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Views from the Choir Loft

More On Secular Music At Mass … John Lennon?

Guest Author · December 23, 2014

530 B16 AT TIP to Jeff Ostrowski for his exposé on Dan Schutte’s “Missa My Little Pony.” As soon as I heard it, I told my fiancée, “He’s right—it’s the same song. And there’s more music like that.” As in, there’s more church/liturgical music stolen from… errr… similar to secular music.

I told her I couldn’t think of precise songs at the moment, but I knew there were more. Now that it is Advent, with Christmas music blaring from radio stations and every department store’s overhead speaker, I have remembered one of the songs.

I was fortunate to go to World Youth Day 2008, where I saw His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, and where I heard an Alleluia song by Guy Sebastian. It might just be my imagination, but isn’t the supporting vocalization/background music of John Lennon’s “So this is Christmas” the same music as that Alleluia? Judge for yourself:

      * *  Mp3 Excerpt: Guy Sebastian and Paulini’s “Alleluia”

      * *  Mp3 Download: John Lennon’s “So this is Christmas”

Listen to the “Alleluia” first, and then listen to the Lennon song. You will hear the “Alleluia” music slowly coming up from the background. If you go to the original YouTube video versions, you can set the “Alleluia” to 1:04 and “So this is Christmas” at 1:03, playing them simultaneously. (Sebastian sings slower, but he fits in so well as things progress.)

So this is Alleluia! Happy Advent to my fellow Catholics and Merry Christmas to the secularists who are already saying that. Try not to think of Sebastian’s Alleluia every time you hear Lennon’s Christmas song!


We hope you enjoyed this guest article by A.W. Smay.



Editor’s Note: It would be important to know whether this song was sung DURING an actual liturgy, or whether it was used outside of Mass only.

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

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Secular vs Sacred Music at Mass Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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Quick Thoughts

23 May 2022 • FEEDBACK

From a reader: “I wasn’t looking for it. But, I stumbled across your hand-dandy arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon. Jeff, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread! I had to play a wedding on Saturday. The bride requested the Canon. There were 11 bridesmaids! The organ loft is a football field away from the communion rail. It’s so difficult to play and keep checking the mirror. Your arrangement is absolutely genius. One can skip and choose which variations to use. The chord names are handy so that when my eyes are off the music, I always know where I am at. A thousand times thank you for sharing this arrangement!”

—Jeff Ostrowski
19 May 2022 • “Trochee Trouble”

I’m still trying to decide how to visually present the “pure” Editio Vaticana scores, using what is (technically) the official rhythm of the Church. You can download my latest attempt, for this coming Sunday. Notice the “trochee trouble” as well as the old issue of neumes before the quilisma.

—Jeff Ostrowski
16 May 2022 • Harmonized Chant?

This year’s upcoming Sacred Music Symposium will demonstrate several ways to sing the CREDO at Mass. This is because—for many parishes—to sing a full-length polyphonic CREDO by Victoria or Palestrina is out of the question. Therefore, we show options that are halfway between plainsong and polyphony. You can hear my choir rehearsing a section that sounds like harmonized plainsong.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“Then, when the later great Germans arrived, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—all secular composers—and tried their hands at sacred music, they set Roman Catholic words to music which in form and spirit is Protestant.”

— Sir Richard Runciman Terry (1912)

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