Views from the Choir Loft

Colloquium Roundup

Fr. David Friel · July 8, 2014

NOTHER SUCCESSFUL CMAA Sacred Music Colloquium has come and passed. It was a glorious experience, made beautiful by tremendous music and made enjoyable by terrific fellowship. If you were not able to attend in person, you are not out of luck. You will find here a number of resources that will help you to tap into some of the experience from the comfort of home.

First, if you haven’t checked out my own summaries & reflections on the week, they are available here:

Colloquium Update I
Colloquium Update II
Colloquium Update III
Colloquium Update IV

For magnificent photos of the liturgies, check out the posts by Charles Cole at NLM:

New Liturgical Movement

Ben Yanke has posted an awesome series of short videos (vlogs) recapping the workshops, liturgies, and day-to-day events of the Colloquium over at the Chant Café. There you will also find a few reflections by Charles Culbreath:

Finally, one of the other priests in attendance at the Colloquium was Fr. James Bradley, of the Ordinariate. He has promised several reflections on his experiences in Indianapolis. These will be posted on his website, Thine Own Service:

Thine Own Service

Next year’s Colloquium will be held from June 29th to July 4th at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. (Naturally, I’m happy that the event is returning to my home state!) If you have never been to a Colloquium before, treat yourself. There is so much to be learned and experienced and enjoyed.

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

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and serves as Director of Liturgy at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. —(Read full biography).

Music List • (2nd Sunday of Lent)

Readers have expressed interest in seeing the ORDER OF MUSIC I created for this coming Sunday, which is the 2nd Sunday of Lent (1 March 2026). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. This feast has magnificent propers. Its somber INTROIT is particularly striking—using a haunting tonality—but the COMMUNION with its fauxbourdon verses is also quite remarkable. I encourage all the readers to visit the feasts website, where the Propria Missae may be downloaded completely free of charge.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Like! Like! Like!

You won’t believe who recently gave us a “like” on the Corpus Christi Watershed FACEBOOK PAGE. Click here (PDF) to see who it was. We were not only sincerely honored, we were utterly flabbergasted. This was truly a resounding endorsement and unmistakable stamp of approval.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Which Mass?

In 1905, when the Vatican Commission on Gregorian Chant began publishing the EDITIO VATICANA—still the Church’s official edition— they assigned different Masses to different types of feasts. However, they were careful to add a note (which began with the words “Qualislibet cantus hujus Ordinarii…”) making clear “chants from one Mass may be used together with those from others.” Sadly, I sometimes worked for TLM priests who weren’t fluent in Latin. As a result, they stubbornly insisted Mass settings were ‘assigned’ to different feasts and seasons (which is false). To understand the great variety, one should examine the 1904 KYRIALE of Dr. Peter Wagner. One should also look through Dom Mocquereau’s Liber Usualis (1904), in which the Masses are all mixed up. For instance, Gloria II in his book ended up being moved to the ‘ad libitum’ appendix in the EDITIO VATICANA.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Extreme Unction

Those who search Google for “CCCC MS 079” will discover high resolution images of a medieval Pontificale (“Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 079”). One of the pages contains this absolutely gorgeous depiction of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction.

—Corpus Christi Watershed

PDF Chart • “Plainsong Rhythm”

I will go to my grave without understanding the lack of curiosity so many people have about the rhythmic modifications made by Dom André Mocquereau. For example, how can someone examine this single sheet comparison chart and at a minimum not be curious about the differences? Dom Mocquereau basically creates a LONG-SHORT LONG-SHORT rhythmic pattern—in spite of enormous and overwhelming manuscript evidence to the contrary. That’s why some scholars referred to his method as “Neo-Mensuralist” or “Neo-Mensuralism.”

—Jeff Ostrowski

PDF • “O Come All Ye Faithful” (Simplified)

I admire the harmonization of “Adeste Fideles” by David Willcocks (d. 2015), who served as director of the Royal College of Music (London, England). In 2025, I was challenged to create a simplified arrangement for organists incapable of playing the authentic version at tempo. The result was this simplified keyboard arrangement (PDF download) based on the David Willcocks version of “O Come All Ye Faithful.” Feel free to play through it and let me know what you think.

—Jeff Ostrowski