VI Váci Nemzetközi Gregorián Fesztivál is an international festival of Gregorian chant held every three years in Hungary, in the cities of Vác and Budapest. Participation is by audition and invitation, and Schola Gregoriana Maynooth has been invited to return to the 2014 festival after a successful visit in 2011.
The Schola will travel to Hungary on 3 July and join with eleven other plainchant scholas from Europe and the Orient for a four-day multi-location event. The festival combines presentations of liturgically based and programmatically based chant exhibitions by all the scholas, along with massed participation in liturgical services at Vác cathedral. Schola Gregoriana Maynooth will perform in Vác and Budapest.
One of these recitals promises to be a very special event: the Schola will present chants from the Office of St Malachy, newly-transcribed by the group's conductor, Darina McCarthy. The Office is preserved in a 12th-century French manuscript (a copy of which was generously provided to the Schola by Dr Frank Lawrence of UCD). St Malachy was an Irish saint and the Hungarian festival provides a rare opportunity to sing for an international audience material with an Irish connection which has probably not been performed for 800 years. The presentation also includes a new melodic setting for a previously unsung Malachy hymn text.
The Schola has a uniquely fluid performance style which won many admirers during the 2011 visit to Hungary. Participation in international events such as this and the Watou festival in Belgium offer an extremely important platform for the Schola to show a chant style which is influenced by the quick, flexible rhythms of Irish music, and conversely, to maintain a strong connection with European trends in chant scholarship.