Saturday 26 February 2011

Sing Compline for Lent.... or anytime.

I'm not going to apologise for pointing you in the direction of this excellent post by Jeffrey Tucker of the Chant Café blog network. Go and read it, and then put it into practise!

Jeffrey's post refers to the Ordinary Form in the Latin Rite. We at Rudgate use the Extraordinary Form (it keeps my running costs down, as I don't have to buy copyrighted material, rather just download it freely!)

Whatever form it's offered in, it is a tremendous spiritual offering, and one I wholeheartedly encourage you to take up, be it by yourself, or in a small group - in your own home, or local/parish church. In our case, the use of the oldest church in York (Anglican) for a Latin Catholic service has been mentioned before, and everybody is welcome to come to Bishophill Jnr. Details will be posted here each month from now on. We usually meet on Saturdays, but occasionally this gets moved to Sunday evenings due to other events/services/concerts etc that take place. This is York after all!

Besides ourselves, I've noticed locally that Compline in Lent is being advertised at Holy Trinity Church, Micklegate as Ecumenical Prayer in Lent. on 15th March & 5th April. starting at 7pm to rehearse, with a small break for refreshments, before singing Compline itself. I've no idea what format this will be in, but guess it will be similar to this. This form of Compline is also chanted by the excellent Ebor Singers during Lent at York Minster on Thursdays at 9pm, usually with added polyphony.

If you want to come to ours though, we'll be delighted to see you!

The current schedule is:

Saturday 26th February
Saturday 5th March
Sunday 13th March
Sunday 20th March
Saturday 26th March

All times 9pm at the Church of St. Mary, Bishophill Junior, York YO1 6EN

I almost forgot to mention. This is *entirely* by candlelight. We do provide everyone with their own candle though!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Mike,

really hoping to get along to one of these. There is a free OF Compline for download at:

http://www.transitofvenus.nl/LiturgiaHorarum/

The guy who's done the settings is Dutch (I think), and I think their antiphons are different. Otherwise, it's really good for beginners (like me).

Chatto said...

Sorry, that comment from Siobhan was actually from me!

Mike Forbester said...

You'll be welcome any time!