Schola Cantorum

Gregorian chant has been associated with the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale since its founding. Throughout the years, a number of singers have provided the Gregorian propers whenever the Chorale sings one of the great orchestral Masses for a solemn liturgy. 

In the early 1970s, Dr. William F. Pohl, a professor of mathematics at the University of Minnesota, sang the Gregorian chant, mostly solo, while developing a small schola of Chorale volunteers to assist him. Dr. Pohl guided the chant during the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council when all the liturgical books were being revised was no small task, but as some may recall, he was no small man.

By 1975, in cooperation with Monsignor Richard J. Schuler, pastor of Saint Agnes, and Harold Hughesdon, its master of ceremonies, Dr. Pohl, joined by a number of dedicated volunteers, had begun the custom of singing Sunday vespers weekly and the full office of Tenebrae during Holy Week. 

Organist David Bevan arrived from England in 1976 to accompany the Chorale, and he assumed directorship of the Gregorian chant after Dr. Pohl's retirement in 1977. Bevan added new singers to the schola, introduced the use of the new Graduale Romanum edited and published after Vatican II, and contributed his own clear singing voice to the difficult solos that the chant requires.

After Bevan returned to England in 1979, Monsignor Schuler appointed Paul W. LeVoir to direct the Gregorian chant. LeVoir developed the schola as a men's choir, added a number of new singers over the years, and continued the practices his predecessors began, while introducing more authentic interpretations of the chant based on recent authoritative research and discoveries. The current editions of all the chant books are now being used. Sunday vespers, moreover, is now sung coram Sanctissimo. All this was done under the watchful eye of Monsignor Schuler.

Today, the Gregorian schola for the Sunday solemn Masses boasts of up to twenty members, and is considered a training ground for many of the seminarians with whom the Parish of Saint Agnes is blessed.