RSCM Report, Part One: Cecilia and her Sisters

"Sing for the morning' joy, Cecilia, sing,
In words of youth and phrases of the Spring;
Walk the bright colonnades by fountains' spray,
And sing as sunlight fills the waking day;
Till angels, voyaging in upper air
Pause on a wing and gather the clear sound
Into celestial joy, wound and unwound,
A silver chain, or golden as your hair."
(from "A Hymn to St. Cecilia" by Herbert Howells: text by Ursula Vaughan Williams)


I have written of St. Cecilia elsewhere in connection with her Feast, and that of C.S. Lewis:
Link

"... it once seemed odd to me that the Patron of Music was a young woman . . . Why not some grave and distinguished (and probably male) musician [such as J. S. Bach]?"

------
At the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis on Sunday morning near the conclusion of our RSCM Course, the choral disposition was such that I was beside a group of three girls in their mid-teens, all of them experienced red-ribboned choristers. I sought, with mixed results, to live up to their example. Their strong, clean, intelligent voices were a delight, and singing the "Hymn to St. Cecilia" alongside them was joy unbounded. The treble anthem "Hail, true Body" by Stanley Vann was even better, for I could listen without needing to attend to my own part. The girls (and the other trebles, boys as well as girls) sailed above the staff to G and A flat as if they were larks on a spring morning. One of them, Jenna, was singing directly in my ear. I can attest that she sang the Howells, the Stanley Vann, and the Vierne Messe Solenelle and other choral music appointed for the liturgy without a single error of rhythm or pitch, and with spirit, excellent diction, musical phrasing, and tone so beautiful as to melt my heart. Blessings be upon her! I would estimate that there were at least a half-dozen other girls in the room who probably sang every bit as well.

The tables were turned at Evensong, where I was behind these three girls, singing into their ears. I gave them plenty of bad singing, and I question what I can offer to support such choristers: more on that another day.

I have worked in choirs with other girls like these over the years; one of them (Meredith) was across from us in the Decani, and another (Jennifer) was in the congregation. One cannot understand St. Cecilia, or Music, without hearing them and seeing the light in their eyes as they sing something to which they are committed.

They are not the whole story. Their brothers in the choir, including a group of three teenage boys doing some excellent singing behind me on tenor and bass (Mike, Mark, and Spencer), were equally inspiring. And there is a place in the choir for old people like me. But, I repeat, one cannot understand Music without taking into account the singing of these girls and those like them in choirs of every generation.

"Through the cold aftermath of centuries
Cecilia' music dances in the skies:
Lend us a fragment of the immortal air,
that with your choiring angels we may share
a word to light us thro' time-fettered night..."

I dare not think of the "cold aftermath of centuries." All I ask is that the memory of these sounds and these choristers light my way through "time-fettered night" until next year's Course.