A Tribute to Dr. Mary Berry 1917-2008.

Sometimes you get lucky. At the beginning of the 1980s while living in Portland Oregon, I saw a notice for a two-day “chant-workshop” directed by Dr. Mary Berry.

In musicology courses at the University of North Carolina, I’d struggled with the Medieval period. I shuddered remembering all my brainy fellow grad students who seemed plucked right out of the 1200s. Perhaps the workshop could improve my attitude?

So I went.

Let me tell what I did not realize: Dr. Berry (Sister Thomas More) was one of the world’s leading authorities on plainchant. An English Augustinian nun with a Ph.D. from Cambridge, she had an impeccable lineage as a direct student of Thurston Dart and Nadia Boulanger. If you are in the world of music, you know what those names mean. If not, think of it as learning to coach under Vince Lombardy and Tom Landry.

Yet, she’d spent much of her life delivering workshops across the world to people of all faiths, introducing (or reintroducing) them to the joy of singing chant.

The workshop ran two days. The first day I was nervous. The second, I was ecstatic. With her gentle, but imposing, presence, she bustled around, making each of us feel capable. She was, or seemed, very tall, and her voice boomed, but in a bell-like fashion. “Don’t be alarmed,” she’d say. Or “Try, just try.”

To be honest, my focus was elsewhere: I was about to leave for the Soviet Union on a government grant to do dissertation research on an 18th-century Russian serf-musician. Chant wasn’t on my radar.

Still, I learned, along with everyone else. We were a rag-tag group, from many backgrounds, but she shaped us into a smooth-voiced choir, able to execute a small selections of chant with skill. I left the workshop believing, for the first time, that Medieval music might have more to offer than sheer torture.

Isn’t that was a good teacher does? Empower us to leave our fears and limits behind, and claim a piece of the new knowledge as our own? And then, we can build on it with less fear, at least. Little could I imagine that one day I’d be creating a course called Early Sacred Music for my own students.

Today, holding her thin, classic Plainchant for Everyone in my hand, I realize how lucky I was to experience two full days of Dr. Berry’s presence. I can hear her voice saying the very sentences in the book: if you sing chant in English, sing it “as naturally as you would speak it, not as if you were hitting nails on the head with equal force.” Or, don’t be intimidated by the modes (chant scales), “since you are probably familiar with the RAY [Dorian] mode through that old favorite ‘What shall we do with the Drunken Sailor.’”

Find her little book, with its clean pages and clear information. Think of how much knowledge this woman had, and marvel at how she was able to bring it down to 44 pages, designed for “everyone.” Now that is a teacher who left a legacy.