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Views from the Choir Loft

Catholics Get The “Chants” of a Lifetime…

Guest Author · September 18, 2019

This article by Peter Jesserer Smith appeared in the National Catholic Register on 6 July 2019.
Corpus Christi Watershed was granted permission to reprint on 31 July 2019.

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81596 sperabo ORE THAN SEVENTY Catholic men and women gathered from across the United States and countries abroad for an intensive week at the Sacred Music Symposium to bring alive a powerful form of evangelization in their parishes: sacred chant at Mass and vespers.

“The marriage of music and the word is incredibly powerful and transforms people’s lives,” Richard Clark, director of music for the Archdiocese of Boston and one of the conductors teaching at the week-long music-immersion program, told the Register.

The Sacred Music Symposium is a joint project of Corpus Christi Watershed and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) held yearly in Los Angeles. The event is geared toward choir directors and choristers, especially those who sing at Roman Rite liturgies in both the ordinary or extraordinary form of Mass and vespers. The theme for this year’s symposium, which was held June 24-28, focused on “Hymnody and Your Volunteer Choir.” Participants immersed themselves in the singing of medieval music, plainsong (unaccompanied Western chants), hymnody (the singing of hymns), and polyphony (music with two or more lines of independent melody) throughout the week and sang solemn vespers every day.

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Students had opportunities to sing a new composition by Kevin Allen, as well as sacred music written by medieval and Renaissance composers such as Palestrina and Father Cristóbal de Morales. The week also gave participants the opportunity for private study in composition and conducting, and included break-out sessions on topics such as how to propose and implement successfully Gregorian chant in parishes and schools, or how singers and choir directors can thrive amid the challenges of the sacred-music vocation. At the end of the week, participants sang for the first Mass of a newly ordained FSSP priest, Father Luc Poirier, at the Mission San Fernando founded in Los Angeles in 1797. The final day concluded with the production of a rehearsal video by the students, which was later selected to be used as #84 for the Saint Jean de Brébeuf Hymnal project.

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Sound Evangelization

Clark said sacred music is “an important part of evangelization” and that, for him and the other conductors and composers, it was a “privilege” to teach the students at the symposium. “The purpose of sacred music, as Pope Pius X talked about, is the sanctification and edification of the people.” Sacred music reaches back in sacred history to the Israelites chanting the Psalms in Hebrew in the Temple.

The symposium gathered people of all ages, but Clark said it was significant that participants, on average, were in their 20s and committed to carrying on this beautiful tradition. “What they’re doing with music is helping the transmission of faith,” he said. “It’s an incredible experience to get them all to sing in one voice,” Clark also said, adding that after 24 hours the unified sound of the participant choir emerges, and “after three to four days it’s incredibly powerful.”

Thomas Quackenbush, dean of students and a teacher at St. Monica’s Academy in Montrose, California, told the Register he is directing the high-school choir program next year and joined the symposium “to immerse myself in the beauty of sacred music with Catholics who believe what they sing.” — “Probably more than anything, it has been a real experience of the sacred,” he said, and a “huge blessing.” Quackenbush said it was a “wonderful experience” to sing sacred music as a form of prayer. The experience introduced him not only to Gregorian chant, but also to vespers.

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Practical Approach

The symposium’s teachers aimed to give participants, whether they were choristers or music directors, “the best tools” that would empower them to pass on the knowledge of sacred music to their parishes—a kind of “train the trainer” approach—according to Kevin Allen, conductor of the Schola Laudis at the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Chicago and one of the symposium’s teachers. “The most important reason was to give people in parishes, people in the trenches, real tools from practitioners who are quite accomplished in the field,” he said. The conference was also an excellent platform for networking, fellowship, and shop-talk among its participants, Clark said. “You make a lot of friends, and it feels like you’ve known them forever, even though it’s been three or four days,” he said.

Nicole Sutherland, who is directing a children’s choir at St. Sebastian School in Santa Paula, California, told the Register that the symposium provided ample time, particularly around lunch and dinner, to talk with others who are passionate about sacred music and form friendships. Overall, she said, the symposium was eye-opening. “I was expecting a lot, and it was more than I expected,” Sutherland said. “Personally being immersed in the music, singing all day every day, I feel that my skills have been really developed with this focus,” she added.

Allen said it was also humbling to see participants’ enthusiasm and eagerness to learn, because they clearly intended to absorb this knowledge to share it with others. Their aim is to help people realize the beauty of what takes place on the altar at Mass by immersing them in the beauty that comes from the choir loft. “The absolute best tool for evangelization is the Mass, and the Mass is the most beautiful thing we can do to soften and win souls for Christ,” he said.

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A Church in Harmony

Allen said the Sacred Music Symposium aims at fulfilling the vision of the Second Vatican Council in Sacrosanctum Concilium that called for the restoration of Gregorian chant, as well as the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours, morning prayer (lauds) and evening prayer (vespers), in regular parish life.

“Church documents state very clearly that vespers should be offered for the people, particularly at the cathedral,” Allen said. Most people know, he added, that vespers is “a very rare occurrence at cathedrals, let alone our parishes,” but the hope is that training people to chant vespers “would help that practice become more widespread, as the Church wants us to do.” Clark said anyone can pick up sacred music with the right direction and instruction. Whether it is “simple or more ornate,” sacred music is a prayer that speaks to people about God, and choirs are meant to take that prayer out into the world.

Clark said, “I tell people that you’ll affect people in ways you may never know.”


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

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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President’s Corner

    PDF Download • “Polyphonic Extension” (Kevin Allen) for Gloria III
    EVIN ALLEN was commissioned by Sacred Music Symposium 2025 to compose a polyphonic ‘middle section’ for the GLORIA from Mass III, often denoted by its trope name: Missa Kyrie Deus sempiterne. This year, I’m traveling from Singapore to serve on the symposium faculty. I will be conducting Palestrina’s ‘Ave Maria’ as well as teaching plainsong to the men. A few days ago, I was asked to record rehearsal videos for this beautiful polyphonic extension. (See below.) This polyphonic composition fits ‘inside’ GLORIA III. That is, the congregation sings for the beginning and end, but the choir alone adds polyphony to the middle. The easiest way to understand how everything fits together is by examining this congregational insert. You may download the score, generously made available to the whole world—free of charge—by CORPUS CHRISTI WATERSHED:
    *  PDF Download • Gloria III ‘Middle Section’ (Kevin Allen)
    Free rehearsal videos for each individual voice await you at #24366. Related News • My colleague, Jeff Ostrowski, composed an organ accompaniment for this same GLORIA a few months ago. Obviously, the organist should drop out when the polyphony is being sung.
    —Corrinne May
    “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

Quick Thoughts

    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

Random Quote

After sixty years as teacher, composer, and organist, I may state that the Gregorian Chant should be part of the basic material of any musical education, be it religious or secular. The study of it enormously enlarges the spiritual background of any musician. Whereas students in literature will always be required to study Dante, Petrarch and Chaucer, why neglect Gregorian in music education?

— Flor Peeters

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