About The Saint Dunstan Schola
The Saint Dunstan Schola is an independent sacred music ensemble and youth Chorister Guild serving the Tampa Bay area. Formerly the resident choral ensemble at Epiphany of Our Lord Roman Catholic Church, The Saint Dunstan Schola now continues its work independently, offering formation and liturgical music rooted in the catholic tradition and inspired by the English choir school model.
Our mission is to form singers — especially young singers — in the discipline, beauty, and prayer of sacred music.
The Saint Dunstan Schola is intentionally intergenerational. Adults and children rehearse and sing together, allowing young choristers to be formed within a living musical community rather than in a separate children’s program. In this model, adults provide leadership, stability, and example, while choristers grow through regular participation in real liturgical singing.
The ensemble’s musical life is centered on Gregorian chant, sacred polyphony, traditional hymnody, and the great choral repertoire of the Church. We believe that sacred music is not merely decorative, but integral to the worship of God. It shapes the soul, trains the mind, orders the affections, and gives voice to the prayer of the Church.
As an affiliate of RSCM America, The Saint Dunstan Schola employs the Voice for Life curriculum as a foundation for the formation of its Chorister Guild. This program provides a structured path for young singers to grow in vocal skill, musical literacy, rehearsal discipline, and choral leadership. At The Saint Dunstan Schola, this curriculum is enriched with a particularly strong emphasis on Gregorian chant, traditional liturgical tradition, and sacred polyphony.
Our singers rehearse weekly and sing regular liturgies throughout the Tampa Bay area. Through this rhythm of formation and worship, choristers and adult singers alike are invited into a living tradition of sung prayer.
Why St. Dunstan?
The Saint Dunstan Schola takes its name from St. Dunstan of Canterbury (c. 909 – 19 May 988), one of the great reforming figures of tenth-century England. A monk, bishop, craftsman, statesman, and musician, Dunstan helped renew the spiritual and cultural life of the Church in England by restoring monastic discipline, strengthening the worship of God, and fostering a renewed love for learning, craftsmanship, and sacred beauty.
His legacy is especially fitting for our mission. The Saint Dunstan Schola seeks, in its own small way, to participate in that same work of renewal: forming singers in discipline and joy, handing on the musical treasures of the Church, and cultivating a community where prayer, beauty, and serious formation belong together. Like the monastic and musical culture St. Dunstan helped revive, our work is rooted in the conviction that beauty is not incidental to Christian life, but one of the ways hearts and minds are ordered toward God.
St. Dunstan is also traditionally honored as a patron of musicians, making him a natural patron for a schola dedicated to sacred song. His life reminds us that music is not merely an ornament to worship, but part of a larger Christian culture of devotion, skill, patience, and excellence. Under his patronage, The Saint Dunstan Schola seeks to form young choristers and adult singers alike in a living tradition of sung prayer — one that serves God, shapes the soul, and carries the Church’s musical heritage into the next generation.
A pious tradition also connects St. Dunstan to the chant Kyrie Rex splendens, now known as Mass VII of the Gregorian Kyriale. According to this tradition, St. Dunstan heard the Kyrie sung by angels in a heavenly vision and transcribed what he had heard. Whether received as history, legend, or devotional memory, the story beautifully expresses what sacred music seeks to do: echo, however humbly, the worship of heaven. It is this same vision of music as prayer, formation, and a glimpse of divine beauty that animates the mission of The Saint Dunstan Schola.