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Pope Saint Paul VI (3 April 1969): “Although the text of the Roman Gradual—at least that which concerns the singing—has not been changed, the Entrance antiphons and Communions antiphons have been revised for Masses without singing.”

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Views from the Choir Loft

Basic Steps To Improve Music At Your Parish — Part 5

Fr. David Friel · July 20, 2014

EING THE FIFTH contributor to this series is no easy task, as so many excellent ideas have been proffered by the bloggers who have preceded me. I do not envy the task of Jeff & Aurelio, whose thoughts are still to come tomorrow & the next day. For my part, today, I will add two small ideas to the many more important thoughts already shared.

IRST, an important early step toward promoting good music at your parish would be to promote silence in your liturgies. Silence is one of the most important sounds of the liturgy. Anyone who lives in a home with other people knows that silence is an asset that must be fostered if it is not to be forgotten. There is a beauty to silence that cannot be ignored; it possesses its own noble role, a sort of a priori legitimacy that deserves a fair hearing.

How might one bolster silence in a parish setting? Working with your pastor—always a delicate task—move towards lengthening the moments of silence already built into the Mass. For instance:

•  End your prelude a minute or two early, so that the Mass is immediately preceded by an atmosphere of silence.

•  Train your lectors & psalmists to pause between readings. A solid, 20-second pause sends a message to the congregation that invites them to enter into meditation on the Word of God.

•  Talk with your priest about observing the silent pauses called for during the Act of Penitence and after each Oremus.

•  Encourage your priest to sit down briefly after his homily, rather than bursting right into the Creed.

•  Once the tabernacle door closes after Communion, consider forgoing your usual organ instrumental in favor of complete silence.

There are other potential moments for silence, too, but inserting or expanding the silence in these places would go a long way toward reclaiming the sacredness of both silence and sound.

ECOND, encourage your priest to do his part. (Okay, this point has already been made within this series by my fellow bloggers, but I hope to bring something extra to the point as a priest, myself.) Even if you must continue for a time with the four-hymn sandwich (an undesirable, but sometimes inexorable state of affairs), simply having the priest chant the dialogues can still give the liturgy a distinctly sacral tone. A Mass in which all the dialogues are chanted and four hymns are sung would be a vast improvement over the status quo in many places. Once the dialogues are in place, it will be easier to start stripping away the hymns, because they will start to appear as extraneous as they are.

Is your priest scared to start? Does he feel ill-equipped? Chanting the dialogues is really very easy, and there are many resources available to help priests get started. Even starting out recto tono would bring a tremendous increase in beauty to the liturgy. If your priest needs assistance, direct him to one or more of the following:

Practice videos from CCW

Tutorial videos from CMAA

Scores from ICEL

Article from NPM’s Pastoral Musician

Discussion thread from the CMAA Forum

Cultivating silence and singing the dialogues are two simple, practical, and essential steps towards improving music at your parish.


7-part series:   “Basic Steps To Improve Music At Your Parish”

FIRST PART • Andrew Motyka

SECOND PART • Peter Kwasniewski

THIRD PART • Richard Clark

FOURTH PART • Veronica Brandt

FIFTH PART • Fr. David Friel

SIXTH PART • Jeff Ostrowski

SEVENTH PART • Aurelio Porfiri

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

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Basic Steps To Improve Parish Music, ICEL Chants, Singing the Mass Last Updated: March 1, 2025

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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).

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President’s Corner

    (Part 2) • Did they simplify this hymn?
    Choirs love to sing the resplendent tune called “INNSBRUCK.” Looking through a (Roman Catholic) German hymnal printed in 1929, I discovered what appears to be a simplified version of that hymn. Their harmonization is much less complex than the version found in the Father Brébeuf Hymnal (which is suitable for singing by SATB choir). Please download their 1929 harmonization (PDF) and let me know your thoughts. As always, the Germans added an organ INTRODUCTION. For the record, I posted a different harmonization a few months ago which was downloaded more than 2,000 times.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    PDF • “Lectionary Comparison Chart”
    Various shell corporations (in an effort to make money selling Sacred Scripture) have tinkered with the LECTIONARY texts in a way that’s shameful. It’s no wonder Catholics in the pews know so few Bible passages by heart. Without authorization, these shell corporations pervert the official texts. Consider the Responsorial Psalm for the 1st Sunday of Advent (Year A). If you download this PDF comparison chart you’ll notice each country randomly omits certain sections. Such tinkering has gone on for 60+ years—and it’s reprehensible.
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    Monsignor Klaus Gamber Speaks!
    An interesting quotation from the eminent liturgist, Monsignor Klaus Gamber (d. 1989): “According to canon law, a person’s affiliation with a particular liturgical rite is determined by that person’s rite of baptism. Given that the liturgical reforms of Pope Paul VI created a de facto new rite, one could assert that those among the faithful who were baptized according to the traditional Roman rite have the right to continue following that rite; just as priests who were ordained according to the traditional Ordo have the right to exercise the very rite that they were ordained to celebrate.”
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    New Bulletin Article • “12 October 2025”
    My pastor requested that I write short articles each week for our parish bulletin. Those responsible for preparing similar write-ups may find a bit of inspiration in these brief columns. The latest article (dated 12 October 2025) talks about an ‘irony’ or ‘paradox’ regarding the 1960s switch to a wider use (amplior locus) of vernacular in the liturgy.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “American Catholic Hymnal” (1991)
    The American Catholic Hymnal, with IMPRIMATUR granted (25 April 1991) by the Archdiocese of Chicago, is like a compendium of every horrible idea from the 1980s. Imagine being forced to stand all through Communion (even afterwards) when those self-same ‘enlightened’ liturgists moved the SEQUENCE before the Alleluia to make sure congregations wouldn’t have to stand during it. (Even worse, everything about the SEQUENCE—including its name—means it should follow the Alleluia.) And imagine endlessly repeating “Alleluia” during Holy Communion at every single Mass. It was all part of an effort to convince people that Holy Communion was historically a procession (which it wasn’t).
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Canonic” • Ralph Vaughan Williams
    Fifty years ago, Dr. Theodore Marier made available this clever arrangement (PDF) of “Come down, O love divine” by P. R. Dietterich. The melody was composed in 1906 by Ralph Vaughan Williams (d. 1958) and named in honor of his birthplace: DOWN AMPNEY. The arrangement isn’t a strict canon, but it does remind one of a canon since the pipe organ employs “points of imitation.” The melody and text are #709 in the Brébeuf Catholic Hymnal.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“Partly on account of these alterations, and partly because I have been unable to ascertain the authorship of many compositions—which have come to me either in manuscript or through other collections—I have thought it right to publish the volume without appending the names of writers to their works. This, however, I confess to be a defect…”

— Benjamin Hall Kennedy (1863)

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  • PDF • “Lectionary Comparison Chart”

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