Chant Summer Camp
For the third consecutive year, the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe is offering a Chant Camp for high school students. Do you know someone who may be interested in the summer camp?
Date: August 12–16, 2024
Subject: Gregorian Chant
Classes: 9:15 am – 12:00 pm
Ages: 14–18
About the Camp
While the structure of the course is similar to the children’s Choir Camp in June, the material is considerably more sophisticated and the study more advanced, allowing youth to explore the riches of an ancient tradition. “It’s a fairly serious study of the subject, but we try to make it as fun as possible,” explains Scott Turkington, the Shrine’s Director of Sacred Music.
Community & Choir
In the Choir Loft
As in the Choir Camp, participants in the Chant Camp have the opportunity every day to sing for the 12:15 Mass in the Shrine Church. As they learn, they also advance in this participation in the Mass, notes Turkington: “Our musical involvement at the 12:15 Mass each day becomes a little more complicated, because they get better at what they’re doing.”
The Learning Experience
This experience of using what they learn to serve in the liturgy helps students to understand the Mass and the place of music in the Church’s life. “When you sing for Mass, your primary function is to sing the proper texts of the Mass,” Turkington comments; the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, he adds, prefers that these texts, such as the entrance antiphon, the Psalm, and the verse before the Gospel, be sung by a choir. “And the kids take it very seriously.” Indeed, over the years, students have responded to Gregorian chant with a love both serious and eager, beginning with the first Chant Camp at the Shrine: The attendees that week volunteered to sing at Mass every day, rather than only on Friday as had been planned.
Sacred Music
Sacred Liturgy, conducted with the greatest reverence and beauty, has always been central to Our Lady’s Shrine. In holding a workshop for youth to learn chant, the Shrine passes on a knowledge and love of this ancient liturgical tradition to the next generation, so ready to embrace the good, the true, and the beautiful.
