Views from the Choir Loft

The Beauty Of Ancient Catholic Manuscripts

Jeff Ostrowski · July 6, 2015 ·

T WOULD BE DIFFICULT to speak too highly of the ancient Catholic manuscripts being made available on the internet. What stupendous treasures! Those who damaged our liturgy in the 1960s are heartbroken to see such things accessible to anyone with a smart phone, because more and more young Catholics can easily discover our precious heritage—and this was not supposed to happen, according to some.

Some of these manuscripts were preserved only because of their beauty. (I speak of a time in history when people did not know how to read “neumatic” musical notation correctly.) Manuscripts were usually created by (at least) two monks. One drew the pictures, and the other wrote the words and/or musical notation.

What makes SAN GALL 546 so interesting is that hundreds of pages were left incomplete, as you can see:

561 codex sang 546

Perhaps they never got around to finishing this manuscript? Or maybe some other cause interrupted this book’s creation, and they never finished it? Hopefully some genius out there can explain what happened by commenting on the CCW Facebook page:

556 codex sang 546

In that same manuscript, I noticed a hymn called “Vita Sanctorum,” which I wrote about here:

553 vita sanctorum

About Jeff Ostrowski

A theorist, organist, and conductor, Jeff Ostrowski holds his B.M. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas (2004), and did graduate work in Musicology. He serves as choirmaster for the new FSSP parish in Los Angeles, where he resides with his wife and children.

Could Pope St. Pius X Sing?

“On 12 March 1908, the complete publication of the Roman Gradual was issued by the Vatican Press. On that very day, Dom Pothier solemnly presented the first copy to the Holy Father. A witness of the audience says that Pius X wished to be the first to see the new book; he opened it at random, at page 128 of the supplement pro aliquibus locis—it was the Introit of the new Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Pope sang it with perfect taste to the last note.” (Catholic Choirmaster, February 1915)

—Jeff Ostrowski

Julius Bas Accompaniment

A very prolific harmonizer of Gregorian chant in the early 20th century was Mr. Julius Bas. He often uses a very strange technique, wherein he employs rests to eliminate the Alto, Tenor, and Bass voices. Consider what he did with “Lumen ad revelationem” here:

* JPEG • Lumen ad revelationem

It seems quite lazy, and I’ve never seen anyone else use such a technique, although Dr. Peter Wagner often switched to parallel octaves when he ran out of ideas… (Yuck!)

—Jeff Ostrowski

Hitting wrong notes

Fr. Valentine Young, OFM, used to say: “The organist can play 1,000 correct notes and one wrong note—and the only thing people will care about is the wrong note.” Last Sunday I hit some wrong notes, and felt bad. Then I remembered a story about Rudolf Serkin and started to chuckle. Charles Rosen (or was it Leon Fleisher?) told the story of Serkin playing a Beethoven Sonata in front of a large audience. The theme is all in octaves; but Serkin hit some wrong notes, and played parallel 7ths instead. This so unnerved him that every time the theme returned, he played the entire thing in parallel 7ths! We must remember that even the greatest hit wrong notes. Alfred Cortot, Vladimir Horowitz, Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer, Sviatoslav Richter, Egon Petri—they all hit wrong notes, which we can hear on recordings. (Josef Hofmann was an exception, but he was super-human so he doesn’t count!)

—Jeff Ostrowski