Views from the Choir Loft

Report • Hong Kong Summer Choral Workshops

Andrew Leung · September 7, 2017

HAVEN’T BEEN POSTING too much lately and I apologize for that. I have been very busy with the following workshops. In August, I conducted two Summer Choral Workshops for church singers in Hong Kong. The workshops were about six hours long and about fifty singers participated. Participants were introduced to traditional sacred music, both Gregorian chant and polyphony, of the Catholic Church. Both workshops were concluded with Sung Masses in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Here are some pictures from the workshops and the Masses

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LEARNED A LOT in this workshop through teaching and it was amazing to be able to work with church singers in Hong Kong again (I did a similar workshop last summer). A lot of the participants come from regular parish choirs, and most of them don’t have the chance to sing chant and polyphony in a regular basis. It was definitely an unforgettable experience for many to be able to sing choral pieces by European masters like: Tallis, Byrd, Allegri, Rheinberger and Faure. We were also very grateful to Dr. Peter Kwasniewski for allowing us to use his setting of Tantum Ergo during one of the workshops.

Here is a recording of Gregorio Allegri’s Adoremus in Aeternum, which we sang during communion on the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. Keep in mind that participants rarely get the opportunity to sing pieces like this and the recordings never do justice to the actual sound. The piece is fairly simple, especially for small church choirs, and is suitable to be sung during communion and Eucharistic adoration. It is available for free download on Choral Public Domain Library.

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).

“Music List” • 5th Sunday of Easter (Year C)

Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for the 5th Sunday of Easter (18 May 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. The Communion Antiphon was ‘restored’ the 1970 Missale Romanum (a.k.a. MISSALE RECENS) from an obscure martyr’s feast. Our choir is on break this Sunday, so the selections are relatively simple in nature.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Communion Chant (5th Sunday of Easter)

This coming Sunday—18 May 2025—is the 5th Sunday of Easter, Year C (MISSALE RECENS). The COMMUNION ANTIPHON “Ego Sum Vitis Vera” assigned by the Church is rather interesting, because it comes from a rare martyr’s feast: viz. Saint Vitalis of Milan. It was never part of the EDITIO VATICANA, which is the still the Church’s official edition. As a result, the musical notation had to be printed in the Ordo Cantus Missae, which appeared in 1970.

—Jeff Ostrowski

“Music List” • 4th Sunday of Easter (Year C)

Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for the 4th Sunday of Easter (11 May 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. I don’t know a more gorgeous ENTRANCE CHANT than the one given there: Misericórdia Dómini Plena Est Terra.

—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