Views from the Choir Loft

CMAA Winter Sacred Music Workshop

Andrew Leung · December 3, 2015

JUST RECEIVED a email from the Church Music Association of America (CMAA) today about the Winter Sacred Music Workshop. The workshop will be held at St. Mary’s Seminary in Houston, Texas, from January 4 to January 8. The registration is now open and there will be a fee for late registrations after December 15.

In the past, the CMAA has organized Chant Intensive Courses in the winter. But this year, they came up with a new conference, a mini-colloquium. This conference will include both chant courses and polyphony courses in different levels. The conference faculty include Wilko Brouwers, Scott Turkington, Dr. William Mahrt and Kevin Clarke who will serve as the organist. The repertoire is now finalized and the music book is available for downloads here.

If you have never experienced a CMAA sacred music conference before, this video from the Colloquium 2015 may give you some idea of what you might be singing:

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

About Andrew Leung

Andrew Leung currently serves the music director of Vox Antiqua, conductor of the Cecilian Singers, and music director at Our Lady of China Church.—(Read full biography).

Surprising Popularity!

One of our most popular downloads has proven to be the organ accompaniment to “The Monastery Hymnal” (131 pages). This book was compiled, arranged, and edited by Achille P. Bragers, who studied at the Lemmensinstituut (Belgium) about thirty years before that school produced the NOH. Bragers might be considered an example of Belgium “Stile Antico” whereas Flor Peeters and Jules Van Nuffel represented Belgium “Prima Pratica.” You can download the hymnal by Bragers at this link.

—Jeff Ostrowski

15 February 2021 • To Capitalize…?

In the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, there is a question regarding whether to capitalize the word “christi.” The Vulgata does not, because Psalm 27 is not specifically referring to Our Lord, but rather to God’s “anointed one.” However, Missals tend to capitalize it, such as the official 1962 Missal and also a book from 1777 called Missel de Paris. Something tells me Monsignor Knox would not capitalize it.

—Jeff Ostrowski

15 February 2021 • “Sung vs. Spoken”

We have spoken quite a bit about “sung vs. spoken” antiphons. We have also noted that the texts of the Graduale Romanum sometimes don’t match the Missal texts (in the Extraordinary Form) because the Mass Propers are older than Saint Jerome’s Vulgate, and sometimes came from the ITALA versions of Sacred Scripture. On occasion, the Missal itself doesn’t match the Vulgate—cf. the Introit “Esto Mihi.” The Vulgate has: “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in domum refúgii…” but the Missal and Graduale Romanum use “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in locum refúgii…” The 1970s “spoken propers” use the traditional version, as you can see.

—Jeff Ostrowski