Views from the Choir Loft

A Requiem on All Souls Day at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

Richard J. Clark · October 27, 2017

EW YORK — Thursday, November 2, 2017 • 7:00 p. m. • Richard Kelley, trumpet, and I will team up again at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City in a concert of American composers Clark, Hovhaness, Pinkham, and Sowerby. In observing All Souls Day—Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, the featured work is my Requiem pour une américaine à Paris. The concert is free and open to the public.

Composed for trumpet and organ, this work is based on the Gregorian Chants of the Requiem Mass. It was directly inspired by the Requiem Mass in the Extraordinary Form at the 2012 Sacred Music Colloquium in Salt Lake City, Utah.

You can also listen to Richard Kelley and I talk about the upcoming concert with Dr. Jennifer Pascual, Director of Music for Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, on her program Sounds from the Spires. The show will air this Saturday and Sunday on SIRIUSXM 129 Radio, The Catholic Channel: Saturday, 11pm-12am, Sunday, 6am-7am and 8pm-9pm (All Eastern times)

Richard Kelley, trumpet, has been a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and plays with the Boston Pops. He has performed with artists such as Andrea Bocelli, Ray Charles, Steven Tyler, and James Taylor. He can be heard on a variety of recordings including the Oscar and Golden Globe-winning soundtrack to Disney’s Pocahontas and Stephen Paulus’ Grammy-nominated Concerto for Two Trumpets and Band.

“The career of trumpeter Richard Kelley is not only a testament to the versatility of his instrument, but also to the ability of one individual to excel across the broadest possible range of music.” — Brian McCreath, WCRB

HE CONCERT FEATURES feature two works composed specifically for Richard Kelley: Pinkham’s Scenes and Requiem pour une américaine à Paris. Recorded by Kelley and Clark, Requiem has been featured on SiriusXM’s Sounds from the Spires, various radio programs around the US, and will be performed at Saint-Eustache in Paris in 2018.

Requiem – Order CD
Requiem – Order from iTunes

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

About Richard J. Clark

Richard J. Clark is the Director of Music of the Archdiocese of Boston and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.—(Read full biography).

Music List • (2nd Sunday of Lent)

Readers have expressed interest in seeing the ORDER OF MUSIC I created for this coming Sunday, which is the 2nd Sunday of Lent (1 March 2026). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. This feast has magnificent propers. Its somber INTROIT is particularly striking—using a haunting tonality—but the COMMUNION with its fauxbourdon verses is also quite remarkable. I encourage all the readers to visit the feasts website, where the Propria Missae may be downloaded completely free of charge.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Like! Like! Like!

You won’t believe who recently gave us a “like” on the Corpus Christi Watershed FACEBOOK PAGE. Click here (PDF) to see who it was. We were not only sincerely honored, we were utterly flabbergasted. This was truly a resounding endorsement and unmistakable stamp of approval.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Which Mass?

In 1905, when the Vatican Commission on Gregorian Chant began publishing the EDITIO VATICANA—still the Church’s official edition— they assigned different Masses to different types of feasts. However, they were careful to add a note (which began with the words “Qualislibet cantus hujus Ordinarii…”) making clear “chants from one Mass may be used together with those from others.” Sadly, I sometimes worked for TLM priests who weren’t fluent in Latin. As a result, they stubbornly insisted Mass settings were ‘assigned’ to different feasts and seasons (which is false). To understand the great variety, one should examine the 1904 KYRIALE of Dr. Peter Wagner. One should also look through Dom Mocquereau’s Liber Usualis (1904), in which the Masses are all mixed up. For instance, Gloria II in his book ended up being moved to the ‘ad libitum’ appendix in the EDITIO VATICANA.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Extreme Unction

Those who search Google for “CCCC MS 079” will discover high resolution images of a medieval Pontificale (“Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 079”). One of the pages contains this absolutely gorgeous depiction of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction.

—Corpus Christi Watershed

PDF Chart • “Plainsong Rhythm”

I will go to my grave without understanding the lack of curiosity so many people have about the rhythmic modifications made by Dom André Mocquereau. For example, how can someone examine this single sheet comparison chart and at a minimum not be curious about the differences? Dom Mocquereau basically creates a LONG-SHORT LONG-SHORT rhythmic pattern—in spite of enormous and overwhelming manuscript evidence to the contrary. That’s why some scholars referred to his method as “Neo-Mensuralist” or “Neo-Mensuralism.”

—Jeff Ostrowski

PDF • “O Come All Ye Faithful” (Simplified)

I admire the harmonization of “Adeste Fideles” by David Willcocks (d. 2015), who served as director of the Royal College of Music (London, England). In 2025, I was challenged to create a simplified arrangement for organists incapable of playing the authentic version at tempo. The result was this simplified keyboard arrangement (PDF download) based on the David Willcocks version of “O Come All Ye Faithful.” Feel free to play through it and let me know what you think.

—Jeff Ostrowski