Views from the Choir Loft

Sacred Music Boot Camp 2020

Fr. David Friel · October 12, 2020

UILDING on the success of the first-ever virtual Sacred Music Colloquium back in July, the Church Music Association of America (CMAA) will host a Sacred Music Boot Camp later this week via Zoom. One of the presenters will be our own Dr. Lucas Tappan. This event will feature practical chant instruction and lectures designed to introduce attendees more broadly to the treasury of Catholic sacred music. In addition to the instruction and lectures, there will also be opportunities for prayer.

Among the breakout sessions being offered are many interesting topics, including:

The Hierarchy of the Sung Liturgy: When and What to Sing
How to Read Square Notes
The Basics of Conducting Chant
Building a Music Program Budget
How to Start a Chant Choir

All of the sessions on Thursday evening will be offered both in English and in Spanish.

The dates for the boot camp will be Thursday through Saturday, October 15–17, 2020. The program will run from 5:00 to 10:30 PM (ET) on Thursday and Friday and from 10:00 AM to 6:15 PM (ET) on Saturday.

More information and registration is available here.

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

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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).

PDF Download • Vespers for the Dead

Mr. Albert Bloomfield kindly sent me “Vespers for the Dead”—which does not fulfill a priest’s obligation to pray the Divine Office, yet is often prayed when a loved one dies. Here is formatting A, and here it is again with formatting B.

—Jeff Ostrowski

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