Chant Camp with Anonymous4 April 18, 2009

Join Anonymous 4's Susan Hellauer and Marsha Genensky for CHANT CAMP, an all-day workshop of chant singing, structured around a number of carefully-chosen plainchant topics. Each topic presentation begins with a brief, informative, illustrated lecture, followed by plenty of group singing, to illustrate and permanently set the lesson. The day's workshop ends with a communal chant singing, combining elements of the day's work, along with extensions and improvisations based on the day's material.

This workshop is for both professional and experienced amateur singers who want to know more about the nuts and bolts of western plainchant, from Medieval sources as well as from modern transcriptions of the Solesmes books. And its the singing that makes it stick. Plainchant has been called musical meditation, but we think about it more as yoga for the voice: active, physical and transforming. There's absolutely nothing like unison singing, with unity of melodic intent, to grow a sense of blend and cohesion.

These Chant Camp session topics will range from broad overview to very specific subjects, among them: singing from original notation; medieval Vespers hymns; Frankish tropes and sequences; Hungarian plainchant; Hildegard of Bingen; chant for St. James from the magnificent Codex Calixtinus; prayer tones; the Marian antiphons of Compline (focusing on the Salve regina); a chant mode refresher for those who attended our September 2008 chant camps in the bay area; and, of course, chant by ear ... and much more!

Official Website: http://www.sfrv.org