Views from the Choir Loft

Guest Author

Guest Author · February 28, 2017

EF Divine Office Resource • Daily Recordings of Lauds

“At the crowing of the cock, hope returns…”

Guest Author · January 3, 2017

New! • Easy Choral Extension Mass (Ordinary Form)

How to make polyphony work for your Ordinary Form Choir.

Guest Author · December 22, 2016

Opening Our Hearts At Christmas

The best way to spread Christmas cheer is…

Guest Author · November 7, 2016

Catholic Liturgy in Secular Sweden

How does a tiny Catholic community in a secularized country celebrate Mass with the Pope?

Guest Author · October 28, 2016

What you didn’t realize about World Youth Day…

Guest article by the co-director of music for the English liturgies at WYD 2016.

Guest Author · October 27, 2016

PDF Download • “Mass of the Alabaster Jar” (2016)

These settings were written to be easily played by pianists and organists of an intermediate skill level.

Guest Author · September 5, 2016

Guest Article: “Why That Hymn Doesn’t Work”

Twelve Criteria to Help Explain Yourself

Guest Author · April 6, 2016

Musical and Liturgical Life at the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

Praising our Extraordinary God in the Ordinary Form

Guest Author · March 5, 2016

“To Sing With The Angels” • A History Of The Twin Cities Catholic Chorale

A guest article by Dr. Virginia A. Schubert.

Guest Author · January 25, 2016

Reflections on the Change of the Mandatum Rite

A guest article by Mr. Michael Chan, who lives in Hong Kong.

Guest Author · December 14, 2015

Benedict XVI Institute Seeks Executive Director

Are you an entrepreneur?

Guest Author · November 7, 2015

Sermon on Poor Souls • Based on Wisdom 2:23—3:9

A guest article by Fr. Valentine Young, OFM

Guest Author · October 12, 2015

“Saving” Gregorian Chant In The Ordinary Form

Daniel Craig’s review with a “signs of the times” digression.

Guest Author · September 9, 2015

PDF Download • SAB Setting of “Jesu Rex Admirabilis”

Including an update on wonderful things happening for Sacred Music in Colorado!

Guest Author · September 1, 2015

The Responsorial Psalm: What You Never Knew!

…including recent documentation from the Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy (USCCB).

“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

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