The Schola is excited to announce a new regular location for Vespers at St Andrew's Cathedral, the mother church of the Diocese of Dunkeld, in Dundee.
Vespers will now take place in Dundee approximately every other month, alternating with our existing commitment in Edinburgh.
We are particularly grateful to Vincent, Bishop of Dunkeld, for his support and to Fr Martin Pletts, the administrator of the Cathedral.
Please see the calendar of events for details of individual events.
20+C+M+B+11
The gentlemen of the St Margaret's Schola would like to wish all their friends and benefactors a Happy and Holy 2011!
2010 was a very successful year for the Schola with a total of twenty-one sung liturgies. Particular highlights included the Tenebrae for the Sacred Triduum and Holy Mass in honour of our patroness, St Margaret. We are very grateful to everyone who has helped to make our work possible, particularly our celebrants and especially Monsignor Regan and the staff and parishioners at St Mary's Cathedral.
We hope you will be able to join us again in 2011, which we pray will be another successful year.
The Schola's monthly Vespers have moved to Saturday evenings at 4:30pm.
The calendar of events has been updated for October and November and can be viewed here.
The Schola was grateful to receive permission to bring some of the marvellous liturgy of the Great Week back to St Mary’s Cathedral this year. From early February we had been arranging additional practices in an attempt to learn all the music for Tenebræ. This quickly proved to be an impossibility, given the sheer amount to be learnt (the total duration of these Tenebræ, where Vigils and Lauds are chanted together without a break, over the three days of the Triduum amounts to some eight hours of chanting): antiphons, psalms and responsories combine to imbue these great offices with more drama that in all the operas ever penned by man.
The very name, Tenebræ, derived most probably from the Good Friday responsory, “Tenebræ factæ sunt” (although some scholars differ on this), had a certain relevance this year, given that from the Tuesday until Good Friday morning the Cathedral had been completely without electric power supply. (Purists might add that the relevance would have been all the greater had not the 1955 reform of the Liturgy introduced by Pope Pius XII stipulated that Tenebræ, instead of being anticipated on the night before, should now take place on the morning of the day itself!) Shadows are not seen as clearly in daylight, but the overwhelming culminating effect of nigh on three hours of uninterrupted chant on each of three successive days, I would venture to say, leaves one with more than just an inkling of the enormity of what took place over those three days of Our Lord’s Passion. As for the cantors, I can vouch for us all when I say that the physical effect cannot be much different from that of running a marathon! We were delighted that Fr Brendan Gerard FSSP, in Edinburgh to assist Fr Emerson over Easter, was able to be present with us as officiant for the two days when we were able to chant this great office: Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The Schola’s thanks are also due in no small measure to Mark Hamid, who at very short notice set about applying his carpentry skills and coming up with a magnificent Tenebræ Hearse, without which we could not in all conscience have gone ahead with the solemnity we managed to achieve.
