Views from the Choir Loft

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Jeff Ostrowski · June 10, 2019

PDF Download • Vespers Organ Accompaniments

Do you understand why some of the harmonies are blank?

Jeff Ostrowski · June 4, 2019

PDF Download • “Magnificat” + Rehearsal Videos!

“You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I know of no greater piece than this.” —Jeff Ostrowski

Jeff Ostrowski · May 23, 2019

PDF Download • Palestrina “Gloria” w/ practice videos!

Careful: the Alto line is surprisingly difficult!

Jeff Ostrowski · May 17, 2019

PDF Download • Franz Liszt and Gregorian Chant

Many would ask: “What is the purpose of posting such books? Are we supposed to sing from them?”

Jeff Ostrowski · May 2, 2019

PDF Download • Complete Kyriale on Modern Staves!

If you can read treble clef, you can read this edition … a brilliant idea!

Jeff Ostrowski · April 20, 2019

PDF Download • “Cheat Sheet” for Easter Vigil

Releasing this is probably a bad idea…too late!

Jeff Ostrowski · April 19, 2019

PDF Download • Organ Interludes for Manuals!

I will most definitely be playing these pieces—based on hymn tunes—by Georg Philipp Telemann!

Jeff Ostrowski · April 8, 2019

PDF Download • Spectacular “Tenebrae” Booklet

Mr. Albert Bloomfield has done us a breathtaking favor.

Jeff Ostrowski · April 4, 2019

PDF Download • Mystery Kyriale (100 Pages)

Nobody knows the author or date of publication.

Jeff Ostrowski · January 22, 2019

PDF Download • “Chant Service Book” (208 pages)

An extremely rare book from 1941, containing all your favorite Gregorian chants!

Jeff Ostrowski · December 22, 2018

PDF Booklet • Christmas Midnight Mass (36 pages)

It looks so simple when placed in a booklet like that…

Veronica Brandt · December 1, 2018

PDF Download • “Easy Organ Interludes” (229 pages)

Enjoy this treasure trove of organ music from almost 400 years ago! Plus a few highlights from along the way.

Jeff Ostrowski · November 15, 2018

PDF Download • Mass Hymns by Fr. Seed, SJ (1906)

How utterly strange to see such items!

Jeff Ostrowski · November 6, 2018

PDF Download • “Pope Pius XII Hymnal” (1959)

Very few people have a copy of this incredibly rare Catholic hymnal.

Jeff Ostrowski · October 30, 2018

“Source Material” • The Saint Jean de Brébeuf Hymnal

We assembled a staggering number of Catholic hymnals and selected only the very best material from each.

Jeff Ostrowski · October 15, 2018

PDF Download • “Sanctus” (SATB) by JS Bach!

Wow … I bet you’ve never heard this piece before!

Jeff Ostrowski · October 2, 2018

PDF Download • “Christmas Carol” by Peter Lejeune

I recorded all the voices, to demonstrate how it sounds…

Jeff Ostrowski · August 13, 2018

PDF Download • “Leeds Catholic Hymnal” (232 pages)

A hymnal out of print for fifty years has been scanned by Mr. Colin E. Jackson!

Jeff Ostrowski · August 7, 2018

PDF Download • “Sunday Vespers”

…including a failed descant from 1983.

Jeff Ostrowski · May 1, 2018

PDF Download • A “Bright” Eucharistic Hymn

Could there be a nicer hymn than this? It is fresh and glorious.

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