Schola Cantorum

I don't think I've written here about choral singing and how much I love it, how much a part of my life it's been since I was a child. I always sang in church choirs as a child and youth, and I sang in the touring and chapel choirs in college. We (Shelle and I) even sang briefly with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus under Robert Shaw, way back before we were married. Since then, we've sung with the occasional community group, but mostly with church choir.

The Schola Cantorum of the medieval church was the trained cathedral choir, a group of choral scholars. Now it's a (frankly pretentious) name often used for a professional or semi-professional choir at a liturgical church. Our church is not a cathedral. We're a small in-town Episcopal church with a 40-50 voice choir that divides among two services. Sometimes I'm the only bass singer at the early service. But our choir is quite good, regardless of which service you attend and how many singers show up. A few weeks ago, our newly-formed evensong choir -- our "Schola Cantorum" -- met to record some songs we had learned over the course of just three rehearsals, including the recording session itself. The evensong choir is a smaller version of the main choir, and though we're the ones singing on this recording, we're certainly no better than the larger choir. But I wanted to post a sample of what a 20 voice volunteer choir can sound like on a spur-of-the-moment recording. Perhaps this will illustrate why choral singing is so important to me.

Click to download/stream This Shining Night