chant, to introduce you all to chanting. All Anglican chant tunes are a series of ten different chords with the melody being the highest sounding tone. The tune is by George McFarren, who is a 19th century English composer and musicologist. To learn the tune, in the choir room we sing our notes on numbers, from 1 to 10, and once we have somewhat memorized the tune, we move on to adding the psalm texts.

The chant itself

Now we move to what may seem more difficult, but do not fear! Psalm verses almost always will not have only 10 syllables, so that requires something called “pointing.” Pointing looks like the different lines, brackets, and dots over and beside the text itself.

• The lines between texts represent the measure lines in the music itself, you may notice that the first line has two of these which represents the three measures of the first half of the chant. Then the second half of the chant has three lines or measure lines which coordinates to the four measures of music in the chant.

  • The first half of the chant is at the margin of the page

  • The second half of the chant is indented to represent it being the second half of the music.

• If you see a bracket above the text, this means that multiple syllables (either two or more words, or one word that is two syllables) are sung on the same note.

• If you see two dots above the word, this means that a one syllable word is sung over two notes.

I’ve also included a short practice video at the bottom of this article that I hope you may ponder one or more times before Sunday! As always, if you have any questions about this or any musical things at Saint Andrew’s, please ask!