• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Corpus Christi Watershed

We’re a 501(c)3 public charity established in 2006. We have no endowment, no major donors, no savings, and run no advertisements. We exist solely by the generosity of small donors.

  • Donate
  • Our Team
    • Our Editorial Policy
    • Who We Are
    • How To Contact Us
    • Sainte Marie Bulletin Articles
  • Pew Resources
    • Brébeuf Catholic Hymnal
    • Jogues Illuminated Missal
    • KYRIALE • Saint Antoine Daniel
    • Campion Missal, 3rd Edition
    • Repository • “Spanish Music”
    • Ordinary Form Feasts (Sainte-Marie)
  • MUSICAL WEBSITES
    • René Goupil Gregorian Chant
    • Noël Chabanel Psalms
    • Nova Organi Harmonia (2,279 pages)
    • Roman Missal, 3rd Edition
    • Father Enemond Massé Manuscripts
    • Lalemant Polyphonic
  • Miscellaneous
    • Site Map
    • Secrets of the Conscientious Choirmaster
    • “Wedding March” for lazy organists
    • Emporium Kevin Allen
    • Saint Jean de Lalande Library
    • Sacred Music Symposium 2023
    • The Eight Gregorian Modes
    • Gradual by Pothier’s Protégé
    • Seven (7) Considerations
Views from the Choir Loft

“My Song Is Love Unknown” • Jeff Attempts to Sing All Parts … Including the Female Voices!

Jeff Ostrowski · March 8, 2025

Update: My choir attempted this hymn
at yesterday’s Mass for the first time.
Gorgeous harmonies enter at marker 0:28.

UMAN BEINGS are captivated by irony. I remember learning about a sedevacantist group in Kansas during the 1990s. They claimed Pope Pius XII was the last ‘true’ pope and considered him the paragon of liturgical propriety. They especially loved how he was crowned with the papal TIARA. If they’d only known the truth! From a liturgical standpoint, Pope Pius XII was insanely progressive. He eliminated the midnight fast, permitted evening Masses, allowed the laity to chant the readings at Mass (during Holy Week), allowed the congregation to recite the Pater Noster and Proprium Missae (!) along with the priest, and—believe it or not—attempted to replace the ancient Psalter, which would have necessitated changing every liturgical book in existence.1 One of the cruelest things Pope Pius XII did was to suppress the ancient tradition of TENEBRAE, although the major Roman churches ignored this. In a moment, I’ll explain why I bring this up.

Lenten Hymn • Yesterday, I attempted to record all the vocal parts for a famous Lenten Hymn called “My Song Is Love Unknown.” It appears as #65 in the LONDON ORATORY HYMN BOOK. In the Saint Jean de Brébeuf Hymnal, it is #689. By switching the text, Dr. Theodore Marier used that melody numerous times in his hymnal. (He seems to have been deeply attached to it.)

I’m a baritone, but I did my best to sing the female voices:

To access this hymn’s media in the Brébeuf Portal, click here.

Acceptable Criticism • With the benefit of hindsight, it’s okay to criticize certain things Pope Pius XII did, even though he was one of the most intelligent men who ever lived. But this should only be done by people who genuinely know what they’re talking about. It should not be done by people only capable of parroting what others say. Nor should it be done by those whose only goal is to attack the church. Readers have probably noticed that certain ‘professional Catholics’ desire only one thing: clicks. These authors are usually “terminally online,” and nothing makes them happier than a juicy scandal. As my mother would say: “Any old stick will do to beat the Church.” If a new report comes out indicating Catholics are abandoning their faith, such authors become positively gleeful. Let’s leave such people to one side.

Unintended Consequences • Even Pope Saint Pius X—as holy and great as he was—made mistakes. In 1903, he issued a famous MOTU PROPRIO called “Inter Pastoralis Officii Sollicitudines,” reforming sacred music. Many of his reforms were excellent. On the other hand, sometimes his legislation was interpreted as banning everything except plainsong. That meant that certain beautiful traditions were abandoned. For instance, many parishes sang Sunday Vespers in figured music. Owing to the new legislation of Pope Pius X, many parishes discontinued such things. In the days before the internet, when so many were poor and uneducated, it wasn’t always possible to implement plainsong, especially since many of the instructional booklets were printed in Latin. Moreover, learning how to sing Gregorian Chant from a book can be difficult.

Even more damaging was the reform of Holy Week under Pope Pius XII, which—by moving the ceremonies to untraditional times—effectively eliminated beautiful parish traditions the faithful profited from, such as The Seven Last Words Of Christ and the Stations of the Cross. If memory serves, Pope Pius XII annihilated Easter Sunday Matins and severely truncated Easter Sunday Lauds. But if any day of the year should have Matins, surely Easter Sunday ought to!

Gregorian Rhythm • Ever since 1984’s Quattuor Abhinc Annos, many Catholic communities follow the liturgical books of 1962—but there’s something I’ll never understand. On the one hand, musicians who prepare ceremonies according to 1962 will spend hours arguing about rubrical minutiae, citing Monsignor Pio Martinucci, Father Louis Stercky, Father Adrian Fortescue, Father John O’Connell, Father Innocent Wapelhorst, and so forth. On the other hand, these same people couldn’t care less about 1962 legislation vis-à-vis the rhythm of Gregorian Chant. When Pope Pius X promulgated the EDITIO VATICANA, he was specific and explicit about what rhythmic system was to be followed. That legislation was upheld and reinforced as late as 1958. I know of one musician who works in a “formerly Ecclesia Dei community” who devised his own system of rhythm—which no scholar in the galaxy agrees with. I’d like to know about why such folks are so conscientious regarding every rubric, yet downright sloppy when it comes to the important matter of the official edition’s rhythm, which effects every phrase of every piece.

Conclusion • The hymn above (“My Song Is Love Unknown”) isn’t directly from the liturgy. Some might say it’s a bit sentimental. On the other hand, I feel there’s a place for such para-liturgical items in any healthy parish. What do you think?

1 The Pius XII Psalter—a.k.a. the “Bea Psalter”—was eventually abandoned. Various authorities disagree as to whether it was ever mandatory. (I’ve seen ‘hard’ evidence supporting both sides of that argument.) Regarding TENEBRAE, I’m using shorthand when I say Pius XII “suppressed” it. In other words, it could still technically be sung if the faithful got up extremely early in the morning. But the traditional place (for centuries) was each evening during Holy Week, since the liturgical action took place in the morning. I won’t insult the reader’s intelligence by explaining the effect of moving TENEBRAE to the crack of dawn… It’s rather like what happens when a priest says: “You can have a TLM, but it will take place 3:00pm on Sunday afternoon.” And then they act shocked when attendance is sparse. In the 1960s, people experimented with something called the “Beatles Mass.” It was basically the Mass accompanied by Rock’n Roll instead of sacred music. It would have been wise for priests in those days to place the Beatles Mass at 5:00am on Sunday morning—with the predictable impact on attendance. Such tricks are called “virtual suppression.”

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

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: BEA PSALTER, Father Innocent Liturgical Wapelhorst, Father John B O'Connell Rubrics, Father Louis Stercky Liturgical Rubrics, Gregorian Rhythm Wars, Inter Pastoralis Officii 1903 Motu Proprio, Monsignor Pio Martinucci, My Song Is Love Unknown HYMN, Pope Pius XII Psalter, Quattuor Abhinc Annos John Paul II, Rev Fr Adrian Fortescue Liturgy Last Updated: May 27, 2025

Subscribe

It greatly helps us if you subscribe to our mailing list!

* indicates required

About Jeff Ostrowski

Jeff Ostrowski holds his B.M. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas (2004). He resides with his wife and children in Michigan. —(Read full biography).

Primary Sidebar

Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    “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
    “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Truly Great Processional” • (Pipe Organ)
    I stumbled upon this live recording of a PROCESSIONAL I played on the pipe organ in 2002. It’s an excerpt from a much longer composition by Sebastian Bach. In those days, there weren’t sophisticated recording devices allowing one “fix” wrong notes. (Perhaps they existed, but we didn’t have machines like that.) So it was necessary to play the entire piece from beginning to end. If you’re a church organist, feel free to download the PDF score. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until some joker uses “artificial intelligence” to play music at church … but there’s something so satisfying about playing an organ in real life.
    —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

Legitimate and necessary concern for current realities in the concrete lives of people cannot make us forget the true nature of the liturgical actions. It is clear that the Mass is not the time to “celebrate” human dignity or purely terrestrial claims or hopes. It is rather the sacrifice which renders Christ really present in the sacrament.

— Pope Saint John Paul II (20 March 1990)

Recent Posts

  • PDF Download • “Text by Saint Francis of Assisi” (choral setting w/ organ: Soprano & Alto)
  • “Yahweh” in church songs?
  • “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
  • “Participation” • Recovering its Receptive Dimension
  • “Breathtaking Photographs” • First Mass of Father Michael Caughey, FSSP (Muskegon, MI)

Subscribe

Subscribe

* indicates required

Copyright © 2025 Corpus Christi Watershed · Isaac Jogues on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Corpus Christi Watershed is a 501(c)3 public charity dedicated to exploring and embodying as our calling the relationship of religion, culture, and the arts. This non-profit organization employs the creative media in service of theology, the Church, and Christian culture for the enrichment and enjoyment of the public.

The election of Pope Leo XIV has been exciting, and we’re filled with hope for our apostolate’s future!

But we’re under pressure to transfer our website to a “subscription model.”

We don’t want to do that. We believe our website should remain free to all.

Our president has written the following letter:

President’s Message (dated 30 May 2025)

Are you able to support us?

clock.png

Time's up