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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

    Luis Martínez Must Go!
    Sevilla Cathedral (entry dated 13 December 1564): The chapter orders Luis Martínez, a cathedral chaplain, to stay away from the choirbook-stand when the rest of the singers gather around it to sing polyphony—the reason being that “he throws the others out of tune.” [Excerpt from “The Life of Father Francisco Guerrero.”]
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Urgent! • We Desperately Need Funds!
    A few days ago, the president of Corpus Christi Watershed posted this urgent appeal for funds. Please help us make sure we’re never forced to place our content behind a paywall. We feel it’s crucial that 100% of our content remains free to everyone. We’re a tiny 501(c)3 public charity, entirely dependent upon the generosity of small donors. We have no endowment and no major donors. We run no advertisements and have no savings. We beg you to consider donating $4.00 per month. Thank you!
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “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

Quick Thoughts

    Pope Pius XII Hymnal?
    Have you ever heard of the Pope Pius XII Hymnal? It’s a real book, published in the United States in 1959. Here’s a sample page so you can verify with your own eyes it existed.
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    “Hybrid” Chant Notation?
    Over the years, many have tried to ‘simplify’ plainsong notation. The O’Fallon Propers attempted to simplify the notation—but ended up making matters worse. Dr. Karl Weinmann tried to do the same in the time of Pope Saint Pius X by replacing each porrectus. You can examine a specimen from his edition and see whether you agree he complicated matters. In particular, look at what he did with éxsules fílii Hévae.
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    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

Random Quote

“One must pray to God not only with theologically precise formulas, but also in a beautiful and dignified way. The Christian community must make an examination of conscience so that the beauty of music and song will return increasingly to the liturgy.”

— Pope Saint John Paul II (26 February 2003)

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