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“What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too…” Pope Benedict XVI (7 July 2007)

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Views from the Choir Loft

Introduction To “Views From The Choir Loft”

Jeff Ostrowski · December 30, 2012

LEASE allow me to welcome you to “Views from the Choir Loft.” Credit for the clever Blog name belongs to Andrew Motyka, one of the founding contributors. I hope our Blog title is sufficiently descriptive, because I dislike Blogs with excessively enigmatic titles.

I will not attempt to describe the kinds of blog entries our contributors will be creating since I assume this will be obvious to our readers. For myself, however, I anticipate posting two different types of items: (1) reflections on Catholic sacred music & liturgy; (2) short reflections on interesting things I come across. To illustrate number 2, here is an example:

This was found in a very interesting article by Dom Gregory Anthony Murray (“Catholic Action and the Mass”) published in a 1935 edition of Caecilia (Volume 61, No. 10, page 439).

“In the opinion of all save perhaps the actual singers” . . . How true is this statement by Dom Gregory Murray! So often, singers attempt music they ought not to. But there are ways to remedy this, and I hope to write many more articles explaining how this can be fixed. I also hope to continue providing resources on CCW to help fix this problem.

One more example of an “interesting” thing I would pass along would be this statement by Monsignor Francis P. Schmitt:

It may not seem like forty years to some Pittsburghers since Paul Koch succeeded the redoutable Carlo Rossini, but it is. Prior to that he had studied at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Tech. Graduate study took him to Leipzig and Paris, 1936-1939, for work with Gunther Ramin and Marcel Dupre. Not the least of his accomplishments in Leipzig was slipping out of class one not-so-fine day to snap a photo of the Nazis demolishing an heroic statue of Felix Mendelssohn. Taken into custody, he was released only after they found the negative.

This was taken from a 1989 article (“Regalement In Pittsburgh”) in Sacred Music. I will be including a lot more by “Frank Schmitt” (as his friends called him) because he was a good writer with “wit” . . . perhaps too much wit.

P.S.

I will sometimes end my blogs with the following motto, repeated often by a great Church musician:

“Remember: the life of a Church musician is a life of sacrifice.”

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Jeff Ostrowski

Jeff Ostrowski holds his B.M. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas (2004). He resides with his wife and children in Los Angeles.—(Read full biography).

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Quick Thoughts

    William Byrd • Simple “Agnus Dei” Canon
    Time flies! Back in July, I posted a PDF setting of a perfect canon by William Byrd (d. 1623) arranged as an AGNUS DEI for three voices. Last Sunday, we sang that arrangement with our volunteer choir. To hear a ‘live’ recording of it, click here (Mp3). In my humble opinion, this would be a perfect piece for a choir just beginning to experiment with polyphony.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Glory To God” • (For Choir + Congregation)
    I wish to thank everyone for the nice comments I received vis-à-vis my Glory To God setting for Choir & Congregation. A gentleman with a musical doctorate from Indiana University wrote: “Love this setting so much. And I will pray, as you asked, for your return to composition more fully. You are very very good.” A female choir director wrote: “I love your harmonizations, your musicality, and the wonderful interplay you have with dissonance and consonance in your music. So fun to listen to, and great for intellect, heart, and soul!” A young woman from California wrote: “Thank you for releasing your new Glory To God in honor of Saint Noel Chabanel. I'm enjoying reading through the various parts and listening to your recordings.”
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    William Byrd • “Mass for Five Voices”
    Our volunteer choir is learning the “Sanctus” from William Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices. You can hear a short excerpt (recorded last Sunday) but please ignore the sound of babies crying: Mp3 recording. We still have work to do—but we’re on the right track. Once we have some of the tuning issues fixed, I desire to use it as an example proving volunteers can sing complicated polyphony. — One of our volunteer choirs also sang that SANCTUS on 24 September 2023, and you can listen to how that came out.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“It will not be Rome to tell you what you should do, no: because you have the charism. …you have the Holy Spirit for this. If Rome were to begin to make the decisions it would be a blow to the Holy Spirit, who works in the particular Churches.”

— Pope Francis (27 March 2023)

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  • William Byrd • Simple “Agnus Dei” Canon
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  • A Brief Addendum

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