Views from the Choir Loft

Sacred Music Camp in Allentown, NJ

Fr. David Friel · June 16, 2018

ET ANOTHER opportunity for young people to learn sacred music this summer in the United States has been announced. In addition to the annual chant camp in San Diego (which has spread to the Bay Area), we highlighted last week the inaugural Cantate Domino Festival in Philadelphia. Today, we pass on the happy news that a new Sacred Music Camp will be hosted by St. John the Baptist Church in Allentown, NJ.

This will be a three day event, running from 10 AM to 2 PM, August 14–16, 2018. The camp will conclude with Mass in the Extraordinary Form at 7 PM on August 16.

Sacred Music Camp is open to students in grades 3 through 12. Children with and without experience in Gregorian chant are welcome. Participants will learn to read chant notation, and they will receive training in vocal technique and musicianship.

Instructors will include Peter Carter and Lauren Walters, who serve as director of sacred music and coordinator of religious education, respectively, at St. John the Baptist Church in Allentown, NJ. Last fall, the parish hosted a workshop to introduce non-musicians to important themes in sacred music.

Online registration for Sacred Music Camp is available here.

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

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel served as Parochial Vicar at St. Anselm Parish in Northeast Philly. He is currently a doctoral candidate in liturgical theology at The Catholic University of America.—(Read full biography).

11 October 2021 • “Sing All Verses?”

Some claim Catholics deserve condemnation because (unlike Protestants) Catholics often omit verses when singing hymns at Mass. Is that true? The wonderful Sophia Institute Press—as part of a series on authentic sacred music—has provided an answer (PDF) to this question.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Where do Catholics find hymns?

The wonderful Sophia Institute Press has begun a “Q+A” section which tackles common liturgical questions, and here’s a sample: “At a conference I recently attended, the speaker said hymns don’t belong at Mass; was he telling the truth?” And you can read the answer. To access the complete set (which is a work in progress), scroll towards the bottom of this link.

—Jeff Ostrowski

28 September 2021 • FEEDBACK

From a reader: “I have read the pages explaining the Blessed Sacrament in the Brébeuf hymnal and plan on continuing to contemplate them. Moreover, the Christ the King Hymn is beautifully sung on the recording you posted (to the Watershed blog), and I wish my church would sing these hymns instead of modern ones from Choral Praise. We receive a wonderful explication of the Eucharist through this hymn. I am always impressed at the simple yet beautiful melodies in the Brebeuf hymnal.”

—Jeff Ostrowski

“We must say it plainly: the Roman rite as we knew it exists no more. It has gone. Some walls of the structure have fallen, others have been altered—we can look at it as a ruin or as the partial foundation of a new building. Think back, if you remember it, to the Latin sung High Mass with Gregorian chant. Compare it with the modern post-Vatican II Mass. It is not only the words, but also the tunes and even certain actions that are different. In fact it is a different liturgy of the Mass.”

— Fr. Joseph Gelineau (1978)