Views from the Choir Loft

Random Acts of Beauty: the Vestment Fund

Veronica Brandt · December 17, 2016 ·

OMETHING THAT STANDS OUT looking through the Campion Missal is the proliferation of beauty. The church is huge with lots of ornate details. The vestments are jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

Some Catholics could go to Mass every Sunday and never come across anything that elaborate. Such furnishings and vestments would be expensive, not to mention difficult to clean! Efficiency and practicality hold sway.

Simple polyester chasubles make sense when you think of all the hundreds of parishes and priests to equip, but if you consider each priest is an individual laying down so much of his life for Christ and His Church, then surely we can make some sacrifice to see he is suitably clothed to enter the Holy of Holies.

The stories behind vestments can be enthralling. Once you start noticing them, it opens up a whole new avenue for distractions at Mass, especially ad orientem when the design on the back of a chasuble is especially intriguing.

This Christmas season, consider contributing to the Vestment Fund for Priests and Seminarians

About Veronica Brandt

Veronica Brandt holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering. As editor, she has produced fine publications (as well as valuable reprints) dealing with Gregorian chant, hymnody, Latin, and other subjects. These publications are distinguished on account of their tastefulness. She lives in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia, with her husband Peter and six children.

Could Pope St. Pius X Sing?

“On 12 March 1908, the complete publication of the Roman Gradual was issued by the Vatican Press. On that very day, Dom Pothier solemnly presented the first copy to the Holy Father. A witness of the audience says that Pius X wished to be the first to see the new book; he opened it at random, at page 128 of the supplement pro aliquibus locis—it was the Introit of the new Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Pope sang it with perfect taste to the last note.” (Catholic Choirmaster, February 1915)

—Jeff Ostrowski

Julius Bas Accompaniment

A very prolific harmonizer of Gregorian chant in the early 20th century was Mr. Julius Bas. He often uses a very strange technique, wherein he employs rests to eliminate the Alto, Tenor, and Bass voices. Consider what he did with “Lumen ad revelationem” here:

* JPEG • Lumen ad revelationem

It seems quite lazy, and I’ve never seen anyone else use such a technique, although Dr. Peter Wagner often switched to parallel octaves when he ran out of ideas… (Yuck!)

—Jeff Ostrowski

Hitting wrong notes

Fr. Valentine Young, OFM, used to say: “The organist can play 1,000 correct notes and one wrong note—and the only thing people will care about is the wrong note.” Last Sunday I hit some wrong notes, and felt bad. Then I remembered a story about Rudolf Serkin and started to chuckle. Charles Rosen (or was it Leon Fleisher?) told the story of Serkin playing a Beethoven Sonata in front of a large audience. The theme is all in octaves; but Serkin hit some wrong notes, and played parallel 7ths instead. This so unnerved him that every time the theme returned, he played the entire thing in parallel 7ths! We must remember that even the greatest hit wrong notes. Alfred Cortot, Vladimir Horowitz, Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer, Sviatoslav Richter, Egon Petri—they all hit wrong notes, which we can hear on recordings. (Josef Hofmann was an exception, but he was super-human so he doesn’t count!)

—Jeff Ostrowski