Views from the Choir Loft

This Saturday! • Solemn Pontifcal Mass in D.C.

Andrew Leung · April 26, 2018

WAS INFORMED THAT a Solemn Pontifical Mass will be offered in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception this coming Saturday, April 28, at 1pm.

The Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample, Archbishop of Portland, Oregon, will be celebrating the Mass in the Extraordinary Form; and he will be assisted by famous clergy from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. The Mass is being celebrated in honor of the 10th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum.

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If you are living near Washington DC, this is something you do not want to miss! The music—including Victoria’s Missa Salve Regina and other Renaissance motets—will be provided by the Basilica Choir; and the Propers will be sung by the schola of St. Mary Mother of God Parish at the nearby Chinatown.

The Mass will be broadcast by EWTN.

AM ALSO AWARE OF another Solemn High Mass that happened about two weeks ago on Low Sunday (Sunday within the Octave of Easter or Divine Mercy Sunday). The Mass was held at the National Shrine of St. Alphonsus of Liguori in Baltimore, MD, which was recently entrusted to the Fraternity. The historic Shrine was founded in 1845 and exists within the Diocese of Baltimore, the oldest Catholic Diocese in the United States.

Pictures of the Mass can be found on An American Photographer. The Mass was celebrated by Fr. Joel Kiefer, FSSP, the pastor of the Shrine. Fr. Kiefer was the associate pastor at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Atlanta, GA, prior his current assignment. I had the privilege to meet him when I was the director of music at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Conyers, GA. I would sing with the schola at St. Francis de Sales occasionally on special feast days during weekdays.

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).

“Booklet of Eucharistic Hymns” (16 pages)

I was asked to create a booklet for my parish to use during our CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION on 22 June 2025. Would you be willing to look over the DRAFT BOOKLET (16 pages) I came up with? I tried to include a variety of hymns: some have a refrain; some are in major, others in minor; some are metered, others are plainsong; some are in Spanish, some are in Latin, but most are in English. Normally, we’d use the Brébeuf Hymnal—but we can’t risk having our congregation carry those heavy books all over the city to various churches.

—Jeff Ostrowski

“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

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