Thank you for all who came this past Monday for this conclusion to our 5 introductory lessons. These five sessions focused on the elementary theory of reading chant, the development of a home practice discipline and providing assistance to that home practice by reviewing exercises in our sessions.

We also showed the path opened by such home practice:

• reading the chant proper without the help of an instrument, and
• how the reading of chant on 4 lines will lead to reading modern music notation on 5 lines.

The handout for the Week 5 session can be downloaded here:

You can access also the materials from the previous 4 weeks at these links:

WEEK 1 ; WEEK 2 ; WEEK 3 ; WEEK 4

Now, what comes next?…

We will now take a few weeks to let the information and the home practice discipline learned in these five weeks “sink in”…

In a few weeks, after we can assess the fruits of these first five weeks, we plan on resuming with new sessions. Theses new sessions will be planned at the appropriate level to be the correct “next level” for most of the singers in the SSPP Wilmington Santa Cecilia Schola. Nobody wants to learn what we already know…!

To help us assess what that “next level sessions” should be, your feedback is welcome. Anything you want to write is helpful to us, but more specifically, please tell us which of the three statements below rings closest to your self-evaluation:

1. “I have been able to do some of the exercises offered in Week 2, 3 and 4, but I need more time with them”
2. “The sight-reading exercises offered so far are too easy. I have been singing polyphony in a choir for several years and need more challenging exercises.”
3. “I do not believe I can read music. Some people can, but I cannot. An organ or piano accompaniment is always needed for most people, including me, to sing in church.”

Thank you for giving us feedback so we can best plan future music education sessions for the choir!