MEMORIES OF A CHOIR BOY IN THE SEGOVIA CATHEDRAL

   GREGORIAN SINGING

I transposed the gate of the Cathedral of Segovia (that pine wood hulk almost twenty meters high and three meters wide) countless times when I was an altar boy. I knew the confiteor and the suscipiat and the canon of the old rite. The Latin words sound sweet and therapeutic in my memory.

It was the magic of the Seven, the octaves and neumes of Gregorian chant. Now that I am old, I perceive in my memory the kiries and the gloriapatris combined with the loud voice of Dean Revuelta who summoned us:

─Children, in chorus

And a flurry of red sotanillas and white roquetes made its way down the sacred way from the main altar in a hurry. The thuriferians came perfuming the nave of the Gothic cathedral, behind them the pertigueros followed by the magistral, the lectoral, the racionero and the fabriquero.

The deep voice of Don Quirino the beneficiary sounded who sang the Passio on Good Fridays interpreting Christ, Matesanz the tenor embellished him as a chronicler. Don Macario acted as the people, giving voice to the mobs in the gazofilacio.

I remember those summers of my childhood when they named me seis and tiple of the choir. I pedaled my bicycle down from Valdevilla to the Plaza Mayor and entered through the gate, I hardly had the strength to push the gate and emerge unscathed from the hood of the thick leather curtain that protected the main temple from the fierce winter cold of Segovia. .

Dona Bibi was already there, the poor shamefaced woman, wrapped in a sheepskin robe, begging for alms, murmuring the prayer of the Just Judge through her toothless mouth. A little alms for the love of God.

I always gave the poor tramp a fat bitch even though I knew she would spend it on wine later. Her husband and one of her sons had been killed by the Reds in the Battle of Brunete and she took to drinking.

  The entire chapter was already sitting on their chairs or resting their butts on the misericords, ready to sing Domine Labia mea Aperies.

The words were in Latin, but the spirit of Israel throbbed in all of them. The lauds were shorter than Prima at ten o'clock. They ended with a beautiful intercessory plea to the Virgin Mary. All the clergy then went out to breakfast. Many were seminary professors or parish priests. They escaped to say mass. None was at noon and Tercia at three in the afternoon. The service of Tertia took place at the same time that Jesus died on Mount Clavario.

Around lunch time and in the afternoon when the sun was sinking behind the horizon Vespers. And so day after day for almost nine centuries. A melody that does not stop and crosses time, leaving aside wars, plagues, famines, droughts, earthquakes. This continuity of the church of Segovia is one of the great traditions of the deposit of the Christian faith. Gregorian chant is all a brilliance of contemplative beauty. Man abstracts himself from his miseries and rises. God must be pleased with praise and pour out his thanks upon the earth. It is another of the great virtues of Catholicism. Don't touch it anymore, that's what the rose is like. When we begin to reason and question with innuendos, minuends and subtrahends and pegas, the flower withers. Christ is Love and Beauty. Allow the voice of love to come out from your vocal cords. A rooster that doesn't sing has something in its throat. The Gregorian sequences and antiphons are cries of the soul, a remedy for sadness, an incentive for joy. In the seminary I learned to love choral singing and I regret that the Novo Ordo has ignored Gregorian chant, giving way to musical instruments such as the guitar or the trumpet that were prohibited in masses by Pius X. The devil must be happy about this change . They say that the best musical instrument is the human voice. Only the Russians have preserved such great heritage that dates back to the first centuries of Christianity. The Byzantine troparians open the door of mysteries. Human beings have always sung at weddings, at funerals, at work in the fields, at home, in taverns, in love. Warriors went into battle singing. Where has the art of counterpoint gone? What became of the old melodies? Let the reader understand the disenchantment of this old man who learned to pray and sing the divine office in the cathedral of Segovia

antonio parra galindo

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