Views from the Choir Loft

Free Recordings • British Boys’ Choir

Andrew Leung · July 28, 2016

AST NIGHT, I went to a concert featuring the famous boys’ choir of the King’s College, Cambridge. The music was just splendid and beautiful! I have always love the traditional choirs formed by men and boy choristers! Their blending, energy and color is amazing. The concert reminded me of the YouTube channel, Collegium Regale. On this channel, you can find free recordings of the most famous British boys’ choirs, mostly from the choral evensongs and vespers that they performed.

Due to the recent tragedy in France, I thought it would be appropriate to share the following recording, Victoria’s Requiem sung by the Westminster Cathedral Choir at the All Souls’ Day Mass.

There are many more recordings of British Cathedral Choirs and College Choirs. I like to play them as background music as I am working and praying. I hope you would enjoy them. Here are a few recordings of the two famous Catholic boys’ choir in London, the Westminster Cathedral Choir and the London Oratory Choir:

– Choral Vespers from the London Oratory, 30th November 2011

– Choral Vespers from the London Oratory, 11th June 2014

– Choral Vespers from the London Oratory, 20th January 2016

– Choral Vespers from the Westminster Cathedral, 7th November 2012

– Choral Vespers from the Westminster Cathedral, 8th October 2014

– Choral Vespers from the Westminster Cathedral, 1st July 2015

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).

“Yahweh” in church songs?

My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.

—Jeff Ostrowski

“Music List” • Pentecost Sunday

Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.

—Jeff Ostrowski

“Truly Great Processional” • (Pipe Organ)

I stumbled upon this live recording of a PROCESSIONAL I played on the pipe organ in 2002. It’s an excerpt from a much longer composition by Sebastian Bach. In those days, there weren’t sophisticated recording devices allowing one “fix” wrong notes. (Perhaps they existed, but we didn’t have machines like that.) So it was necessary to play the entire piece from beginning to end. If you’re a church organist, feel free to download the PDF score. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until some joker uses “artificial intelligence” to play music at church … but there’s something so satisfying about playing an organ in real life.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Antiphons Don’t Match?

A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).

—Corpus Christi Watershed

When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962

There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop

—Veronica Brandt

The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum

Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.

—Daniel Tucker