Archive

Our Events in 2002

This was a thoroughly enjoyable day, attended by about 30 people from around the diocese.

John Bell has been working in liturgy and spirituality with the Wild Goose Resource Group for about 15 years. Much of this has involved facilitating and encouraging lay leadership. About a third of his work is with Catholics, particularly in America and Australia .

John explored with us some of the reasons why people sing, and these included because we can, because it makes us happy and can change our mood, because it is a way of expressing and generating emotion (for example, singing ‘Happy Birthday'), and because it helps us to remember and to tell the church's story.

Throughout the day we sang hymns and songs, some of them from the Iona Community, and some from the world church. It was amazing to see how we were enabled to sing things in harmony almost immediately!

Songs can shape our faith. Using a country's traditional melodies in church music can be important, because it can allow Christ to become part of its culture. Singing songs and hymns from other countries is valuable, because it helps us to relate with the worldwide church.

God has given each of us a voice, and it is a unique gift that no-one else has! We offer our singing to God as individuals in a unique way. When a congregation comes together to sing, then this is something special, because it is a combination of voices that is in itself unique, and we are singing to an audience that is God.

Galloway Music Festival Mass at Smithstone House - Sunday 18 August 2002

Our third annual Galloway Music Festival Mass was held on Sunday18 August at Smithstone House, Kilwinning. Last year it drizzled a little and we were unsure whether the weather would hold out - this year we were in no doubt as it was pouring down when we arrived at Smithstone House! We therefore set up inside. There were plenty of musicians including about seven guitars, keyboard and two violins. A mandolin and bagpipes also made appearances at times!

The Mass was celebrated by Fr Con Botter, and he was joined by Stephen McGrattan from Ardrossan (who will be ordained next year). Local parishes helped by providing readers, leading the bidding prayers, taking the collection and serving as Eucharistic ministers.

Despite the weather, we were pleased that there were over fifty people altogether!

Music Ministry Day at St Teresa's Dumfries - 18 May 2002

The core group was glad of another opportunity to meet people from the south of the Diocese!

In the morning, Michael McCulloch led us in singing parts of the Mass to guitar accompaniment, and also introduced us to some hymns set to (mainly Scottish) traditional tunes. After lunch, we discussed music in our parishes - the successes (and not-quite successes!), how well our congregations sing, and how music is chosen. We ended the day with a workshop let by George and Christine Gardner from Darvel, which introduced us to children's hymns suitable for Advent to Christmas, Confirmations and First Communions.

We are indebted to St Teresa's for letting us use their hall again, and providing us with refreshments.

Music Ministry Day - 20 April 2002 at Smithstone House

This was well attended, and by people from all over the Diocese!

After the initial welcome, we invited three priests to share their experiences of music at Mass, and we are very grateful to Mgr Joseph Boyd (from St Paul's, Ayr), Fr Michael Farrington (from St Andrew's, Dumfries) and Fr Con Botter (from Smithstone House) for being willing to take part in this! They were then asked to respond to a wide variety of questions about liturgical music (ranging from 'What is your least favourite hymn?' to copyright law) and the morning was both informative and enjoyable!

After lunch we enjoyed a brief workshop on new hymns for Easter to Trinity. The core group's hymn survey enabled us to identify simple hymns which were likely to be new to most people! They were started off by Catrin Jeans of Girvan parish, and everyone present joined in the singing as they picked up the (usually simple) melodies.

Our final workshop of the day was led by Pat Dougan, David Robinson and members of the Cathedral choir. We were skilfully introduced to, and taught to sing, 'Mass for the Bread of Life' by Margaret Rizza. The Cathedral choir has sung this on a number of occasions, and we found it to be straightforward tuneful music that should be easily accessible to our parish congregations.

Once again, we are grateful to Smithstone House for their excellent hospitality!