Views from the Choir Loft

Now Online! Fr. Josef Jungmann’s Study of the Roman Rite “Missarum Sollemnia”

Jeff Ostrowski · January 25, 2014

SE THE LINKS below to download Fr. Joseph Andreas Jungmann’s masterpiece: The Mass of the Roman Rite: its origins and development. It is also called “Missarum Sollemnia.”

Both volumes are contained in this PDF:

* * 6460 • Both Volumes by Fr. Jungmann

The following files can also be downloaded, but this is unnecessary if you’ve already downloaded #6460.

* * PARS I • Vol. 1, to p. 229

* * PARS II • Vol. 1, p. 230 to END

* * PARS III • Vol. 2, to p. 229

* * PARS IV • Vol. 2, p. 230 to END

* * PARS V • Complete Indices

The priest who translated both volumes into English was Fr. Francis Brunner, C.Ss.R. Years ago, he was a “major player” in the Sacred music movement. He wasn’t a huge fan of the Solesmes rhythmic signs, probably due to his German associations. When I posted Brunner’s gentle condemnation of the hymn “On This Day, Oh Beautiful Mother” it caused quite a uproar …

BEWARE! There’s a version of Jungmann’s Missarum Sollemnia being sold which combines Volume I and II … but all the footnotes are missing!

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

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).

PDF Download • Vespers for the Dead

Mr. Albert Bloomfield kindly sent me “Vespers for the Dead”—which does not fulfill a priest’s obligation to pray the Divine Office, yet is often prayed when a loved one dies. Here is formatting A, and here it is again with formatting B.

—Jeff Ostrowski

20 October 2020 • “What we can’t share”

Almighty God has given to us the example of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America, whose feast day we celebrated yesterday. Of course, along with those eight martyrs we honor their associates, e.g Father François Bressani. I can’t share with you the torments Father Bressani underwent at the hands of Iroquois: it is too brutal. It would tear your heart out. But I will share what Bressani’s Superior said, after receiving a letter from him: “The letter is soiled and ill-written; because the writer has only one finger left on his right hand, and cannot prevent the blood from his wounds—which are still open—from staining the paper. His ink is gunpowder mixed with water, and his table is the earth.” If you have the stomach for it, read what Father Bressani (d. 1672) underwent for Jesus Christ. Let his example help us never fall into sins of impurity, avarice, ingratitude, or envy.

—Jeff Ostrowski

13 October 2020 • Chopin talks Bach

My “pianist pedigree” goes from my teacher through Wiktor Łabuński through Felix Blumenfeld, who studied with Anton Rubinstein. I always considered myself part of the “Bach-Mozart-Chopin school” as opposed to the “Handel-Beethoven-Liszt school.” (Needless to say, there’s great overlap between these schools.) Before giving a concert, Frédéric Chopin would always shut himself up in a room and play through Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. The year Chopin died, he spent considerable time with the painter, Eugène Delacroix (d. 1863), who recounts hearing Chopin launch into a monologue on the transcendence of J.S. Bach, insisting that “the fugue is like pure logic in music,” and that “to know fugue deeply is to be acquainted with the element of all reason and all consistency in music.”

—Jeff Ostrowski