One more week

The RSCM St. Louis Course begins July 15, a week from tomorrow. Here is a YouTube clip from the Course way back in 2010: Kyrie, from Messe Solenelle (L. Vierne)

As you can see from the photo in the second half of the clip, the Course was much smaller in those days. I am proud of the trebles – indeed, of the choristers on all of the parts – for making the big sound needed for the Vierne.

I wish there were more YouTube clips from the Courses. From the few available, I chose this one to give a taste of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis (note especially the reverberation at the end).

As it happens, 2010 was a year when I wrote at length about the Course. Here is a link to the first of eight essays. Some may wish to read them all; just click “newer post” at the bottom of the first, and it will take you to the second and right on through. I will quote from the eighth and last:

Among the young people (and sometimes those not so young), there are always many tears at the final Evensong on Sunday, and the ensuing farewells, the Course completed. It is right that it be so, for we do not know when or if we will meet again in this mortal life. Every year, some old friends are missing. The day will eventually come when we will be the ones missing, or when the Course is no more.

It occurs to me that I have probably attended more Courses than any but a handful of people. I began taking boys to Belmont Abbey and girls to Atlanta back in the mid-80's, and have been either there or at the St. Louis course almost every year since. The Belmont Abbey and Atlanta Courses no longer exist, though some of the principals from those days are active in other Courses. The boys and girls from those days are now adults, many of them with children of their own. I very much doubt that I will see any of them again in this life….

As I have said several times in these pages, there is a special bond between those of us who have sung at these Courses, all the more so when we have sung together for a number of years. I believe that such bonds, and the similar bonds one has with others in this life, sometimes people we encounter only for a brief time, are a manifestation of the Communion of Saints which we affirm in the Creed. I can easily think of a score of choristers and directors with whom I have sung who have since passed out of this life, and I miss them, sometimes very much. Once, they were young; they learned to sing in the company of those of the generation before them and in turn they taught us, directly or by example. We are bound as choristers into a seamless web across the generations.

We will see one another again, in this life or the next. We will sing again with one another, and the years apart shall be as yesterday when it is past.