“God’s voice is not heard in big musical productions […] but in the gentle breeze of Gregorian chant.” – Msgr. Donald Neumann (1948-2003)
On October 16, 2020, Una Voce Canada composer-in-residence Mark Emerson Donnelly gave a virtual workshop to around 45 participants from three of the five choirs at St. Francis Xavier Parish (Chinese Catholic Centre) in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Titled “Gregorian Chant: Strength of Song, Peace of Soul,” the workshop covered the early Church’s view on music in the liturgy; the origin of musical notation; how musical notation led to harmony and polyphony; the restoration of Gregorian chant in the second half of the 19th century; and the importance to the Church of creating new music with the foundation of Gregorian chant and the masters of Renaissance polyphony, especially Palestrina. Mark also demonstrated how to perform Gregorian chant and discussed his Organum Novi Mundi, a compositional technique for singing chant in harmony that he pioneered in 1989, as well as his work as a composer of sacred music.
Below are two video clips from the workshop. Many thanks to Frances Wai-ling So, Jeremy Wong, and Chris Chan of St. Francis Xavier for organizing the workshop and providing an opportunity for members of the parish’s sacred music ministry to learn more about one of the greatest treasures of the Catholic Church.
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To learn more about the compositions of Mark Emerson Donnelly and how you can sign up for his newsletter and support his work, visit his website at markemersondonnelly.com
To support Mark’s compositional work through Una Voce Canada, please click here and choose “MED Composer” from the dropdown menu. Canadian donors will be provided with tax receipts.
