Views from the Choir Loft

Watershed Needs Your Help To Continue!

Jeff Ostrowski · October 16, 2015 ·

IRST, A WORD ABOUT the title of this post. We’ve tried more subtle ways to ask for money—but they never work. We hate asking for money, and especially with a title that makes us sound desperate. We are not desperate, because God always provides. However, we require more donors willing to give $5.00 per month. Can you help?

* * Help Us Continue Our Work • Pledge $5.00 per month

Please help us introduce to more people the beauty of sacred music. How can anyone hear an antiphon—such as the following—and not agree it’s utterly sublime?

Please help us upload more rare books—such as 1934 Antiphonale—one of hundreds which would not otherwise be available, except for Watershed.

Please help us make practice videos, like this one, for my favorite chant: GAUDEAMUS. ¹

Please help us continue. We hear from Catholic musicians throughout the entire world who appreciate our ministry! Here’s an excerpt from a recent message:

HAVE TO THANK YOU for all your diligence, sacrifice, and hard work to help musicians, such as myself. Corpus Christi Watershed has been extremely helpful and has brought so much solace and support, knowing there is someone out there that understands what I’m going through. God bless and may the angels protect you always.

We are a 100% volunteer organization. None of us receives any salary.

NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1 Cristóbal de Morales must have liked this piece too, because he used it underneath a piece with a remarkable history, centering on the Truce of Nice in 1538. Here’s a recording, and here’s the score. Do you hear the Gaudeamus underneath? The composition has a fascinating history, and Morales would later write an entire Mass based on this Motet.

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