Views from the Choir Loft

Los Angeles: Less Than A Week Away!

Cynthia Ostrowski · May 23, 2016

AVE YOU EVER BEEN to the Latin Mass? How about a Solemn High Mass offered by the FSSP District Superior? How about a Mass where sixty people sing polyphony and Gregorian chant under the baton of famous conductors? How about Pontifical Benediction?

I have huge news!

We cordially invite you to a momentous event to be held TUESDAY (May 31st) in West Hollywood:

4:30pm •• SOLEMN HIGH MASS —with FSSP District Superior

7:00pm •• CONFIRMATION & BENEDICTION —with Archbishop José H. Gomez

8:15pm •• CATERED DINNER —free to all who attend

(Please notice that Mass no longer begins at 3:30pm.)

Location : Saint Victor Church, 8634 Holloway Drive, West Hollywood, CA 90069

OES YOUR SPIRITUAL LIFE need a boost? Do you feel a desire to draw closer to our Lord? Want to expose your children to the Extraordinary Form? Please come! Taking part in these ceremonies with devotion would be a magnificent way to show gratitude to our Lord. Moreover, the feast on 31 May is “Queenship of Mary”—and our Lord has promised special graces to those who honor his mother.

Your presence will show Archbishop Gomez that he was correct to ask the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter to begin an APOSTOLATE in Los Angeles. In fact, there’s no better way to demonstrate how we Angelenos value the traditional liturgy.

By the way, the music will be sensational, because it’s being provided by the Sacred Music Symposium. Famous conductors are traveling here specifically to direct these ceremonies.

Please help us spread the word!

A discussion about this post is underway.

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