SSG Aug 02

Society of St Gregory Summer School

19 –23 August 2002 – New Hall Chelmsford

Take 75 singers and musicians, give them a piece of Music, let the conductor raise his arm and they are off ….It doesn’t matter that many have never seen this piece of music before, a beautiful sound will be produced.

This was my sixth summer school and the quality of sound, and the amount of music we produce never fails to astound me. For those who may not know about the Society of St Gregory (known by its friends as “SSG”) it was founded in 1929 and is the national Society for Music and Liturgy in the Catholic Church in the British Isles.

This year we returned to New Hall. It was my third visit there. Our title this year was ‘Let me be your servant.’ There had been a gap of two years since the last summer school and to keep the costs to a reasonable level the course had been shortened by a day. This meant we worked incredibly hard.

The day started with breakfast and ended after Night Prayer at 9.00pm when we had free time in the Bar! The only breaks we had during the day were meal times, and often we worked during these on extra projects.

We prepared and sang the music for three services every day – Morning and evening prayer and The Eucharist. We had 52 pieces of music in our music packs. We actually sang 51 of them! In addition we had Four “Teaching Sessions” when we had three experts lecture us in their field – Ann Moynihan – Liturgy, Paul Wellicome Music, Marian Tolley Pastoral. In the Afternoons we had workshops. These were for Presiders, Eucharistic Ministers, Readers, Cantors and Accompanists. Everyone was able to attend two, and everyone got their first choices!

However we did manage to have plenty of fun. The annual concert on Wednesday evening produced not only music of a high calibre but other hidden talents. The quiz organised by Paul Moynihan on Thursday enabled those of us who were in the teams to demonstrate not only our Liturgical knowledge, or lack of it but also to play several TV panel games to the great amusement of the audience. This was interspersed with the late arrivals at the Liturgist’s Ball , when people took liturgical terms and turned them into names, these got more and more outrageous as the evening progressed! Then there was the Olympic sized swimming pool available to us at 7.00am every morning

One new thing this year was that we were able to enrol for the preliminary Certificate in Church Music. This is not quite what it sounds! It has now been opened wider than just music, so those like myself who are not highly talented musicians can do it in other areas. I am having a go at Serving and Eucharistic Ministry.

On the last day we were sent forth with a Mission to go home and revitalise our parishes! We were challenged and given a number of ideas, which in this period of change in our diocese will be very useful, even if I don’t change the world! We were told that if we didn’t do anything new well we would have had a nice time and that would be it!

We worked very hard, but would I go again? The answer is Yes. My only regret is that because of copyright we couldn’t keep our music, some of which is new and we will have to wait for it to come into print.

Our aim is to have at least one member of the SSG in every parish. If you would like to know more about the Society why not visit our website at www.ssg.org.uk

GNC September 2002

The Four aims of the Society are:

	To further the study and understanding of the people of the Roman Catholic church, with a view to promoting active participation in accordance with the teaching of the church.
	To promote facilities for the study of liturgy and church music
	To organise meetings, schools and conferences at which instruction in the liturgy and music is given
	To reproduce, print, publish and sell books and pamphlets likely to be required by persons concerned with the liturgy and sacred music.