Views from the Choir Loft

Keven Smith • Article Archive

Keven Smith is the music director at St. Stephen the First Martyr Catholic Church, an apostolate of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) in Sacramento, California. He trains and directs a mixed choir that sings full Gregorian propers, ordinaries, and sacred polyphony at more than 100 traditional Latin Masses per year. Keven lives in Sacramento with his wife and five musical children.—Read full biography (with photographs).

Keven Smith · May 18, 2020

What to Do When Music Creeps Into Your Prayer

Music is a language, but it does not supplant our own. Rather, it enlivens our words so that they can penetrate the soul with the fullness of their meaning—and enlighten our eyes in any circumstance.

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Keven Smith · May 11, 2020

Choir Roster? No. It’s a Love List!

You can form a stronger connection with your choir even while rehearsals are suspended. All it takes is one simple thing that you probably already have.

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Keven Smith · May 4, 2020

Bring Your “Lost Motets” to Life

I can think of at least five reasons to use the current downtime as an opportunity to educate your parish about sacred music. And it doesn’t take much work.

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Keven Smith · April 27, 2020

What Spilling My Coffee Taught Me About Directing My Choir

(Keven Smith) • Yesterday morning I spilled coffee all over my desk before leaving for our live-streamed Mass. It ended up being a great move+

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Keven Smith · April 18, 2020

Maintaining Easter Joy in a Pandemic

Would you believe Easter Monday is usually one of the darkest days of my year?

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Keven Smith · April 16, 2020

Biography • Keven Smith

Keven earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and a Master of Professional Writing degree from the University of Southern California…

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Calling Dr. Weaver!

A remarkable exposition of the “mora vocis” (published in 1953 in the Netherlands) which doesn’t shy away from a certain item!

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—Jeff Ostrowski

SLANE • “Simplified” Keyboard Arr.

Do you know ‘SLANE’ the hymn tune?

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—Jeff Ostrowski

Insane Baroque-Era Dissonance!

The sumptuous melody called “JESU LEIDEN PEIN UND TOD” appears no fewer than three times in the Brébeuf Catholic Hymnal and is harmonized with standard Common Practice Era SATB voice leading and harmonies (which is only natural). However, one who takes the time to examine what Sebastian Bach did with that tune will encounter an incredibly dissonant sound. As far as I’m concerned, there is no more dissonant sound—in the entire Baroque era—than what I highlighted in yellow on that excerpt. Please let me know if you disagree.

—Jeff Ostrowski

‘Ould’ But Not Good

Dom Samuel Gregory Ould (note the spelling) was a Benedictine monk at FORT AUGUSTUS ABBEY in Scotland. As musician, organist, and composer, Dom Ould was highly regarded. Moreover, he was considered an authority on Gregorian Chant. But not everything found in an old book—or, in this case, an “Ould” book—is necessarily praiseworthy. Consider this page from Dom Ould’s hymnal. Do you see the rhymes? They offend severely by ABR (“Abuse By Reuse”) and are utterly predictable. In my recent article—Two Ways to Defile a Hymn—I addressed this topic.

—Jeff Ostrowski

“Reader Feedback” • 22 June 2026

A reader wrote to us from Virginia: “I really appreciate the 23 harmonizations that you posted on CORPUS CHRISTI WATERSHED for the Daily, Daily, Sing to Mary hymn. I hope to find willing voices in our small Schola Cantorum to try the three-voice version. Carry on, sir! You’re doing the Lord’s work.” While we don’t know this gentleman personally, we note that he earned a Ph.D. (which demonstrates that our blog has something for everybody). 😊

—Corpus Christi Watershed

Time and Again We Are Asked…

John Baptist Singenberger (d. 1924) was a central figure of Catholic Church music. In this utterly fascinating excerpt (Single-Page PDF), Singenberger writes: Time and again we are asked: “Is the Gregorian chant to be accompanied by the organ?” As a young student in Saint Gall, Singenberger befriended SEBASTIAN GEBHARD MESSMER, the future Archbishop of Milwaukee (Wisconsin). The two graduated together in 1861. The school they attended (Saint George’s Seminary) was a “seminary”—but in the older European sense. In other words, it provided a classical education without necessarily leading to ordination. Singenberger remained a layman his whole life, but Messmer was eventually made archbishop—by Pope Saint Pius X—of the very archdiocese in Wisconsin where Singenberger would spend his American career, giving him a powerful ecclesiastical ally.

—Jeff Ostrowski

The representative Protestant collection, entitled “Hymns, Ancient and Modern”—in substance a compromise between the various sections of conflicting religious thought in the Establishment—is a typical instance. That collection is indebted to Catholic writers for a large fractional part of its contents. If the hymns be estimated which are taken from Catholic sources, directly or imitatively, the greater and more valuable part of its contents owes its origin to the Church.

— Orby Shipley (1884)