Views from the Choir Loft

Litany of St Joseph

Veronica Brandt · January 28, 2020 ·

SINGING LITANIES is probably an acquired taste. I haven’t found anyone yet who loves them straight out of the box. When teaching my kids, they always give you that look as if to ask “how much longer does this have to go?”. Maybe letting them know that this one is the shortest one in the Liber Usualis will help them feel better.

On the positive side, litanies are easy to learn. The same responses occur over and over again. One run through may be all you require – and all that you can extract from limited attention spans.

Typing up litanies is a challenge in itself. The Liber Usualis and other books align several lines of invocations under the one line of chant. Software like gregorio is designed for perfectly aligning one line of text at a time. Asking it to spread the notes out and align a few more lines underneath takes more patience and some clever tricks.

* * Litany of St. Joseph (PDF)Download

Although I’m sure some people will be impressed with that PDF, most times when I present people with a score, they complain that they can’t read this four line stuff and they will require a recording. Here is a quick recording of my eldest son and myself singing through the Litany of St Joseph in Latin.

* * Litany of St Joseph (MP3)Download

And may St Joseph bless you and your family with good weather, patience, humility, work, housing, safe travels and a happy death. St Joseph is also one of the patron saints of confectioners.

About Veronica Brandt

Veronica Brandt holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering. As editor, she has produced fine publications (as well as valuable reprints) dealing with Gregorian chant, hymnody, Latin, and other subjects. These publications are distinguished on account of their tastefulness. She lives in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia, with her husband Peter and six children.

Could Pope St. Pius X Sing?

“On 12 March 1908, the complete publication of the Roman Gradual was issued by the Vatican Press. On that very day, Dom Pothier solemnly presented the first copy to the Holy Father. A witness of the audience says that Pius X wished to be the first to see the new book; he opened it at random, at page 128 of the supplement pro aliquibus locis—it was the Introit of the new Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Pope sang it with perfect taste to the last note.” (Catholic Choirmaster, February 1915)

—Jeff Ostrowski

Julius Bas Accompaniment

A very prolific harmonizer of Gregorian chant in the early 20th century was Mr. Julius Bas. He often uses a very strange technique, wherein he employs rests to eliminate the Alto, Tenor, and Bass voices. Consider what he did with “Lumen ad revelationem” here:

* JPEG • Lumen ad revelationem

It seems quite lazy, and I’ve never seen anyone else use such a technique, although Dr. Peter Wagner often switched to parallel octaves when he ran out of ideas… (Yuck!)

—Jeff Ostrowski

Hitting wrong notes

Fr. Valentine Young, OFM, used to say: “The organist can play 1,000 correct notes and one wrong note—and the only thing people will care about is the wrong note.” Last Sunday I hit some wrong notes, and felt bad. Then I remembered a story about Rudolf Serkin and started to chuckle. Charles Rosen (or was it Leon Fleisher?) told the story of Serkin playing a Beethoven Sonata in front of a large audience. The theme is all in octaves; but Serkin hit some wrong notes, and played parallel 7ths instead. This so unnerved him that every time the theme returned, he played the entire thing in parallel 7ths! We must remember that even the greatest hit wrong notes. Alfred Cortot, Vladimir Horowitz, Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer, Sviatoslav Richter, Egon Petri—they all hit wrong notes, which we can hear on recordings. (Josef Hofmann was an exception, but he was super-human so he doesn’t count!)

—Jeff Ostrowski