Views from the Choir Loft

Popular Posts From 2015

Cynthia Ostrowski · December 29, 2015

Below are some popular articles from 2015. Unfortunately, the list is not exhaustive, because Facebook makes such lists difficult to assemble. If you didn’t read them, you might want to check them out. Here they are in no particular order:

RICHARD CLARK:

Carpeting Is the Enemy of Congregational Singing

Five Things Directors and Choirs Must Remember This Week

ANDREW MOTYKA:

“Proper Of The Mass” (Ignatius Press)

FR. DAVID FRIEL:

Pastoral Difficulties with Recently Ordained Priests

The Future of the Pipe Organ

Bishop Conley & Advent “Ad Orientem”

DR. LUCAS TAPPAN:

One Sure Way To Destroy Your Child’s Musical Potential

Where Have All The Organists Gone?

JEFF OSTROWSKI:

Cardinal Sarah’s Powerful Letter Available In English!

Six Things To Know About USCCB Hymn Approval

PDF Download • Extremely Rare Hymnal (1952)

Top Six Liturgical Quotes By Robert Cardinal Sarah

Short, Fresh, & Beautiful • SATB “Ave Maris Stella”

CHRISTOPHER MUELLER:

A Striking Approach To Performing Gregorian Chant

ANDREW LEUNG:

Papal Master of Ceremonies on receiving Communion

Understanding the Sacred

DR. ALFRED CALABRESE:

An Antidote For Clericalism: Sung Vespers

VERONICA BRANDT:

Easy Organ Hymns for Catholics

How to do Marian Hymns

GUEST AUTHOR:

“No Approval Needed for Substitute Songs” says USCCB

“Saving” Gregorian Chant In The Ordinary Form

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

About Cynthia Ostrowski

Cynthia Ostrowski holds a bachelor's degree (2005) in Geographic Information Science and a minor in Computer Science from Texas A&M University Corpus Christi.—(Read full biography).

PDF Download • Vespers for the Dead

Mr. Albert Bloomfield kindly sent me “Vespers for the Dead”—which does not fulfill a priest’s obligation to pray the Divine Office, yet is often prayed when a loved one dies. Here is formatting A, and here it is again with formatting B.

—Jeff Ostrowski

20 October 2020 • “What we can’t share”

Almighty God has given to us the example of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America, whose feast day we celebrated yesterday. Of course, along with those eight martyrs we honor their associates, e.g Father François Bressani. I can’t share with you the torments Father Bressani underwent at the hands of Iroquois: it is too brutal. It would tear your heart out. But I will share what Bressani’s Superior said, after receiving a letter from him: “The letter is soiled and ill-written; because the writer has only one finger left on his right hand, and cannot prevent the blood from his wounds—which are still open—from staining the paper. His ink is gunpowder mixed with water, and his table is the earth.” If you have the stomach for it, read what Father Bressani (d. 1672) underwent for Jesus Christ. Let his example help us never fall into sins of impurity, avarice, ingratitude, or envy.

—Jeff Ostrowski

13 October 2020 • Chopin talks Bach

My “pianist pedigree” goes from my teacher through Wiktor Łabuński through Felix Blumenfeld, who studied with Anton Rubinstein. I always considered myself part of the “Bach-Mozart-Chopin school” as opposed to the “Handel-Beethoven-Liszt school.” (Needless to say, there’s great overlap between these schools.) Before giving a concert, Frédéric Chopin would always shut himself up in a room and play through Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. The year Chopin died, he spent considerable time with the painter, Eugène Delacroix (d. 1863), who recounts hearing Chopin launch into a monologue on the transcendence of J.S. Bach, insisting that “the fugue is like pure logic in music,” and that “to know fugue deeply is to be acquainted with the element of all reason and all consistency in music.”

—Jeff Ostrowski