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To: Sans-Culotte
There is a PCA chuch kind of near that I intend to look at. It has to be a church with a halfway decent choir program, which my wife enjoys.

Tell your wife that if she follows God, God will take care of her.

I illustrate:

I started choir singing in the Cathedral of St. Philip (Atlanta) at age 6 and never stopped. Toured with high school chamber ensemble, sang in college, sang in parish choir after I got married. My parents were members of the choir there for 45 years. My grandmother sang at the Met and was the soloist for St. Peter's Rome (that's Georgia < g > - the Piskies got to town first and snagged the name.) That's just to explain that I consider myself a pretty serious musician of the amateur sort.

My big, big objection to the Catholic parish we now attend was the music program (such as it was). The choir director really liked praise music, there were maybe 14 people in the choir and they were not what I would call serious musicians - maybe 2 or 3 could actually read a little music. The repertoire was about what you would expect - a lot of unison anthems of a mealy mouthed sort, "contemporary" praise music, etc. etc.

Well, everything else was just ducky (and we had a couple of strong spiritual clues of the leading kind that this was the right place), so I gritted my teeth and we joined. I was singing in the choir and putting the best possible face on things, when . . .

The choir director suddenly got a job offer from another parish across town to be their music director and jumped at it. Search committee for replacement formed - deacon put me on it - we started looking around and lo and behold the accompanist, a very quiet and self-effacing man, turns out to have a doctorate from Juilliard and a passion for Ancient Music, chant, and Renaissance polyphony. We basically BEGGED the rector to hire him. He did, and the rest is history. We are singing magnificent music (Palestrina, chant, Viadana, Bach, Purcell, Tallis, Byrd - he likes the English composers and thinks that Byrd marries English text to tune better than anyone living or dead), we have four new staff singers, the choir is growing by leaps and bounds . . . we're going to have to get a new choir room . . .

I'm telling you, God will take care of the music!

126 posted on 10/07/2005 11:55:49 AM PDT by AnAmericanMother (. . . Ministrix of ye Chace (recess appointment), TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary . . .)
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To: AnAmericanMother

A Catholic parish that sings Palestrina and Tallis? Where is this?


139 posted on 10/07/2005 12:09:46 PM PDT by RonF
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