Views from the Choir Loft

You Will Want To Download These!

Jeff Ostrowski · April 11, 2016

HE FOLLOWING PRAYERS—required for Confirmation in the Extraordinary Form—have never been written out … until today!

Toward the beginning:

* * PDF Download • Versicles & Responses (“Part 1 of 3”)

When the bishop washes his hands:

* * PDF Download • CONFIRMA HOC DEUS (“Part 2 of 3”)

Toward the end:

* * PDF Download • Versicles & Responses (“Part 3 of 3”)

If you look in the Saint Gregory Hymnal, Mr. Montani attempted to notate some of these chants, but he made mistakes. Specifically, Mr. Montani seems not to realize that priests can choose from several tones. In fact, when the 2nd ferial tone is chosen, the beginning (“Ostende nobis, etc.”) should probably be sung recto tono—although very few priests seem to realize this. These issues were dealt with here:

* * Tutorial For Priests: Various Tones Fully Notated

…but I probably should have done the beginning prayers in “Ferial Tone B” recto tono. This is not “traditional,” but it seems to be the “correct” way.

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

About Jeff Ostrowski

Jeff Ostrowski holds his B.M. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas (2004). He resides with his wife and children in Los Angeles.—(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