Views from the Choir Loft

Top five resources for teaching chant to children

Veronica Brandt · May 25, 2013

1. Jubilate Deo
This is a handy little booklet to have. For children who ask “Why?” this book shows the bare minimum of music for the Catholic Church all around the world.

2. Words with Wings
A chant instruction program for children. The layout is ideal for a weekly class with 20 lessons mapped out.

3. Gregorian Chant for Church and School or download the pdf
The first half has a whole lot of theory followed by a selection of pieces as an elementary repertoire. The chant is laid out with each syllable evenly spaced which seems odd.

4. A New Book of Old Hymns
This is my book, assembled back in 2003 or thereabouts with gradual improvements since then. The main features are: A) a mixture of hymns, rounds, litanies and some english hymns to fill in the gaps and B) English translations running underneath the Latin or in parallel columns.

5. If you can sing Joy to the World, you can learn to read and sing Gregorian Chant
This has lots of great big diagrams to explain different features of chant notation with colour coding to make it really easy.

Another book that didn’t make the photo, but still has a place in my bag is Catholic’s Latin Instructor for help with translations.

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

About Veronica Brandt

Veronica Brandt holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering. She lives near Sydney, Australia, with her husband and six children.—(Read full biography).

Can You Spare 33 Seconds?

Here’s an audio excerpt (33 seconds) of a setting for Kyrie VIII which was recorded live last Sunday at our parish in Los Angeles. The setting (“Missa de Angelis”) is by composer Richard Rice, and you can download the free PDF if you click here and scroll to the bottom. I think Richard’s composition is marvelous. I missed a few notes on the organ, but I’ll get them right next time.

—Jeff Ostrowski

5 April 2021 • When Girls Sing

Covid restrictions here in California are still extremely severe—switching “two weeks to flatten the curve” into “two years to flatten the curve.” Since 2020, we’ve had police breaking into our church to check if everyone is wearing a mask…even when only 5-6 people are present! But we were allowed to have a small percentage of our singers back on Easter Sunday, and here is their live recording of the ancient Catholic hymn for Eastertide: Ad Cenam Agni Providi. The girls were so very excited to sing again—you can hear it in their voices!

—Jeff Ostrowski

29 March 2021 • FEEDBACK

“E.S.” in North Dakota writes: “I just wanted to take a moment to say THANK YOU for all the hard work you have put—and continue to put—into your wonderful website. In the past two years, my parish has moved from a little house basement into a brand new church and gone from a few families receiving Low Masses twice a month to several families (and many individuals) receiving Mass every Sunday, two Saturdays a month, and every Holy Day. Our priest has been incorporating more and more High Masses and various ceremonies into our lives, which has made my job as a huge newbie choir master very trying and complicated. CCWatershed has been an invaluable resource in helping me get on my feet and know what to do!!! Thank you more than I can express! May God bless you abundantly and assist you in your work and daily lives!”

—Jeff Ostrowski

The representative Protestant collection, entitled “Hymns, Ancient and Modern”—in substance a compromise between the various sections of conflicting religious thought in the Establishment—is a typical instance. That collection is indebted to Catholic writers for a large fractional part of its contents. If the hymns be estimated which are taken from Catholic sources, directly or imitatively, the greater and more valuable part of its contents owes its origin to the Church.

— Orby Shipley (1884)