I am loving our parish choir. I’ve sung three Sundays and, so far, all the music has been in Latin. Today we did a four-part Salve Regina by Josquin des Prez as the offertory hymn, and William Byrd‘s Ave Verum Corpus during Communion (recording by Coro Nostro here). I had never sung either of these, so the hour and a half practice before mass was it. I think that most of the choir had sung them before, so I am skating through on my sight-reading skills at the moment.

The choir loft is rather cramped and the seating is not well-laid out. For both of these pieces, we gathered around the organ in a semi-circle to better see our director and improve blending. We had a couple of fumbles, and the tempo of the Salve Regina was much faster than we rehearsed it, which threw us a bit. But the music is beautiful and lovely to sing.

The postlude was a spooky Marche Funebre by Louis Vierne that probably scared the babies waiting to be baptized after mass!