THE ARTS: The Palestrina Choir is celebrating its 100th anniversary with a series of concerts that will show its singers at their best, writes Arminta Wallace.

It's the ultimate in polyphony. Six voices move in perfect balance, the lines simple, distinct and rhythmically supple yet unfolding in a crystalline stream of sound, exquisite in its unity. "Kyrie eleison . . ." Small wonder that when Edward Martyn heard the boys of a central-Dublin school sing Giovanni da Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli under the baton of their music teacher, Dr Vincent O'Brien, in 1898 he embarked on what amounted to a crusade.

A wealthy landowner from Co Galway and a founder of the Abbey Theatre, Martyn was passionately interested in liturgical music. During his student days at Christ Church, Oxford, he had travelled all over Europe listening to cathedral choirs and was determined that the Catholic Church in Ireland would have music of a similarly high standard.

He offered a huge sum of money - about €1 million today - for the establishment of a choir at St Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin on condition that O'Brien be appointed choirmaster.

And so it was that on January 1st, 1903 the Palestrina Choir took its place in the Pro. Now, says the choir's director, Blánaid Murphy, it is time to celebrate a century of singing. "We've got all guns blazing for our concert at the Dún Laoghaire festival on June 15th, in which we premiere a new commission by Colin Mawby and sing a programme designed to show off the best of the choir; then we're off to Wales to sing in Cardiff Cathedral. At the end of October we're planning a tour of cathedrals in Longford, Armagh and Galway, and there'll be a big centenary mass at the Pro on October 5th, which will feature the premiere of a new setting of Psalm 100 by Father John McCann."

Travelling is, of course, nothing new in the history of the Palestrina Choir, which has sung in places as far afield as New York, Montreal, St Peter's Basilica in Rome and, for the 400th anniversary of the composer's death, in 1594, in its namesake's home town of Palestrina, in Italy.

The choir's 27 boys and 11 men are no strangers to busy schedules either - and nor are their families and friends. Mary Sugrue is the mother of four boys, all of whom have sung in the choir.

"In the year 2000, the four were involved at various stages. Our oldest son, Ronan, started in the choir in 1991, and then the others followed on. In 2000 he was a gentleman of the choir for a year, while our middle sons were choristers and our smallest one was a probationer," she says. The smallest Sugrue is now 10 and still singing. "The poor child has probably been in the Pro just about every Sunday of his life," says his mother. "He knew the Latin responses and the paternoster and things like that long before he ever joined the choir."

With the boys required to attend two afternoon rehearsals a week at the cathedral - which means two trips to town in the height of rush-hour traffic - as well as Sunday-morning services, singing in the Palestrina Choir demands considerable commitment.

"It's a lot of work," admits Sugrue, "and the kids sometimes forfeit parties or outings or whatever, but they get an awful lot out of it, too. Apart from the musical education in itself, they get a huge amount of camaraderie. They form friendships that go on for ever. And then, whether it's intentional or not, they get a sense of, and a respect for, liturgy and religion. Of course, we have no control over whether they continue to be involved, or decide to do their own thing, once they grow up. But, somehow, you sense that the music will always be there."

Music, in fact, seems never to be far from the Pro-Cathedral. At the 11 o'clock Mass on a blustery mid-week morning, the newly appointed administrator, Father John Flaherty, launches into the sung elements of the service in a clear, light tenor - no surprise there either, for he was recruited into the choir himself as a boy, along with several of his classmates from a local primary school. He also served as an altar boy at the Pro when he was in his late teens.

"It's kind of weird to be back," he says with a chuckle. And still singing? "Ah, sure you croak away and hope for the best," he says.

"But over the years the diocesan director of music, Father Pat O'Donoghue, has built up the tradition that the 11 o'clock Mass has a musical element every day - and you might have noticed that the congregation sings, too.

"There's this fallacy that Irish congregations don't sing in church. They do here, and I think it's because the tradition has been built up so carefully. So you don't have to have a good voice at all; you just start, and the people take it up. And that's the way it should be."

As far as Father Flaherty is concerned, music in church is not just an optional extra; it's essential. "There's a tremendous beauty to it, and it's a great help to prayer and to worship," he says. "We try to use the most beautiful things to praise God, and I think music in the liturgy is extremely important. All kinds of music.

"They have a very successful gospel choir in Gardiner Street which sings on Sunday evenings; here in the Pro we have a more traditional Saturday-evening Mass with a soloist and either organ or piano, or sometimes a trio or a quartet, which is always packed out. And large numbers of young people are coming to the choral Mass on Sunday mornings."

At this last service, most of which is in Latin but with readings in English, Palestrina often rubs shoulders with Britten and Elgar - and with traditional chant. "Chant is the traditional music of the church, and I think it's very important to preserve that - but in a living way," says Father Flaherty. "The Palestrina Choir combines the best of traditional chant with good contemporary liturgical music."

One of those contemporary pieces, Colin Mawby's commissioned setting of the Nunc Dimittis, will be unveiled at St Michael's Church in Dún Laoghaire for this Sunday's concert. The composer, a former director of music at Westminster Cathedral and an experienced writer of choral works, takes a pragmatic view of his task in setting the well-known words "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace . . ."

"You just sit down," he says, "and put blots on paper. Writing music is like any kind of writing - it's frustrating and infuriating and satisfying. But the thing about the Nunc Dimittis is, it's got one point in it which suggests a natural climax. That's the lumen revelationem gentium, or 'light to lighten the Gentiles' - whatever Gentiles are these days. So that gives a centre to the piece.

"And then the Palestrina boys are so good that I wanted to give the opening to a boy soloist. And then, because it's a celebratory occasion, I thought I would end with a very joyful, rousing ending."

The solo will be sung in Dún Laoghaire by the choir's leading boy, Aidan Lundy. But for Blánaid Murphy, although concerts and tours are important to raise the profile of the choir, the essential work is done at the Pro week in, week out, all year round.

"I think it's very important to pull out all the stops every Sunday during the year, to make the biggest impact you can," she says. "Good choral singing can give people an experience they would never get just from the spoken word, and that's why church music needs to be of the highest possible standard. People need to be elevated from their daily lives - they don't want to go into church and be sitting there like they'd sit in their living room."

Murphy points out that when Edward Martyn founded the choir, he wanted its musical emphasis to be on Palestrina and chant. "He wouldn't like the fact that we do Mozart and Haydn Masses," she says. But then it would probably never have occurred to Martyn that the choir might one day be directed by a woman. "There's a funny little clause that there can't be any women in the choir - but it never mentioned that there can't be a female director," says Murphy, who is, in fact, the choir's third femaledirector.

Martyn would, however, doubtless approve of the tireless Murphy's plans for a new Celtic Mass, on which she and regular Palestrina arranger Des Mooney hope to get working during the summer.

"There are lots of beautiful old Irish melodies, many of which are chant-based, and I think that they'd be a great basis for a new Mass - taking all those old things, weaving them into something new. I think it would be very special."

It seems the next 100 years, too, are going to sound pretty good at the Pro.

The Palestrina Choir are at St Michael's Church, Dún Laoghaire, on Sunday at 8.30 p.m. (€10). Latin Mass is at St Mary's Pro-Cathedral on Sundays at 11 a.m.