March 2006
Enjoying Plainchant	Show Menu

David McConnell describes how the introduction of plainchant has added value to a choir’s work.

One of the greatest challenges I face as choir director in a local church is how to provide satisfying SATB music when one or more voice parts is not present. Singers enjoy part singing. Basses and altos often find unison singing difficult. So there is little point in explaining to choirs that to sing with a part missing does not make musical sense; nor do they wish to hear that Erik Routley believed that singing in unison increases Christian zeal and that the German theologian Bonhoeffer supported unison singing on theological grounds. When a voice part is absent, is it ever possible to maintain musical integrity and at the same time retain the interest of a small local choir? The solution may lie partly in regarding (reluctantly) the organ accompaniment as an aesthetic crutch, a musical prosthesis, and then working to demonstrate that to sing some items in unison is neither boring nor demeaning. This line of thought naturally leads to considering Plainchant. Unison singing is fundamental to its philosophy and a group of even five singers can use it effectively to add value to worship.

Early influences

Even as a beginning organist, plainchant fascinated me. My formal introduction was the course of church music lectures given in the early 1960s to divinity students (as they were then known) in TCD by Canon J. Purser Shortt, who was responsible for the wealth of plainchant in CH4. Most of the students seemed bored by these dry presentations by an elderly and somewhat eccentric priest but a young organist who sat in on them lapped up what he said. The Canon used an excellent teaching method for both anglican and plain chant.

At that time, much Church of Ireland worship tended towards a bland uniformity. Any deviation from the Book of Common Prayer's rigid rules for ordering services was discouraged. Plainchant was almost unknown in parish liturgy. It was, of course, part of the magnificent mid-summer festivals of liturgy and music in St Bartholomew’s, Ballsbridge, and the warm incarnational worship of All Saints, Grangegorman and St John’s, Sandymount. I experienced main-stream Anglican plainchant at a Gregorian Association festival service in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford in 1963 and the delights of London’s All Saints, Margaret Street, a year later.

Plainchant in Zion Church

Fast forward to Zion Church, Rathgar, in the late 1990s. Singing is led by a small, deeply committed group of singers. When twice monthly eucharists at the main Sunday worship slot became the norm, we had increasingly to concentrate on supplying quiet items, sung while holy communion was distributed. I insisted that these performances must reflect some degree of quality assurance if they were to fulfil their purpose. To sing a four-part piece with one or more parts missing was unacceptable. The plainchant in the current and previous editions of the Church Hymnal was an obvious resource. I recalled, too, Tom Gordon telling me that he had successfully ‘rescued’ the singing in St Nicholas Collegiate Church, Galway by using a mix of plainchant and Taizé-style music.

I adopted a pragmatic approach and quite quickly the choir became familiar with and sang with style melodies such as Verbum supernum (242), Veni Creator (296) and Adoro te (449). With the arrival of CH5, we added Conditor alme (121), now an established choir favourite. All these are primarily syllabic. In 2005, with Passiontide in mind, we tackled the more melismatic but very beautiful Vexilla Regis (243). This proved to be quite a hurdle. To shorten the teaching process, I enlarged a melody-and-words-only version to A1 size. This enabled us to learn the music without the use of books. Everybody simply kept their eyes on a flipchart.

RSCM influence

At the RSCM International Summer School in York in August 2005, plainchant was included in the music sung by all delegates at the short prayer service in the Minster each day. This simple morning worship had a profound effect on everybody (cf. Soundboard, Issue 10). During that week we also experienced the recent RSCM publication Night Prayer: Compline, which sets the version in Common Worship (the Church of England’s prayer book) to traditional chant. I mentioned all this to Zion Church choir last September, when outlining my plans for the season. While sceptical, they agreed to try Compline.

Celebrating St Brigid’s Day

We worked at the service consistently during November. Affirmation came from one of the older members of the choir who recalled with pleasure his experience of Compline at the school he attended in England. Another man remembered his schooldays at Glenstal Abbey. The attractive RSCM booklet supplied context and credibility. We returned to Compline at the rehearsal on 4 January, at the end of which I recognized that our struggle was over. We were singing the chant with personal ownership, enjoyment and some style. I was quick to affirm my singers in their success.

Four weeks later, on 1 February, the Festival of Saint Brigid of Kildare, sixteen singers and their director walked into the church at 8 o’clock to sing the Office. The plainchant needed no accompaniment. Word had spread, and forty people from various faith communities locally had come to join us in offering praise and prayer at night to the Triune God.

Stretching the boundaries

In one respect, to be able to sing a monastic office to simple chant is not something worthy of special comment. But for us, it represented both a step outside the normal limits of our work and also something completely new. Above all, the experiment was eminently successful. The sense of achievement and pride was palpable, repertoire had been expanded, people outside the immediate faith community were aware of what our small group was doing.

Choirs of all kinds need stimuli such as these. I recommend to others who lead church choirs to seek out new ways of doing things that stretch the expertise and expectations of their singers. It is part of the process of life-long learning!

David McConnell is organist and choir director at Zion Church, Rathgar and organist at the Church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar.

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