Come to Poland to the liturgical plainchant & polyphony singing workshop with Marcel Pérès, the leader of the famous Ensemble Organum! The session will take place on 4-8 March (Dominican Chant) & 8-11 March (Notre-Dame School polyphony) in Poznań, a beatiful city with rich history, and will be held in English.
St. Benedict Foundation invites you to liturgical music workshop held by Marcel Pérès, leader of the famous Ensemble Organum. The workshop will take place in Poznań (Poland) in the Centre of Culture of St. Benedict Foundation (the organiser of the session) on 4-11 March 2026. The workshop will be dedicated to gregorian, and actually even more to so called dominican chant – liturgical plainchant of the Dominican Order, which emerged in XIII c., in the times of St. Thomas Aquinas. The workshop will therefore focus on the interpretation of the square notation, which is way less obvious than anyone could presume – yet its study and practice gives an amazing insight into the musical mentality of XIII c. chanters and musicians. The experience will be thorough thanks to the use of original notation (or notations, because we will go also for some earlier sources), original performance practice (lectern), and all sort of dimensions other than melody: first of all and most difficult the rhytm, then the emission, ornamentation, non-tempered tuning. And most important – the practice in the original context of this music, which is the living traditional latin liturgy of Roman Catholic Church (the liturgies will occur on the 6 & 8 March for the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Sunday Mass)
The workshop is meant fo musicians – professionals, students and amateurs, choir, folk or liturgical schola singers. The capacity of reading medieval plainchant scores is welcome, but isn’t required (you can learn during the session).
The workshop will start on Wednesday 5 March at 10 AM, and there will be two sessions daily: morning ca. 10 AM – 1:30 PM & afternoon ca. 4:30 – 7:30 PM. The plainchant part of the session will finish on Sunday 8 March at 2 P.M. and 5 P.M. the polyphonic part will start. It will last until morning session (10-11:30 A.M.) on Wednesday 11 March.
The price is 125 EUR (discounted price 100 EUR for students under 26 y.o. and retired people aged over 65 y.o.). The registration is until 16 February; afterward, if there’s still places in the group, it will be still possible to register, although the price will rise by 25 EUR.
Feel free to ask for advice about travels and accomodation via email fundacja@benedictus.pl (in English or French). Poznań is situated in the middle-way between Warsaw and Berlin (even though it’s much older than both of them, so better let’s say that they’re located in the same distance from Poznań ;)). Apart of Poznań Airport you can also consider Wrocław Airport, which is very close and well communicated. Anyways, if you feel like joining, please fill the registration form. We hope to see you in Poznań and share this musical adventure!