- vals, "solfège hopscotch" and snacks.
A July 15-16 day camp at St. Mary of the Seven Dolors Parish in Osmond was anything but typical.
It was Chant Camp. There, about a dozen and a half people students and adults learned and practiced Gregorian chant.
"I really learned a lot," said Klaire Stech, who is entering eighth grade at
the parish school and has a fondness for music. Klaire plays the piano and
sometimes serves as an accompanist at Mass. She also sings in a choir with a few of her peers.
"Singing," she said, "helps me learn music more." Gregorian chant, an ancient style of sacred music, is traditionally sung without instrumental accompaniment and without using modern musical notes, but instead with the older square notes.
Camp participants practiced the solfège musical system also known as the do-re-mi scale, made popular by a song from "The Sound of Music." Andrew Meluch, of Holy Trinity Parish in Hartington, made the learning fun through games. Campers jumped to notes on parallel lines drawn with chalk on the concrete outside. His wife, Anna, called the game "solfège hopscotch." Klaire liked the outside games. Sing -
ing without instruments is difficult, she said, because it's harder to find
and read the notes.
Seminarian Thomas Matya also helped at the camp. He taught the history of Gregorian chant, its im portance in the Church, and Latin pronunciation.
Matya, who will study this fall at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, said the goals for the camp were modest, mostly to make Gregorian chant better known and better sung.
The camp offered a basic introduc- tion to chant, Matya said, "especially for those who may have heard of it, or have sung some of the simple chants at Mass," and are "trying to progress one or two steps further."
“The idea was to make it pretty
simple," he said, "but also to have a little bit of fun in doing it."
During the 10 a.m.-to-3 p.m. hours
of the camp, 20 minutes of a lesson were followed by a 20-minute game
or activity.
