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Save Our Heritage Organisation
Reflections Quarterly Newsletter

Summer 2006 - Volume 37, Issue 2

Chorus Breviarii at the Adobe Chapel
An Educational and Entertaining Performance
By Dean Glass

Although Old Town San Diego's longtime parochial church the Adobe Chapel is now a museum and no longer an ordained church, SOHO has been fortunate in having the local Gregorian Chant group known as Chorus Breviarii to sing there as part of our interpretive program.

Left to right (in the back) James Covalt, John Polhamus, Robert Keim, Roberto Lionello;
(in the front) George Pecoraro, Ronald Clemente, Tom Gray

Chorus Breviarii~San Diego is an ecumenical prayer group. They specialize in the study and practice of the traditional Gregorian hours or Divine Office. Originating during the period of Pope Gregory (590-604), Gregorian chant is the traditional music for Latin texts in the worship of the Roman Catholic Church. It is marked by performance in unison and by free-flowing rhythms that follow the phrasing of the text, and often call for one syllable to be sung across several notes.

The Adobe Chapel was Old Town's parochial church from 1858 until 1919, which is also our period of interpretation, it continued to be used as a Catholic kindergarten until 1922, when the building was abandoned and boarded up. In 1936, ownership of the structure was transferred from the Roman Catholic Church to the City of San Diego, and the chapel was razed to put a street through and reconstructed by the WPA using much of the original fabric in 1937. From 1938 until 1970 the rebuilt chapel was used for religious services by the Columban Fathers, an international missionary organization affiliated with the Catholic Church, and has since been operated as a museum, first by the San Diego County Historical Days Association and now by Save Our Heritage Organisation.

This summer the Adobe Chapel Museum will be open 7 days a week from 10am to 5pm with Chorus Breviarii singing on Saturdays from 1pm-4pm, and admission for SOHO members is always free. So come down and enjoy the amazing musical sounds of Gregorian chant while learning something about San Diego's early history.

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