Galloway Music Festival Mass - 17 August 2003

 Our fourth open air Mass was held at Smithstone House on Sunday 17 August.

The Principal Celebrant was Bishop Taylor, and Father Stephen Motroni and Father Stephen McGrattan concelebrated. We were delighted to have a large music group of several violins, viola, recorders, trumpets, trombone, guitars and keyboard - there were about 15 - 20 musicians altogether (including some local children) and a further 50 or so people attending. The bagpipes also made appearances! Given the variety of instruments, the music was lively and enthusiastic.

Local parishes helped by providing readers, leading the bidding prayers, taking the collection and serving as Eucharistic ministers.

We started off outside . . . but . . . unfortunately the ‘gentle rain from heaven' became a little heavier and so we were forced inside at the end of the Liturgy of the Word. However, everyone managed to squeeze into Smithstone House, the Mass continued, and we went home refreshed and uplifted.

 Music Ministry Day at St Teresa's Dumfries - 10 May 2003

A music day was held on Saturday 10 May at St Teresa's, Dumfries , who were as usual excellent hosts. The days we hold in Dumfries are well attended, and seem to be greatly enjoyed by those present.

We started the day with a session on ‘alleluias' - a high speed introduction of new ideas, which everyone picked up very easily. It was good to hear everyone singing together.

We then had our ‘Panel of Priests' and are grateful to Canon Walls, Father Thomson, Father Farrington and Father Campbell for addressing our questions and talking freely about their experiences of music. (We hope we didn't give them too much of a hard time!)

After lunch Fr Stephen Motroni gave us a very interesting ‘thought for the day' on aspects of the history of church music.

We ended with a workshop on the metrical index - which can provide an easy method for finding tunes to new words, or for writing words to favourite tunes.

Music Ministry Day at Smithstone House - 15 March 2003

A music day was held on Saturday 15 March at Smithstone House.

In the morning a workshop on weddings and funerals was led by Laura Gaddis and members of the St John Ogilvie Music Group from High Blantyre. This was a lively and interesting session and we were introduced to some (obviously very successful) non-traditional ideas and suggestions!

After lunch Fr Stephen Motroni gave us a very interesting ‘thought for the day' on aspects of the history of church music.

This was followed by workshops on the metrical index (which had us all counting the number of syllables in the lines of hymn texts) and alleluias. We went through a good number of ‘new' but effective alleluias at high speed, and hopefully some of these will find their way into use around the Diocese.