E ARE in the midst of a GoFundMe campaign which is going very well, but appears to be “stalled” at the 40% marker. Please consider contributing, to help musicians who can’t afford to attend the Symposium. If every Watershed Facebook follower gave 9¢ each ($0.09) we’d meet our goal.

A few clips from last year’s symposium:

This excerpt talks about how choirmasters should never waste rehearsal time fighting with choir members about pronunciation. Sometimes words are pronounced differently depending on region. “Respiratory,” for example, sounds like a different word when the English pronounce it. For the record, there are even Latin words whose tonic accent experts disagree upon, such as LITURGIAM and CANONE. (Words coming into Latin from Greek sometimes—but not always—carry over the accentuation.)

An excerpt from a section dealing with “contrafactum,” something extremely valuable for choirs just starting out:

An excerpt from a section dealing with not losing your temper:

For the record, physical fights sometimes happened in the Papal Chapel, as you can read if you click here and scroll down.