Views from the Choir Loft

Volunteer Choirs • Rehearsal “Tricks”

Jeff Ostrowski · August 22, 2017

ERY WISE WORDS were spoken to me thirteen years ago by a priest: “Only two people in the whole school are forced to publicly demonstrate their work: the choirmaster and the coach. The other teachers can fool around all year without consequences.” When your choir sings at Mass (or when your school children perform a concert) everyone will see whether you have failed. The same is true of the coach—and mulligans aren’t allowed. Only our colleagues realize how difficult and stressful our vocation is. The singers certainly don’t know what the director goes through, and before becoming a director I was undoubtedly the world’s most annoying choir member. ¹

I recently uploaded an SATB Eucharistic hymn whose melody by Heinrich Isaac (d. 1517) was harmonized by J.S. Bach. Did you notice the solfeggio markings? They appear on the PDF score, which I hope you downloaded. Here’s how that sounds:

Your singers will always resist solfeggio at first, but you must not give them the option. And believe me, when you get in front of a volunteer choir, solfège will save your life.

We hope to release a whole bunch of rehearsal techniques, repertoire lists, presentations, and scores from the 2017 Sacred Music Symposium. Keep an eye on the blog each week, because that’s where they will appear.

NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1 I still shudder at some of the comments I made to Simon Carrington when I was still a freshman in college.

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).

Surprising Popularity!

One of our most popular downloads has proven to be the organ accompaniment to “The Monastery Hymnal” (131 pages). This book was compiled, arranged, and edited by Achille P. Bragers, who studied at the Lemmensinstituut (Belgium) about thirty years before that school produced the NOH. Bragers might be considered an example of Belgium “Stile Antico” whereas Flor Peeters and Jules Van Nuffel represented Belgium “Prima Pratica.” You can download the hymnal by Bragers at this link.

—Jeff Ostrowski

15 February 2021 • To Capitalize…?

In the Introit for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, there is a question regarding whether to capitalize the word “christi.” The Vulgata does not, because Psalm 27 is not specifically referring to Our Lord, but rather to God’s “anointed one.” However, Missals tend to capitalize it, such as the official 1962 Missal and also a book from 1777 called Missel de Paris. Something tells me Monsignor Knox would not capitalize it.

—Jeff Ostrowski

15 February 2021 • “Sung vs. Spoken”

We have spoken quite a bit about “sung vs. spoken” antiphons. We have also noted that the texts of the Graduale Romanum sometimes don’t match the Missal texts (in the Extraordinary Form) because the Mass Propers are older than Saint Jerome’s Vulgate, and sometimes came from the ITALA versions of Sacred Scripture. On occasion, the Missal itself doesn’t match the Vulgate—cf. the Introit “Esto Mihi.” The Vulgate has: “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in domum refúgii…” but the Missal and Graduale Romanum use “Esto mihi in Deum protectórem et in locum refúgii…” The 1970s “spoken propers” use the traditional version, as you can see.

—Jeff Ostrowski

The representative Protestant collection, entitled “Hymns, Ancient and Modern”—in substance a compromise between the various sections of conflicting religious thought in the Establishment—is a typical instance. That collection is indebted to Catholic writers for a large fractional part of its contents. If the hymns be estimated which are taken from Catholic sources, directly or imitatively, the greater and more valuable part of its contents owes its origin to the Church.

— Orby Shipley (1884)