Views from the Choir Loft

Compline in the Home – via Podcasts!

Veronica Brandt · April 25, 2020

We’ve been praying Compline as a family now for years. We follow the 1962 Liber Usualis for the most part, adding in a Te Lucis tune for Marian Feasts which I found in a German Compline booklet.

Our booklet is now fairly complete. Having a booklet is helpful, but many people have asked to hear recordings. Although it varies less than the other hours of the Divine Office, there are still substantial changes, especially around this time of the Church’s year.

The latest version of our Compline Booklet is available at compline.brandt.id.au along with almost daily recordings from our family.

Other recordings of Compline which I am aware of include:

The monks of the Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux: barrouxchant.com have all their Divine Office available following the Antiphonale Monasticum.
The new Gregorian Neumz project: neumz.com following the Liturgy of the Hours. They have released recordings of Holy Week and a new app is in the pipeline.
A paid extension to the Universalis App offers Sung Compline from the Liturgy of the Hours sung by the Schola Cantorum of the London Oratory School
A reader suggested this Dominican Compline App including recordings from the Friars from St. Dominic Priory (St. Louis, MO)

But I’m not aware of one following the 1962 books. So, we’ll keep recording!

Looking back over my earlier posts on my family’s adventures with Compline: in 2014 I wrote about Working on a Compline booklet.Then in 2016 I shared a discovery: Compline Online with Chant Notation . Last year I looked at taking the first steps in How to Install Compline in Your Home.

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

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About Veronica Brandt

Veronica Brandt holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering. She lives near Sydney, Australia, with her husband and six children.—(Read full biography).

20 October 2020 • “What we can’t share”

Almighty God has given to us the example of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America, whose feast day we celebrated yesterday. Of course, along with those eight martyrs we honor their associates, e.g Father François Bressani. I can’t share with you the torments Father Bressani underwent at the hands of Iroquois: it is too brutal. It would tear your heart out. But I will share what Bressani’s Superior said, after receiving a letter from him: “The letter is soiled and ill-written; because the writer has only one finger left on his right hand, and cannot prevent the blood from his wounds—which are still open—from staining the paper. His ink is gunpowder mixed with water, and his table is the earth.” If you have the stomach for it, read what Father Bressani (d. 1672) underwent for Jesus Christ. Let his example help us never fall into sins of impurity, avarice, ingratitude, or envy.

—Jeff Ostrowski

13 October 2020 • Chopin talks Bach

My “pianist pedigree” goes from my teacher through Wiktor Łabuński through Felix Blumenfeld, who studied with Anton Rubinstein. I always considered myself part of the “Bach-Mozart-Chopin school” as opposed to the “Handel-Beethoven-Liszt school.” (Needless to say, there’s great overlap between these schools.) Before giving a concert, Frédéric Chopin would always shut himself up in a room and play through Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. The year Chopin died, he spent considerable time with the painter, Eugène Delacroix (d. 1863), who recounts hearing Chopin launch into a monologue on the transcendence of J.S. Bach, insisting that “the fugue is like pure logic in music,” and that “to know fugue deeply is to be acquainted with the element of all reason and all consistency in music.”

—Jeff Ostrowski

12 October 2020 • True Story

Before a Low Mass, the priest ascends the Altar to place the Chalice, check the altar Missal, and do other “preparing” tasks. The organist must be prepared to play here, and—depending upon the priest—this can be of surprising length! For certain priests, I can easily play all six verses of a hymn while he’s doing these tasks. In the Ordinary Form, I believe too many have abandoned the preparation time before Mass (vesting, praying, keeping silence, and so on). I remember waiting for a priest to arrive in Corpus Christi, so I could ask him about the music. He never did arrive, because he had gotten into his vehicle wearing his chasuble, parked, hopped out of his truck (fully vested), and literally “processed” in as he entered the Church…true story.

—Jeff Ostrowski