Going Solo...

...Solos are absolutely not the thing generally within monastic liturgy. The very notion that one voice should be heard above or beyond others is pretty close to anathema.

Cantors assigned to keep the rabble of choir in some kind of decent order are permitted to crank up the volume if the occasion demands to quell or drown a voice manifestly off-key, but that is about all.

There are rare exceptions, one being the chanting of the Lamentations during Tenebrae in which a single monk will step forward to keen solo. (The 'Exultet' for the Easter Vigil is another - and a rank beast of a tune to hold let me tell you. About as enviable a task as being asked to sound 'The Last Post' at Remembrance Sunday.)

Now the Rector has a passing tenor voice; generally on or abouts key, if having the traditional male vice of heading towards flat if not properly held to correct pitch. Not though an absolute cracker, just decent enough for a monastic choir doing plainchant.

Knock me down with a scapular, therefore, when one year I found myself striped down to sing the Lamentations for Holy Thursday Tenebrae! Some mistake surely on Hebdom's part (he the week's ring-master). But no, there it was on the board for all to see and me to cack myself at: 'De Lamentatione' - Dom. PP.

Days mercifully to prepare and to practice. The practising element was, in itself, a bit tricky by reason of the fact that monastic liturgy is essentially 'prayer in action'. You don't 'practice' praying: you either are praying or you are not praying. One simply didn't 'rehearse', one simply did.

But for something as daunting as standing before one's assembled, cowled community, in the half-dark with the literal and metaphorical spotlight upon one, on a most sacred evening in the liturgical year, simply bashing it out - hoping for the best on an 'all right on the night' principle - was just not on.

So off to the woods it was, armed with text, tune and tuning fork for some serious practice. Far better to accept that there was a certain personal vanity in not wanting to make a hash of it, than hearing the dread 'Harrumph' of a displeased Abbot when one did!

Now 'tune' is most certainly not the apposite word for Gregorian chant. There are modes and there are tones. There are incipits and there are cadences. There is rhythm of a free nature, but most certainly not is there measure as in two-four, four-four et al. All written in square neumes on four lines with never a sharp and rarely a flat in sight.

Daunting? Well not really. True it is the saying that when two or three monks are met together then are found four or more 'experts' in the chant, but more that of the dear Abbot who opined truly and wisely that the chant is a wonderful way for ordinary people to make extraordinary music.

If you can breathe, then you can do-re-mi sing; and if you can do that then you can sing Gregorian chant.

Well you can in choir, which entirely is not the same as standing solo and unaccompanied - that last the last great test! - before fifty or so chant 'experts', a few of whom who would be allowing themselves the perfectly traditional monastic vice of hoping you make a complete dog's dinner of the whole thing!

Went it then well, you will be asking. Vainglorious of me would it be to say it was a belter: the monk was inspired, on fire, the voice splitting the gathering shadows with a poignant lament for the horror of the Crucifixion to come.

You can see why solos are not the monastic thing. Vanity all is potential vanity!