Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Summer Course Unites Singers Across Generations in Sacred Music


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This past week, Duke Chapel welcomed the girls and adults participating in the Royal School of Church Music in America's Carolina Course for a week of intensive training in sacred music. Course Music Director Dr. Robert Poovey and Course Organist Stephen Gourley, along with other leaders, instructed the singers in music from composers such as Harold Darke, Kenneth Leighton, and Charles Stanford. Participants in the course also performed a premiere of Preces and Responses by the composer Käthe Wright Kaufman.

Watch the premiere of Kaufman's Preces and Responses sung by course participants during the Closing Evensong service on July 17:

The Carolina Course singers and musicans also led the music in the Chapel's Sunday morning service on July 17, with anthems by Darke, Leighton, the Swiss composer Carl Rütti, and English composer Ernest Walker. Watch the service here.

RSCM America's Carolina Course at the Chapel is part of a ongoing partnership between the two groups to nurture church music, particularly choral singing, at Duke and around the country. The RSCM America administrative base of operations is located at Duke Chapel.